I’m still not sure about the whole WikiLeaks mess that’s dominating the news/web.

It’s a complex issue, and there are many facets to the story.

However, I am sure about a couple of aspects of the WikiLeaks story:

The hackers who are exacting revenge (denial-of-service attacks, outright hijacking of sites) over sites that have distanced themselves from WikiLeaks are just dead wrong. Whatever you think of WikiLeak’s founder – Julian Assange – and his actions, there is a lot of gray area in which to say he is doing some good. Impeding the access to Visa’s & Master Card’s web sites because they cut off WikiLeaks is just criminal. There is no upside. Yes, it is civil disobedience, to some degree, but civil disobedience requires a public – not anonymous – act of protest. Just wrong.

Jeff Jarvis is wrong. I usually agree with Jarvis (a professor of Journalism at CUNY, and someone who “gets” the internet), and his defense of WikiLeaks contains many compelling points. However, Jarvis totally misses the boat with this paragraph from the article:

Of course, we need secrets in society. In issues of security and criminal investigation as well as the privacy of citizens and some matters of operating the state—such as diplomacy—sunlight can damage. If government limited secrecy to that standard—necessity—there would be nothing for Wikileaks to leak.

   — Jeff Jarvis, Buzzfeed.com

While I agree with the first two sentences, the third is an incorrect conclusion that totally disregards human nature: Do we need to know why Hillary Clinton is traveling to China to meet with some X person? No. Do we need to know how actor/actress Y is doing in rehab? No. Do we need to know the sexual orientation of this or that public figure? No.

Do we still want to know?

Yes!

If we were an incurious lot, Nick Denton would have to fold up Gawker.com and the other titles he runs and get a real job. Ditto TMZ and so many more.

This has always been the case; Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 classic, Winesburg, Ohio, revolves to some degree around this issue of privacy: In a small town, there are no secrets…even if the so-called secrets are never publicly voiced.

And I think Jarvis is wrong for a second reason: In the case of politics – why we went to war etc – there are real reasons to want to see the secret documents. Think Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.

If we just complacently accept that what is secret is of no import to us, we are implicitly trusting government.

And ever since Watergate, the average US citizen has had issues with implicitly trusting government. The war in Iraq – i.e. how did we get here? – has made many citizens even more skeptical of government actions.

But, again, I can’t quite figure out what side I come down on with Assange’s actions. It’s a turning point in journalism and the web, however. I’m sure of that much – just not sure which way we’ll be turning.

Or if that direction is the correct one.