WikiLeaks and the Long Haul

WikiLeaks continues to surprise US allies and opponents alike on how foreign officials aided and informed US embassy staff. Of course, informants expected confidentiality, and the US government was unprepared for sudden exposure. “For negotiation to work, people’s stated positions have to change, but change is seen, almost universally, as weakness,” explains Professor Clay Shirky in an essay, admitting to his conflict over the disclosures. “People trying to come to consensus must be able to privately voice opinions they would publicly abjure, and may later abandon.” The window into US State Department processes has stunned collaborators, citizens and targets afar, and Shirky criticizes the US government’s knee-jerk reaction, scrambling to devise new laws and legal justification to charge WikiLeaks and its supporters. He suggests the US damages its own credibility by taking legal shortcuts, refusing to abide by democratic process in regulating internet sites like WikiLeaks. – YaleGlobal