The fallout from whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has reached a new high after the most recent dump of classified documents last week, this time pertaining to the U.S.’s diplomatic relations with other countries. While the website has drawn criticism and sparked controversy since its launch, the backlash that has resulted since the latest release is unprecedented.
After Amazon.com dropped WikiLeaks from its server, forcing it to seek a new host in Sweden, and PayPal froze the website’s donation account, cutting off a major source of revenue, WikiLeaks has suffered some of its toughest blows yet.
But the fight against WikiLeaks got even more invasive when an email from a State Department employee and Columbia University alumnus cautioned Columbia students not to discuss WikiLeaks on any social networking sites, as it may negatively affect their job prospects in the future.
Disapproval of WikiLeaks’ mission is one thing, and government condemnation of the leaking of classified documents is expected. The government needs to take a strong stance against actions such as this in order to discourage leaks from continuing in the future. And Amazon and PayPal’s decisions, whether right or not, related directly to their concerns about their own economic success.
But encouraging people, especially students, not to associate with the website in any way by telling them it threatens their job prospects is an unfair intimidation tactic. If students want to debate the ethics of WikiLeaks, no government official should tell them not to. It is not as though the email simply said not to support WikiLeaks, but rather directly discouraged students from posting anything related to the website at all.
The fallout from WikiLeaks’ latest release is a clear overreaction. Few paid much attention after the revealing War Logs documents exposed secrets about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were crucial to the public’s understanding of the conflicts. While the government reacted, the outcry was relatively limited. But after a release of information about American diplomacy, much of which was essentially already well known (honestly, who was surprised that the U.S. isn’t Vladimir Putin’s biggest fan?), suddenly the entire world is up in arms.
WikiLeaks’ release of hundreds of thousands of classified government documents is far from trivial, and its impact will only increase as more documents are released. But there is no reason that people should have to fear associating with the organization in anyway. Part of living in a democracy is that people have the freedom to discuss anything they choose. Discouraging that undermines this basic principle.
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