Edwy Plenel, Editor-in-Chief of Mediapart and a former editor of French daily Le Monde, argues here that the furore over the release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks has opened a worldwide battle over the future of freedom of information. At stake is whether the alliance of economic interests and national powers-that-be can snuff out the future of democratic ideals spurred by the tools of the digital age.
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The WikiLeaks saga could be summed up as an affair which pitches the no-frontier freedom of the internet against the might of the world's most powerful state. Its operations, impeded in the United States where private companies buckled under pressure from the administration, but relayed across the world thanks to the multiplication of ‘Mirror' sites (see Mediapart's WikiLeaksMirror site here), the daily disclosure of confidential US diplomatic cables has been continuing in the manner of a kind of Chinese torture. Totalling 251, 287, they have been released at the rate of a little less than 2,000, day after day, drop by drop.
‘Cablegate', as the first digital age scoop on a worldwide level might be termed, organized by the non-profit-making organization created in 2007 by the Australian Julian Assange, is an event without precedent and of which the consequences are unpredictable. A proper battle has begun, with both democratic and geo-political concerns at stake. This involves the future extension or reduction of freedom of information and communication at a global level, and the decline or the revival of an American super-power whose domination, weaknesses and smallness has been stripped open for all to see.
In this battle, Mediapart is naturally on the side of WikiLeaks. The daily, and sometimes anecdotal, twists and turns in the continuing saga have obscured the main issue. WikiLeaks, a symbol of the radical democracy born from the digital revolution, places itself within the context of quite ancient ideals to which it intends giving a boost of youth.
"The publicity given to political affairs is the safeguard for the people", proclaimed in 1789 Jean Sylvain Bailly, a French astronomer, first president of the French Third Estate and one of the leaders of the first hour of the French Revolution. That was a time of political invention common to revolutions in both France and North America. The First Amendment of the American Constitution which forbade all laws against the liberty of the press, came two years later, in 1791, and was included, almost word forword, in Article 7 of the Second Declaration of Human Rights in France, which was part of the French Constitution of 1793.
WikiLeaks stands on this principle; on matters that concern public affairs, publicity – or open coverage – should be the rule, and secrecy the exception. Revealing to the public what is of public interest is always a legitimate act. Every document that concerns the future of peoples, nations and societies deserves to be made known to the public in order that people can form an opinion, make a judgment according to the evidence, choose to react, play a part in world affairs and on the policies of governments.
If the people are sovereign in a democracy, then the policies led in thepeople's name should not become the prerogative of experts and specialists, of elites and professionals, as if they are the only ones to whom legitimate information can be addressed – acting as if they are the private owners of public property.
The WikiLeaks project – a concept over which it obviously has no monopoly – is to give its full meaning to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by The United Nations General Assembly in Paris in 1948. (One of those who helped draft the Declaration, Stéphane Hessel, now 93 years-old, has recently met with huge success in France with a book invitingus to do our duty and stand up in indignation over current social, political and financial injustices, Indignez-Vous!).
In its ‘About' explanation of its project and actions, WikiLeaks reminds us that Article 19 of the 1948 Declaration "states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression" and that this fundamental right "includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
In a Blogposting in December 2006, Julian Assange wrote an entry titled 'The non lineareffects of leaks on unjust systems of governance', in which he gave a justification of the later ambition behind WikiLeaks: "Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on." It was an inaugural reflection on the organization of massive, public leaks, and was intended to demonstrate how the current digital revolution could help and accelerate a universal concretisation of that utopian vision of 1948.
At a time when media have become personal tools, it is society itself that is now able to directly demand this, and without delay. The liberating potential of digital technology, offering a return to the original promise of democracy, in all its radical and authentic form, allows strategies that allow the weak to no longer be the subject of the domination of the strong. It is not the technology itself that is liberating, but the social use to which it is applied; the practices applied to it, the rights claimed to it and the resistance organized with it so that it remains within the control of those who use it.
A key battle between citizens and those who wield power
A technological motor of the third industrial revolution – one that follows firstly the steam engine and, secondly, electricity – digital technology is in this context a decisive battlefield. It is one that opposes citizens to those in power who wish to prevent the horizontal extension of freedom, and maintain the imposition of a vertical system of control. The internet is a universe without borders, a place of sharing and exchanging, of helping the circulation and preservation of information, without obstacles of access or storage limits. As such, it is a wonderful lever with which to push back the secrecy used by governments and administrations to fool the public and to escape judgment. Above all, the internet allows every individual to use his or her rights, to fulfill duties, or to warn against practices or dangers, which previously could only be accomplished via professional intermediaries.
Obviously, this change in the order of things destabilizes the powers that be, their professional culture and their editorial bearings - and, among them, at the fore, are journalists. Used to being the gatekeepers of information, until now the only guarantors and providers who chose and set the news agenda, the journalistic establishment now finds itself in competition with citizen whistelblowers, newly endowed with the freedom to independently and directly deliver information about matters they consider of essential and legitimate interest. But this unpredictable process unfolding before us has already illustrated that this does not have to be one of conflict between one camp and the other, amateurs against professionals, but rather that it can be a joint action, through a change in established practices and an evolution in cultural markers.
Thus it is that WikiLeaks, which publishes online unedited documents without accompanying analysis from journalists or comments from readers, decided to call upon the services of media professionals, those of the old paper press, to edit, prioritize and categorize the information. Nevertheless, in the absence of clear information about how the collaboration with five newspapers worldwide was organized, that choice is one that raises questions and necessitates debate.
How are the cables sifted and sorted out? What are the criterion used, day after day, to organize the revelations? What justifies the cuts and editing carried out, such as those in a US Paris Embassy cable concerning the relations between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merckel, or in another concerning French military plans in a cable about French relations with Francophone states in Africa?
The questions about how the leaks are presented are pertinent, just as are others about the high profile given to Julian Assange and which runs the danger of transforming a collective project into an individual adventure. Other questions concern the far too secret internal workings of WikiLeaks, which led to disagreements and even to the departures of some of its staff.
But these reservations are secondary to what are the big issues at stake, both from a point of view of democracy - the defence of our freedom to use and access digital information technology – and geo-politics – the secrecy surrounding American power.
That view is shared by US magazine Wired, a leading publication on issues surrounding digital technology, and which has not been shy in its critical debate about the methods and functioning of WikiLeaks. In an editorial entitled ‘Why WikiLeaks is good for America' , published December 6th, Wired's Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen wrote: "WikiLeaks is not perfect, and we have highlighted many of its shortcomings on this website. Nevertheless, it's time to make a clear statement about the value of the site and take sides: WikiLeaks stands to improve our democracy, not weaken it. The greatest threat we face right now from WikiLeaks is not the information it has spilled and may spill in the future, but the reactionary response to it that's building in the United States that promises to repudiate the rule of law and our free speech traditions, if left unchecked."
Revealing to what extent the digital business world will flout the very freedom of communication that allowed it to even exist and gather huge profits, the battle launched against WikiLeaks by the US administration was first organized as an alliance between power and wealth; without waiting to be forced by law, Amazon, PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and others transformed themselves into servile censors. But there was also a cyberwar, with attacks launched by non-identified pirates to bring down servers. It is also, above all, an ideological crusade, with calls in the US for Julian Assange to be prosecuted for espionage - even that he be assassinated for having become an ‘unlawful combatant' - the term employed by the Bush administration during its catastrophic programme of so-called ‘war on terror'.
WikiLeaks has revealed a US unsure of its power
This tension, or rather panic, is obviously explained by the magnitude of the WikiLeaks revelations. Experience shows that relevant news can be buried under an avalanche of information. That's one of the handicaps of the current serialised revelations. The piecemeal delivery of the diplomatic cables combines the essential with the non-essential, conclusive facts with those of relative import and revelations with confirmation of the already known. Also inevitable is the delay in public awareness of the importance of the vast amount of ever-teeming information supplied by WikiLeaks, throughout 2010, since last April's very first leak of this video which shows US troops killing civilians in Iraq and which was highly embarrassing to the US Army.
From the onset, there was a risk that unveiling the information would become the focus of attention with media not taking the time to examine the most revealing and therefore the most conclusive information. Such is the case of the secret cables signed in April 2009 and July 2009 by Hillary Clinton, the Obama administration's Secretary of State. These cables request the systematic espionage of United Nations officials, of the entourage of the UN Secretary-General and of diplomats from selected regions, notably Africa. By providing the proof that the United States turns its embassies into operational branches of its surveillance network, this information is scandalous in and of itself and brutally belies the pretence by the Democratic president that he incarnates a new era of international relations. It is therefore not astonishing that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described the pressure put on WikiLeaks as a type of censure.
The purloined data thus demanded by Hillary Clinton from State Department officials concerns "biometric data" on African leaders including their "fingerprints, identification photos, DNA, retinal scans" and other highly personal information. It also concerns such data as the passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, and frequent flyer account numbers of "key UN officials" including the delegations of the permanent members of the Security Council. Even if this is merely the glaring confirmation of already known practices - in 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was spied upon by the administration of George W. Bush - it is no less scandalous. Is it justifiable for the United Nations, where conversations are, in theory, discrete and where diplomatic negotiations and discussions are carried out in confidence, to be transformed into a nest of spies by a major democratic nation?
Regarding France and the upcoming 2012 presidential campaign, it would be wrong to minimise the revelations unveiled by the cables concerning French support for American errors. The cables show the secret support by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which he has never publically admitted, to the Bush administration during the darkest hours of the post-September 11th wartime adventure at a time when the administration's approval of torture and of extraordinary rendition was already public. The cables also revealed that the French Socialist Party (PS) remains aligned on the US's imperialist positions despite public statements to the contrary. Both Pierre Moscovici, then the PS's International Affairs Secretary, and former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, rushed to the US embassy to confide their condemnation of the refusal to join in the invasion of Iraq taken at the time by French President Jacques Chirac and his Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. Even François Holland, then PS First Secretary, told the US ambassador in 2006 that, should it come to power, the party's position would certainly not be the same as Tony Blair's but that it would not be that of Jacques Chirac either - despite the consensus in France on this issue.
To take the full measure of the WikiLeaks revelations, these must be sorted through with care. They show that the US stands a far cry from the disinterested image it tries to promote and is instead mired in national self-interest, following narrowly selfish diplomatic aims rather than being open to the complexity and diversity of an independent world. This exposure has revealed a nation blind to the new challenges of the 21st Century, obsessed by its rank in the world and the possibility of losing that rank at a time when it should be concerned with creating a new balance of power on a planet in which the US will have to learn to relate to others. This applies not only to China, but to all the major democracies emerging in the former Third World and which are tracing their own paths now that they are free of the binary choices imposed by the polarisation of the US and the Soviet Union.
In other words, the serialised revelations of WikiLeaks tell the story of a world seeking a new centre, a world shifting to new foundations which will not be those that the United States or the European Union thought they would be in the heady days of 1989-1991, when history provided a divine surprise with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The attack on the World Trade Center ten years later, a response to those two events, destroyed all illusions born of that change. At the same time, the superpower discovered, to its astonishment, its own glaring weakness. Looking at things from a new angle helps to understand the impact of ‘cablegate'. While US and EU officials decry the scandal, the rest of the world rejoices and approves.
On his official blog, Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva posted a video in support of Julian Assange's cause. Expressing to WikiLeaks his "solidarity for the disclosure of documents", he congratulated the site's founder for "having exposed a diplomacy that seemed untouchable". And Lula, who will step down as president of Brazil in January, asked internet users to post their support in defence of "freedom of expression" on his blog. It's not fortuitous that the democratic state of Brazil, led by its Labour Party, in a move since followed by other Latin-American nations, recently recognized the 1967 borders of the Palestinian State thus showing its impatience with US powerlessness and complacency in the face of Israel's scandalous policies
Turning to another major democratic nation, India, whose diplomatic policies are close to those of Brazil, especially on nuclear issues and Iran, the press defends WikiLeaks willingly and without reservation. English-language daily, The Hindu, for example, the newspaper of record from Chennai (formerly Madras) in southern India, denounced "digital McCarthyism" in a December 6th editorial and firmly defended WikiLeaks. "The intolerant response to WikiLeaks is a potential threat to all media and must be fought", the editorial said. Not all the support for the leaks comes from bona fide democrats, as demonstrated by Vladimir Putin's suggestion to award the next Nobel Peace Prize to Julian Assange. But what they do share is a perception of what is being played out beyond the media hype: the exposure of US power, of it arrogance and its blind-spots but also, paradoxically, of its powerlessness and weaknesses.
An event that nearly passed without notice demonstrated this context the day after the unveiling of the cables. On November 29th, President Barak Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology released a report called Accelerating the Pace of Change in Energy Technologies Through an Integrated Federal Energy Policy. The report was a response to concerns expressed by the White House through the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu. To sum up his position in a single metaphor, Chu said that the US finds itself at a new "Sputnik moment", an allusion to the feeling in the US of lagging behind when the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. This is, ultimately, is the true reality of the WikiLeaks revelations; they have unveiled that the US is unsure of its power, concerned that it is lagging behind in terms of technology, bogged down in its alliances, trapped in its contradictions and, most of all, overwhelmed by its past failings.
Defending the audacity of whistleblowers
The comparison with the unveiling, in 1971, of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times is immediate and legitimate. Daniel Ellsberg, the source of the 7,000 pages, leaked to the paper, of "top secret" documents on the Vietnam War, was among the first in the US to defend WikiLeaks. Julian Assange is quick to quote the ruling of the US Supreme Court when it ruled against a government injunction forbidding the continued publication of the Papers by the New York Times: "Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government" wrote Justice Hugo Black at the time.
Presenting the disclosure of the 251,287 diplomatic cables, of which 15,652 are classified ‘secret' the WikiLeaks site points out that it is revealing the contradictions between the public statements of US officials and what is said and done "behind closed doors". This is followed by a partial list of examples such as: spying on allies and on the UN; indifference to corruption and to human rights violations; secret deals; and lobbying on behalf of industry. The site also, naively, recalls that every American schoolchild is taught that the first American president, George Washington, never told a lie. This statement is bound to bring a smile to the lips of proponents of Machiavellian cynicism for whom politics is always about dissimulation.
But the catastrophic misadventure of post 9/11 America suffices to remind us that official lies (in this case regarding the links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, as well as Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction) always cause the misery of peoples. And if, on June 16th, 2010, the Icelandic Parliament unanimously voted in the IMMI (Icelandic Modern Media Initiative), proposing to turn this little island country, now ruined, into a political paradise for freedom of information, it is because of the accumulated lies of its economic, political and media elites, which dragged it into the abyss of a devastating financial crisis exacerbated by a moral collapse.
In the troubled and uncertain times that mark this era of transition - the crisis of capitalism, the industrial revolution, the world out of kilter - the only guarantee of keeping at bay the perils of war and mad threats is to maximise the role of democracy and reinforce all its mechanisms, from the most widespread circulation of information to the widest participation of citizens. This guarantee demands politicians who accept accounting for and being accountable for their actions, and, in consequence, a public able to know whether or not they really do what they say, and say precisely what they do.
From this perspective, the transparency demanded reflects not the fantasy of a glass-walled society, but the demand for a policy of openness as stated as early as 1789 by the revolutionary leader Jean Sylvain Bailly: everything that concerns the public can potentially be rendered public. And this is all the more legitimate when it transpires that, sheltered by our so-called democratic societies, those in power cover up their lies and mistakes, their corruption and their hypocrisy, their crimes even, with illegitimate secrets. And yet it is precisely shock that was felt by the young man without whom, according to the American press, all this story would never have seen the light of day.
For, by singling out Julian Assange as a lone Robin Hood figure, the media has consigned to the shadows the courage of his supposed informant, the 23 year-old soldier Bradley Manning. Currently being detained in a military base in Virginia, he may well face more than fifty years in prison. Betrayed by a former hacker in whom he confided via an e-mail exchange last May, this soldier posted to Iraq, an intelligence analyst specialising in computer technology, is said to be the source of the revelations that are shaking America's leadership. Those who have accessed the leaks are, quite logically, refusing to confirm so, out of respect for the protection of sources, and there are doubts that there may be a manipulation exercise involved.
If it so happens that the soldier Manning is indeed behind these scoops that, in one year, have earned WikiLeaks universal fame - the video of a military blunder in Iraq (Collateral Murder), reports on the war in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and, now diplomatic telegrams - what counts is his motivation. According to the emails quoted by the American press and, in France, in the print edition of French weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, his acts are totally disinterested, and profoundly motivated by the shock felt on discovering the lies proffered and the crimes committed in the name of his own country.
"I was actively involved in something that i was completely against..." he writes, adding, "maybe im just young, naive, and stupid [...] i dont believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore [...] we're better in some respects... we're much more subtle... use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimize everything [...] but just because something is more subtle, doesn't make it right."
If, like Ellsberg before him, Manning is the source of WikiLeaks, he's a perfect whistleblower who should be defended and supported as such: a citizen doing his duty by alerting the people to illegitimate acts committed by his own government. "What is your endgame plan, then?" asks the hacker in the May 2010 email exchange, before denouncing him. Manning's answer is sincerely and laudably idealistic: "Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. If not... than [sic] we're doomed as a species. i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens. [...] i want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public [...] it should be a public good". He says that "rather than some slimy intel collector", he is "crazy like that".
The vitality of the ideals of freedom
Whoever the WikiLeaks sources are, they have responded to a democratic injunction far more faithfully than the powers who claim to. In his 2006 programme cited above, Julian Assange aligns his approach with the long tradition of refusal of voluntary servitude launched in 1549, by the famous treatise of Etienne de la Boétie, friend of Montaigne. "Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love", wrote the founder of WikiLeaks.
This ideal of democratic responsibility is echoed by politically engaged Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo, who has paid a high price for ceaselessly repeating to his compatriots that democracy is first and foremost their business: "Voluntary participation in the political life of society and voluntary acceptance of one's responsibilities are the inescapable duties of every citizen. The Chinese people must see that, in democratized politics, everyone is first and foremost a citizen, and then a student, a professor, a worker, a manager, or a soldier."
Logically, Charter 08, which earned him 11 years of imprisonment, demands - among other democratic breaks - the abolition of "all political restrictions imposed on the press", and the withdrawal of the crime of "incitement to subversion of State Power". The Charter concludes with "We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes".
By this measure, our old democracies, somewhat jaded and tired, forget themselves, denying, through the mouthpieces of their leaders, the principles they promoted. When France's current conservative-Right Prime Minister, François Fillon, accuses WikiLeaks of theft and handling stolen goods, he is showing how feeble his democratic conscience is: our own legal system has repeatedly confirmed, in case after case, that the possibly illicit origin of information becomes secondary when proven legitimate because in the public interest. In other words, the general public's right to information, upon which the vitality of democracy depends, has priority over other rights. Last summer Mediapart victoriously defended such jurisprudence, in the first instance and at the appeal, at the beginning of the Bettencourt affair.
But the Right does not have a monopoly on this regression with respect to our own democratic values. When the socialist Hubert Védrine, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, casts himself in the role of prosecutor of WikiLeaks by claiming that "Unlimited transparency is Mao's China", he in turn reveals a real lack of democratic culture. No need to read Hannah Arendt or George Orwell to understand that the defining characteristic of totalitarian power is precisely the opposite of "unlimited transparency": total opacity concerning those in power, and inquisitorial transparency for individuals.
Secrecy protects an absolute power, which conversely tracks down the secrets of a society refused all autonomy. This thoughtless comparison is thus a sort of Freudian slip: for both Hubert Védrine and François Fillon, what counts most is that power survives, sheltered by its secrets, while society remains deprived of the information that could give it a grasp of what is done in its name.
In the case of WikiLeaks, it is therefore not a question of transparency, but of information. In other words, it is not about laying bare individuals, but about exposing policies. These knee-jerk reactions are based on the notion that democracy is the business only of specialists, of experts, who should be left alone to act under the protection of their secrets. This is the thinking of proprietors, an oligarchic way of thinking, at the crossroads of ownership and leadership, of power and finance, where, by the privilege of fortune, diplomas, or birth, a small minority thinks itself more legitimate than ordinary people to speak and act in their name. But democracy, or its ever-unfulfilled promise at least, is exactly the opposite: a regime of each and all, where no privilege gives extra rights. A regime where everybody is entitled to speak, express themselves, protest, vote, monitor, be a candidate, be elected, and govern.
And the number one condition for getting as close as possible to this ideal regime is that information be as open as possible, allowing each and every person to participate, understand, judge and act. Beyond differences and nuances, WikiLeaks and Mediapart are part of this combat. This is why we stand at WikiLeak's side, as resolute as we are free.
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