Heap Overrun

A few days ago, WikiLeaks began the process of incrementally releasing in excess of two million documents. This is at once a very good thing and a very bad thing, with no clear way (possibly no way at all) for WikiLeaks to mitigate the issues while achieving the desired effect and staying true to their stated goals and objectives. The important question in all of this is whether or not the overall result is beneficial.

On one hand we have to consider Freedom Of The Press, a necessary part of the checks and balances to prevent corruption in government. Not that it actually works very well, as anyone who reads beyond the surface news given by major news organizations can plainly see, but to dispose with Freedom Of The Press would be more damaging than leaving things as they are.

We also have to consider something our governments (and journalists) are far too quick to tell us: if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide. If you have any doubt that your government is telling you this, try to pass through airport security and tell them you don't want something scanned. For the first time that I'm aware of, the American government is now in the position of being on the wrong side of their own position. If they did nothing wrong, "Cablegate" would have been comparable to spilling coffee on your brand new suit: annoying, a little painful and both inconvenient and expensive to clean up. Instead, because the American government did play naughty, we're talking about possible loss of life, jeopardization of negotiations and expulsion of American diplomats from foreign postings. It's interesting to see how citizens who question or refuse to accept the concept that innocence is implied by openness are treated with extra suspicion, but when governments try to hide things that shouldn't be kept hidden it's only the people who question the legitimacy of the government's actions who are scrutinized by people in positions of authority.

Granted, there are times when things are marked as "Classified" (or with other security levels) for a good reason. It's unfortunately difficult to trust the government to make the right decision, partially because they feel it necessary to err on the side of caution and partially because there seems to be no accountability. It's an open debate whether the common citizen should be aware of any given discussion our government is involved in. On one side is the opinion that the very existence of international diplomacy depends on diplomatic discussions remaining secret, that revealing the details of a discussion would jeopardize talks entirely. On the other hand is the idea that all government dealings should be open. We've already seen many times what happens when governments take the former approach; the largest pre-Cablegate reaction to secrecy, seen through the ACTA negotiations, showed exactly the sort of nefarious deeds our government tells us will happen when people keep secrets and go to great lengths to prevent knowledge from leaking out. We'll probably never get to see what the latter approach leads to. The real answer, as with most (or maybe all) other problems, is actually neither. Finding the right answer won't be simple and it will require some very close scrutiny of the grey area between the extremes.

The other thing that must be considered, arguably the most important, is the concept of "the good of the many". In today's globalized world, "the many" is bigger than any one city-state or nation-state, or even a nation-state and all their allies. We have to consider the overall benefit to the world at large. Like Canadian fair dealing, this really needs a two-part test:

• Does the release of information provide a net benefit to the majority of people?
• Even if releasing information provides a net benefit, does the release of information lead to an overall negative effect?

These questions are basically an expanded form of asking "does the good of a deed outweigh the evil". The first question is almost always answered with a resounding "YES" provided you consider all people as equal individuals. Educating people and keeping people informed allows people to make more informed decisions. Nothing requires people to make an intelligent and informed decision, but at least the capability to make an informed decision is there. The second question is a lot harder to answer, and it can't be applied to a block of information. Each individual piece needs to run through these tests and not released only if either test can be shown to fail. The dilemma then becomes to define how to determine whether releasing information is globally beneficial, which is never a decision that should be made by any single person. For some of the released diplomatic cables, the end result will surely be beneficial. For others, both the person who leaked the documents and WikiLeaks itself needs to reconsider releasing the document. It would be, for example, very bad for North Korea to learn that they are under covert surveillance, but probably not a big deal if a new recipe for spicy curry is revealed and definitely good for the ACTA text to have been released as negotiations progressed. Unfortunately, WikiLeaks does not do this and so they potentially jeopardize things that could be beneficial to the world at large. Assuming all parties actually follow through of course; didn't the United States sign up for a plan to reduce nuclear armaments?