On Gawker a few weeks ago somebody posted a cell phone video of a fight between a store patron and a store owner.  I have no idea who was right or wrong but the one clear message is that nothing in public is private anymore, at all.  If the police aren't watching, the person over there with the phone is or there's a TV crew.  This isn't entirely new, of course.  Sometimes, as with Rodney King, personal recording devices and the like are used to check those with power.  The police.  The government.  Big corporations.  So far it seems like Wikileaks is targeting the right institutions.

One rule I was taught as a journalist is to avoid raising a story subject up just to knock him down.  If you have to puff up the importance of the target of an investigative piece then you have to at least stop and ask yourself what you're doing and why.  A real investigation gets its power from the importance of the topic at hand.  The Pentagon and the State Department -- obviously big and important enough.  An indepth look at your neighbor's sophomore college English papers to determine if he really read Sense and Sensibility or just skimmed it?  Not so much. That said, I think it kind of sucks that we're making and distributing visual records of people letting off steam or getting drunk in public.  I wish we had more of a sense of proportion as a society.

But Assange's sense of proportion seems pretty good so far.  It's not "you have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide" that's a valid argument.  It's that if you're an institution or individual that uses secrecy to escape being held accountable for harmful acts, then we need organizations like Wikileaks keeping tabs on you.  His milk and plastic example is a good one.  The police, who can control evidence in criminal cases and who often control the narratives of their investigations and arrests are another good target.  Obviously government agencies doing classified work and big businesses count too.

Do individuals count?  If they affect the public interest, yes.  If they use secrecy to the detriment of others, yes.  I think we should take a narrow view of both but Assange is really just saying "Yeah, if you make your money cheating people and covering it up, we're here to make life bad for you."  As it should be, right?  Because whenever a company does cover something up until its too late and we get an Enron, a Worldcom, a Bear Stearns or a Lehman all I ever hear is "where were the regulators/journalists/analysts/ratings agencies who should have known better?"

I think that it is incorrect and even dangerous to confuse the workings of the diplomatic community with that of the banks or the pharma industry, which is what Assange seems to be doing in the interview that you quote.

Diplomacy is not, repeat not a a business and the relations between sovereign "armed and dangerous" states are not the same as the relations between a bank and their customers. Lehman Brothers crashing or a bank screwing its customers is not the same as bombing Iran.

The only thing standing between the guns of the opposing militaries of dozens of countries are the world's diplomats

Imagine a community of people, who spend most of their working careers outside their home countries, who see each other in an endless series of cocktail parties and dinners, who when they move to a new post, find themselves in the company of diplomats from other countries where they were posted before and renew old friendships... this goes on for years and years. They exchange gossip, some of it pretty gamey about the leaders and governments they deal with and about their own leaders too.

This understanding and relationship comes in handy when there is an international crisis and to freeze that could be really, really dangerous at a time like now, when there is a real danger of a war breaking out.

This is what Assange has done. I agree with Hillary Clinton that this is "an attack on the international community".

No time to sugarcoat it, Donal. This is really poorly thought-through. Shorter still: it's crap.

1. You're worried about privacy and security and such, and - not sure you've noticed - while the US has built an incredible world of surveillance, illegal rendition, torture, drone hits, etc.... when someone LEAKS the guts of that world, so we can actually COMPARE their external words versus their internal ones, you make the LEAKERS the privacy concern! For God's sake man, the Government hammered down ANYONE who would raise questions, the old methods of challenging their assertions were ignored, the mass media are absolute lapdogs.... and when Wiki leaks some stuff that let's us check their words, you ATTACK THEM!

I mean, the US Government has started two wars, and killed hundreds of thousands of people, with lies from beginning to end, and then they're caught in their lies. The Afghans democratic leaders, who we ask kids to go die for, are drug-trafficking thieves, liars and thugs. And we know it. Officially confirmed now. 

But you don't worry about that, because now, with the leak, INDIVIDUALS WILL BE AFFECTED. WTF Donal? Seriously. DID YOU THINK INDIVIDUALS WERE NOT AFFECTED BY THE STATUS QUO? BY THE WAY THINGS HAVE BEEN DONE? BY THE WAR??

So Wikileaks - which opens up the guts of the surveillance state - is therefore LIKE the surveillance state?

2. And the leakers, who stand to be sent to prison for life, or killed, are LIKE PAPARAZZI. Did you write this without giving it much more than 10 seconds thought? Seriously. Think about this. There's NO comparison between people taking pictures of the world's most famous people, and being rewarded with MONEY for that, and leakers of the world's most secret stuff, who have to run and hide for life. Really, there isn't. 

3. And then your big fear, Wikileaks is just like Mike Wallace, only following regular old Joes around. Jesus man, get a grip. They're leaking stuff from AS FAR INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF SPIES AND DIPLOMATS AS YOU CAN POSSIBLY GET, THE STUFF ALMOST NO ONE IN THE WORLD SEES, SO NATURALLY, THIS WOULD MAKE YOU THINK IT'S JUST LIKE TRAILING AFTER YOUR GRAMMY.

I'm beginning to lose heart here, you know? If people can't think this shit through any better than this, then fuckit. That has to be the worst series of analogies and comparisons since... well.... since the last Seaton post.

Yeah, sure, Assange is the story, his untrustworthy eyes, and we all should worry that he's gonna leak us to the world, and ummmm, yeah, we should stick a drone on his ass, cause he's such a danger, and WHY WORRY ABOUT THE GUVMINT?

Fuckit.