The Telegraph's deputy blogs editor Will Heaven has accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of "politicising" the Afghan War Logs intelligence material by giving it to three "Left-leaning newspapers" - the Guardian, the New Tork Times and Der Spiegel.Heaven blogs that Assange says WikiLeaks has no political agenda but adds: "So I’m puzzled by today’s 'Afghanistan war log' story. It doesn’t strike me – or many of my colleagues – as politically neutral to feed such sensitive information to three Left-leaning newspapers... Even more puzzling that Wikileaks would choose, very deliberately, to contravene its own mission statement – that crowdsourcing and open data are paramount."
He claims: "By selecting three like-minded newspapers, Julian Assange has politicised the information. Wikileaks has effectively achieved the polar opposite of crowdsourcing, demonstrating precisely why selective disclosure is a far more subtle – and far more dangerous – method of operation.
"Wikileaks is getting an easy ride today – on social networking sites and elsewhere. I’m not sure it should be. The information leaked from Afghanistan is undoubtedly sensitive, but if Wikileaks had been true to its principles, it should have been up to an online audience (of casual readers and experts) to decide its value, not the editors of three Left-wing newspapers. Sadly, those principles have been ditched."
The release of sensitive information by Wikileaks has put hundreds of Afghan informers, and their families, at risk. Names of individuals, and even the villages they lived in, have been exposed.
ReplyDeleteWill the left-wing leakers be charged with accessory to murder if some of these brave Afghans are killed by the Taliban or their AQ colleagues?
No, didn't think so!