Wikileaks Scandal Places Legality Above Morals
Posted by Stacy Litz on Jul 28, 2010 in Commentary • 6 commentsWikileaks, which describes itself as a “multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public,” has inadvertently failed in its mission.
The recent criminal investigation of 22-year-old American intelligence analyst Bradley Manning highlights the reality that legally, Wikileaks cannot do much to protect individuals who leak government information deemed “classified,” even if the individual sees disclosure of the information as being to the public’s benefit.
In the US legal system, this public interest moral argument carries no weight, and Manning will most likely be persecuted for his actions. Instead of Wikileaks being persecuted, or any other news source, the government is going looking for the leakers or whistle blowers themselves, attempting to prevent “shooting the messenger,” along with adding additional privacy measures to government information. When Manning was turned in by a fellow hacker friend, Wikileaks could not protect him and his identity any longer and the case became completely out of the website’s jurisdiction and into government hands.
The video leaked in this case does not seem to give away any specific classified information and by simply browsing the internet, gruesome war images and stories can be found that were not specifically leaked; the ugly truth has a way of naturally making it into the mainstream. In case you are unware, the video shows a 2007 U.S. helicopter strike in Iraq that killed possible insurgents and two Reuters journalists. Corruption, Pakistani collusion with the Taliban and civilian casualities are already known and well documented — this video is almost old news. The public is already well aware of the war statistics even though the government makes concious efforts to hide them, especially by banning photos of coffins of dead soldiers (surprisingly, this was recently overturned).
The argument of national security is the main reason that the government is using against the leaked video, which can have some backbone and can be highly controversial to those who do not consider the war illegitimate. Rather than just the video, 92,000 other documents were also leaked, which especially increased the worry of national security, but this tactic can often be seen used by government often to lower criticism and hinder embarrassment. Anarchists who are at least anti-war and follow consistent views of freedom, especially holding the belief of no need for national security of arbitrary borders, can find this situation of the government condemnation of those bearing the truth to be extremely disheartening.
Considering that the government labels any information to be above the public eye is highly condemnable; remember who’s paying for the war? Besides all the borrowing, money laundering and debt creation, the tax payers are the major bearers of the funds that go to the war and foreign policy concerns. Should they be aware of such information? When publicly funded projects are becoming listed as private or secret from the public, they should not be happening at all. The additional aspect of taxes being involuntary and then, as shown in this case, ending up paying for the death of innocents and abuse of power is an abomination. Manning, in releasing the videos, took the moral high ground — above all the war lies, expenses, and government labels of privacy. His actions should be praised and will hopefully lead to the abolition of this tireless war, but let’s just hope he does not become a martyr for his heroism.
C4SS Social Media Specialist Stacy Litz is an undergraduate at Drexel University, studying political (statist) science. She is the President of the Student Liberty Front, Campus Coordinator for Students for Liberty and founder of her university's chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. She is the winner of the Drexel University Student Leader of the Year award and first place winner of the Campus Freedom Network incentive program. Currently, she writes for Examiner.com, Suite 101, the 2010 Journal of Liberty and Society and other varied publications. She can be found fighting for liberty 24/7 in a relentless fashion. Stacy can be reached at litz@drexel.edu and more information can be found on her website, www.stacylitz.com.
I'm certainly no Christian, and not a theophile or deist of any sort, but I have to say that Jesus of Nazareth knew what was up on the question of law versus morality when he consistently rebuked the legalistic Pharisees for their desire to invoke the letter of the law, but not the morality-based social justice impetus behind the law.
Justice Hugo L. Black: “The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.”
Isn’t it the rule of law itself that places legality above morals? We who have inherited the Judaic fascination with metastasizing legal codes which we then consult as though they were revealed truth have long since forgotten how to assess morality independent of the legal code in force at the time. The feigned umbrage over the wikileaks press inurgency illustrates this, but does not originate it.
"…the morality-based social justice impetus behind the law".
Er, no, that was not what was behind the law. What was behind that were the "two great commandments", of which only the lesser one had anything to do with people's relations with each other, and even that one was not a social justice thing but a personal and individual one.
Actually, PM Lawrence, if you asked any jurisprudential historian about the history of laws, they'd say all laws are based on moral principles.
They just might not be moral principles that everyone agrees with.
It sounds like you are defining "morality" there as _the morality PM Lawrence agrees with_ — which isn't necessarily incorrect if we're being subjective. But I was being objective.
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