{"id":258957,"date":"2013-08-19T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-19T21:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=258957"},"modified":"2024-01-28T16:50:23","modified_gmt":"2024-01-28T21:50:23","slug":"still-wondering-why-we-need-a-stateless-media-entity-like-wikileaks-this-is-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2013\/08\/19\/still-wondering-why-we-need-a-stateless-media-entity-like-wikileaks-this-is-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Still wondering why we need a stateless media entity like WikiLeaks? This is why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If it wasn\u2019t already obvious that the U.S. government is targeting journalists as part of its ongoing war on leaks, it should be fairly clear now that Guardian<\/em> writer Glenn Greenwald\u2019s partner has been detained for nine hours in a British airport<\/a> and had all of his electronics seized by authorities looking for classified documents like the ones Greenwald got from former CIA contractor Edward Snowden. More than anything, this kind of behavior highlights the value of having a stateless, independent media entity such as WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if that wasn\u2019t enough, Guardian<\/em> editor Alan Rusbridger has written about an almost unprecedented effort by British authorities to force<\/a> the newspaper to stop reporting on the government\u2019s surveillance of its citizens \u2014 including the seizure and destruction of hard drives at the newspaper\u2019s offices and warnings about future action if the reporting continues. Rusbridger said the paper will continue its work, but will do so from the U.S. As he described it<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAnd so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian\u2019s long history occurred \u2013 with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian\u2019s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A pattern of journalistic harassment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Reporter\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Moving to the U.S. may not be much of an alternative, however, given the American government\u2019s recent behavior. U.S. authorities have said that Britain took the action they did against Greenwald\u2019s partner, Brazilian resident David Miranda, without any direction from the Obama administration \u2014 under Britain\u2019s Schedule 7 anti-terrorism law \u2014 although the U.S. government did acknowledge that British authorities<\/a> gave them a \u201chead\u2019s up\u201d about the detention and search. But should we believe this, knowing that senior security officials have routinely lied about their activities?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given what has happened with Snowden, it\u2019s entirely believable that the Obama administration asked Britain to take such action, or at least suggested that it would be grateful if it occurred. What\u2019s especially depressing is how quick some defenders of the U.S. security apparatus were to argue that it was<\/a> Greenwald\u2019s own fault his partner was treated in such a way \u2014 as though targeting the families of journalists for unreasonable search and seizure should be considered routine:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/joshuafoust\/status\/369549055572987905\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the Free Press and others have pointed out, the detention is just part of a much larger pattern of harassment<\/a> that has been directed at journalists by the U.S. government over the last year \u2014 a pattern that includes veiled threats of prosecution against Greenwald<\/a> and other journalists who have been involved in leaks, as well as the ongoing quasi-legal measures it has been taking against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WikiLeaks is already a media entity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While the idea of WikiLeaks as a media entity is not universally accepted, I and others have argued that it deserves to be thought of in that way<\/a>: journalism professor Jay Rosen has called it the \u201cfirst stateless news organization,\u201d and Harvard legal scholar Yochai Benkler has made a persuasive case \u2014 both in his writings and in testimony at the Bradley Manning trial \u2014 that WikiLeaks is a crucial part of what he calls<\/a> \u201cthe networked Fourth Estate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The Guardian hard drive shredding scandal demonstrates why it is necessary to publish early publish often and publish globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 20, 2013<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Even Bill Keller, the former New York Times<\/em> executive editor who has had a somewhat contentious relationship with both Assange and WikiLeaks, has told me that he believes the WikiLeaks founder should be given the same protections<\/a> as any journalist, and that the attacks on the organization are a serious threat to freedom of the press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI would regard an attempt to criminalize WikiLeaks\u2019 publication of these documents as an attack on all of us, and I believe the mainstream media should come to his defense. You don\u2019t have to embrace Julian Assange as a kindred spirit to believe that what he did in publishing those cables falls under the protection of the First Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Although WikiLeaks is arguably a media entity in its own right, it also benefits from forming partnerships with existing media players \u2014 as it has in the past with The Guardian<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em> and others \u2014 just as Edward Snowden saw it as valuable to reach out to Greenwald<\/a> instead of just publishing the NSA documents he had on some random website. Traditional media outlets and journalists not only have a brand value and an existing audience, but they can help put things in context and make their meaning more obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need Anonymous for journalism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Anonymous\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the U.S. government and others not only put more pressure on the original whistleblowers in such cases \u2014 the Bradley Mannings and the Edward Snowdens \u2014 but also continue to ratchet up the pressure on the journalists<\/a> who assist them, it becomes even more important to have some kind of entity like WikiLeaks that can act as a central outlet for such leaks, a place that is theoretically out of reach of U.S. control (if such a thing is even possible).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if WikiLeaks isn\u2019t the best candidate for this kind of entity, either because of Assange\u2019s personal behavior or his management style \u2014 or both \u2014 there arguably needs to be something similar. Perhaps a group like the hacker collective Anonymous<\/a> \u2014 a diffused and leaderless movement that shares a common goal \u2014 but for journalistic documents might work. Or a combination of Anonymous and the file-sharing outlet Pirate Bay, where leakers can send their information and know that it will not fall into the wrong hands. Media outlets have tried to create such entities but mostly failed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having that kind of stateless, leaderless entity might make it harder for governments to make any headway by attacking individual journalists like Greenwald or even individual leakers. In some ways, it\u2019s unfortunate that such a thing needs to exist at all, but even if we look only at what has happened over the past year, that case has arguably been made. Now all that is required is the motivation and the means to create it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Carolina Georgatou<\/a>, Jan-Arief Purwanto<\/em> and Shutterstock \/ Rob Kint<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it wasn\u2019t already obvious that the U.S. government is targeting journalists as part of its ongoing war on leaks, it should be fairly clear now that Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald\u2019s partner has been detained for nine hours in a British airport and had all of his electronics seized by authorities looking for classified documents like the ones Greenwald … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Still wondering why we need a stateless media entity like WikiLeaks? This is why”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigaom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258958,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258957\/revisions\/258958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}