Lightly Seared On The Reality Grill

We need to distinguish clearly between the reasonable approach adopted by the UK government, say, with its ambitious but relatively controlled release of non-personal data, and the no-holds-barred transparency of campaigning Web sites like Wikileaks, whether you regard the latter as a good or bad thing. If we don’t fight that dangerous conflation, then, when the establishment counter-attack on Wikileaks begins in earnest, we may find the cause of open data and open government become yet more collateral damage, if not quite collateral murder.

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Charlie Stross has an interesting take on the impact of the ongoing Wikileaks disclosure of US diplomatic cables:

Wikileaks is not attacking the US government; rather, it’s acting to degrade the ability of pressure groups to manipulate the US government to their own ends. Those who benefit the most from their ability to manipulate the State Department are the most angry about this: autocratic middle eastern leaders, authoritarian right-wing politicians, royalty, corporate cartels. Those of us who are scratching our heads and going “huh?” about the significance of Muammar Ghadaffi’s botox habit are missing the point: it’s not about the content, but about the implication that the powerful can no longer count on their ability to lie to the public without being called on it.

Cicero asks:

So is the Wikileaks expose nothing more than an embarrassment?

It should be. One of the essential prerequisites for any functioning democracy is an informed citizenry – we should know what our elected representatives are saying and doing and we should be able to respond to that information. While there is value in keeping the detail of some conversations (temporarily) confidential, we should be able to assume that the the broad thrust of those conversations is consistent with publicly stated positions.

If, in other words, the Western democracies are in a healthy state, Cablegate will lead to a few days of interest and several mildly embarrassing headlines but nothing we didn’t already know – or couldn’t have reasonably guessed.

If that’s not the case, however, we should remember that it’s not the messenger that deserves to be shot.