Wikileaks is Detrimental to Governments Around the World
CON (4 arguments)
With wikileaks, we can help to prevent undemocratic actions amongst the governments, which will lead to more trust among allies, citizens, and potential trading partners. Thus, with Wikileaks, we can build trust and gain allies, which will overall benefit the world and its economy. If Wikileaks did not exist, the United States government would become even more corrupt and keep more secrets.
Wikileaks revealed that the British spy agency — and not the United States —was behind a cyberattack against Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom. The attack was labeled by Belgian authorities as an act of "state-sponsored espionage," a serious allegation considering that both Belgium and the United Kingdom are allies and members of the European Union. Another document leaked to the public in 2009 said the U.S. government regularly hands over intercepted communications to the FBI that have not first been reviewed by U.S. analysts for privacy concerns and therefore may contain phone calls and emails of innocent American citizens. Because of Edward Snowden and Wikileaks we learned that the Obama administration enabled the National Security Agency to collect caller information from Verizon through a “business records” provision of the Patriot Act, established under President George W. Bush. The government ordered Verizon to hand over call information on a daily basis, including the time, location and duration of calls. The Verizon leak enabled the American Civil Liberties Union, a Verizon customer, to file a lawsuit charging that the NSA's mass collection of metadata violates Americans' constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy. And it has been proven that these acts are unconstitutional — in July the court that oversees NSA spying ruled that the agency's domestic dragnet violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures. Additionally, Wikileaks tracks communication lines in the US, making terrorists use alternative communication methods with more people involved; making it easier for the US government to catch the terrorists.
Washington Post, and USA today
Wikileaks, by releasing information that governments think is secure, helps that government by forcing it to strengthen its national cyber-security. “If the trade-off is that we now made it much, much harder for these networks to communicate, that actually could help national security,” said Allan Friedman, a cybersecurity expert at the Brookings Institution. There’s a potential upside of his releasing the information. If the leaks create a situation where terrorists “have to rely on more couriers, more people that we can turn into assets for our country, more sources that are vulnerable to human intelligence and things like that, then you can imagine a benefit for national security.” What happens if the terrorists get ahold of the nuclear codes? If they know our every military move then we are in terrible danger.
If governments tighten up on national security than terrorist attacks will become far and few between. They will no longer be able to identify who spies are or where to bomb next. So in turn, Wikileaks is strengthening national security.
National Security Council
If countries with Constitutions like the US ban Wikileaks, it violates the first amendment rights of free press and free speech. This is what our country stands upon. Also, Wikileaks exists for the sole purpose of providing the truth and revealing so-called secrets, and everyone has the right to know what is actually going on in the government so that injustices and inequality can be faced, as well as where our tax dollars are going. WikiLeaks is a distributor of real information, and if helps guarantee the information won’t be hidden by editors and publishers who are afraid of lawsuits or the government. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “Information is the currency of democracy.” According to the Huffington Post, by labeling tens of millions of documents secret, the US government has created a huge vacuum of information. This “secret” information, which is not given by the government, results in biased, unjust opinions that came from biased sources. Furthermore, “a lack of government transparency and accountability undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust,” according to a 2008 Harris survey commissioned by the Association of Government Accountants. Not only does Wikileaks provide transparent information, it has not been linked to any deaths. According to the Huffington Post, “U.S. officials conceded that they have no evidence to date that the release of documents led to anyone’s death.” Furthermore, according to Pentagon Spokesperson, Jeff Morrell, “We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in Wikileaks documents.” He later says, “The best justification they can find for secrecy is that lives are at stake. Actually, lives are at stake as a result of the silences and lies which a lot of these leaks reveal.”
The impact is a positive one for the American democracy, as it exercises the rights of free speech and free press our country is founded on. Wikileaks allows other journalists to have proper evidence to write their articles; and especially since the have been zero links to deaths due to Wikileaks, it would be unconstitutional to ban Wikileaks.
Huffington Post, Wired
The Wikileaks's goal is possibly to help with the anti war movement by uncovering when America has made some very questionable decisions impacting other countries. This would help with the anti war movement because if you release the brutal secrets of America’s government, it could help change the strategies of the government when it comes to war. It could possibly create more planned out and less brutal strategies.
The face of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has made it clear that they wanted to uncover the brutality and futility of war. One example of this is with the war between Afghanistan and America. Using the uncovered records, the media has detailed some heinous actions. There was also evidence of war crimes, and shooting sprees of U.S. troops.