As you may have heard Wikileaks has been forced to move its site to Switzerland. Today on "Democracy Now" there was a debate concerning the site between Glen Greenwald of the legal blog Salon.com and Steven Aftergood, a transparency activist and the writer of Secrecy News.
While both men are in favor of greater transparency in our government Greenwald argued in favor of Wikileaks while Aftergood argued that Wikileaks is causing too much harm in its unfocused and nonstrategic release of materials better left secret. Amongst his many examples he included the harm the most recent leaks have done to the careers of apparently good diplomats and the danger of having an official blue-print for a nuclear device freely available on the internet. In general Aftergood suggested that Wikileaks has a primitive (what I have sometimes called anarchistic) view of politics which believes that all disclosure of secret information is good disclosure and only the corrupt will ultimately be harmed through such disclosure. He worries that such a view leads to politically counter-productive outcomes. Greenwald, on the other hand, insisted that Wikileaks has done more to strike fear into the hearts of corrupt politicians and government employees than any other transparency activist actions thus far. Here is the full program if you are interested:
Where do you stand? Is Wikileaks a threat to diplomacy? Is it a successful and powerful tool for bringing corruption to light? Does it endanger the nation or just those who have something to hide? Should it be allowed to operate?
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