Whistleblowers, traditionally are given the shaft, and I accept that it is part of life that if you transmit verifiable conspiratorial information to the public domain, you are vulnerable to the wrath of powerful forces that may be available to the parties of the conspiracy.
This is different to information that is secretly passed or sold to the enemy in their private domain. This is the principal difference between whistle blowing and treason. Sure, if you have access to some confidential or secret information, you can sit on it, publish it or sell it secretly.
Either way, with the situation in progress under way in London, it resembles more a diplomatic game of chess than a series of past and possible future court cases. It is even plausible that some parties are playing to lose. People that had put up bail, seemed quite content in losing it, and the British may be playing to lose now. It would be face saving if diplomatic priorities means that Assange would require safe passage to Ecuador to avoid setting a dangerous diplomatic precedent.
4 comments:
I think if you publicly sabotage your country's ability to protect its own national security interests, it's also treason. Secrecy of transfer of information is not a requirement, it's just got a broader use because there are many things that if you did them publicly, the country could alter the specific conditions and thus nullify the risk.
It partly comes down to intent. Specific leaks about specific confidential information may show an intent to damage national security interests. With "Mega-Leaks" like cablegate, it is arguably the institutionalised confidentiality of international relations which is being sabotaged. With the Iraq war logs, it is the institutionalised protection of American Soldiers in spite of confidential evidence to the contrary.
What I am trying to say is that although there is probably information there which could potentially sabotage Western country's national security interests, the facets that were more open to start with are damaged the least. The ones that were least open, amount to conspiracies that would be considered by the public to be unacceptable.
The way America was using Egypt as its private torture chamber for high value suspects, has thankfully stopped - mainly as a result of previously confidential international relations becoming public knowledge rather than rumour.
Post a Comment