Okay, let's deal with that point by point.
This is a completely specious argument. ANY company is severely damaged by the publication of the entirety or broad segments of its internal communication. It doesn't matter if they're ethical or not, because this is not solely - or even primarily - a question of ethical standards. It is a question of a legitimate need to be able to operate, process and share information safely. If you can't, you cannot make business. Philosophically, Assange's argument is akin to that of extreme free churches who prohibit curtains in the homes of its adherents, on the reasoning that you should never do anything that can't stand the light of day. They both take a sound concept - ethical integrity and transparency respectively - and turn it into a destructive tool by extending its application in extremis.
This has always been implicitly understood, and the a free press committed to the ideal of transparency has as a consequence always applied some sort of criteria of restraint. You don't neccessarily publish
anything that might interest someone or tell the public something useful about something. There is no obvious place to draw the line, but normally the publication of classified information is justified by it being in the public interest - for instance, by bringing to light illegal actions, corruption or policies that differ drastically from what is publicly announced for no legitimate reason.
What is Assange's position within this field of questions? It is this:
Which in essence boils down to the claim that the public needs to know
everything. Because the big things are illuminated by the sum of small things, which is of course perfectly true. But the logical consequence of applying such a logic to government is that nobody does, writes or says anything that he or she isn't comfortable about standing up and defending in the newspapers tomorrow. And when I say "defend", I don't mean just ethically, but also politically, in terms of career-advancement utility and so on. I invite you to consider whether this would be a desirable state of affairs.
Moreover, Assange's whole logic rests on a fundamental premiss that is largely unspoken as well as unproven: That the system is as a whole and in general terms corrupt. That lawlessness, arbitrary use of power and corruption are general traits of how Western government works. Only that would provide some justification for his anarchic conviction that general exposure is the only solution. But he is wrong, and I must confess it is a source of constant amazement to me to see millions of educated people across the West who appear to share this delusion. I find it even more amazing that what is emerging from the cables is interpreted as
support for this rather than the contrary. I can't say I have followed everything pertaining to everywhere, but in the case of Norway at least, what we have seen has been mainly frank and often quite good analysis, of just the kind you'd expect a competent embassy to produce.
I've spent the last ten years in Central and Eastern Europe, where problems in corruption, rule of law and generally weak standards of political life are very real issues. In most of the rest of the world, things are
much worse still. And, they exist also in the mature western democracies, but they are not systemic - which is, in fact, a rather unique achievement and something worth fighting for. These problems are real. There is no need to submerge them in an anarchic fantasy of a pseudo-democratic system permeated by corruption.
Well, what I mainly see is demagogy. The leaks are sold as a finished product with no attendant analysis: See, here's the corruption we're talking about. The abuse of power. The US government calls Silvio Berlusconi a pompous asshole. Joseph Biden said something in public he had doubts about in closed meetings. Aren't you angry? No wonder they're keeping it all secret from us, that says it all doesn't it.
But where's the analysis? Where's the guy who's done what Assange has claimed is the main benefit of publishing it all, namely looked at it all (or at least a lot of it) in conjunction and produced some sort of reasoned argument that points out that here is a general practice which is in fact at odds with these reasonably defined standards of ethical behavior and accountability? They are selling a perception, and the documents are essentially a prop. Once they've made ten headlines, no more is essentially needed - what matters is that it's the right kind of headlines. So far, they and their associates have released a tiny fraction of the 250,000 documents and presumably not the most boring ones. If someone with a capacity for synthesising huge quantities of documentation, like a historian, sat down and wrote an account giving a systemic description on that basis, do you think a very sensational picture of that system would emerge?
These guys are media savvy. By leaking documents in driblets they are not just keeping interest up, they are also insuring that the general perception is shaped by the most sensationalist cases and preventing anyone from putting the leaked information into a broader context. And perversely, this is not held against them by most people who realise what they are doing, because to most people today savviness means a lot more than intellectual integrity. That doesn't change the reality, which is that what you have here is essentially an anarchist medicine show that happened to get its hands on some real goods and making the most of them. Go along for the ride if you think it's worth it.
