I have been reading the cables off and on since they wre published. I'm fascinated by the unvarnished language and the cool-headed analysis the cable writers make in their communications. Being a diplomat is a tough job, and I admire them. I'm also struck by the dry, reporter-like style they employ. I can understand why reporters are often accused of being spies– it seems like it is the same damn job!
I'm also struck by how much the cables– especially the ones from Afghanistan and Pakistan– confirm the reporting that has come out of those places for years. I have read reports from Dexter Filkins that have nearly word-for-word recitations of cable elements have appeared in his writing. This makes me appreciate the work of him an his colleagues even more, if that were possible.
I am not at all prepared to vilify Amazon, Paypal, and Tableau Software for cutting Wikileaks off from their services once the heat was placed upon them. Their reticence is to be expected, and it doesn't signal the end of Wikileaks or the ability to publish uncomfortable, radical things. It merely means we've got to double-down on the Internet on distributed publishing. The published cables of today are at least as important as a 1972 live version of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, so it's worth streaming these docs on Bit Torrent or whatever other Napsters there are.
And please let's stop using the word "censorship" in relation to these acts. Bleats and moans of censorship are dumb. Just because a company removes the right of an individual to use their hardware or software does not mean that they are advocating or acting upon the removal of that person's right to speak, or to use other means to say the same thing. It is especially odd to see the word censorship used in the same post that the purportedly censored speech is reproduced. That's speech propagation, not censorship. One cannot be censored and published at the same time.
We have the power– all of us– to help Wikileaks publish. Any time one entity has to step down in order to protect themselves, another should step up, and w/o deprecating those who had to bail. It might be you who has to step down next. No big deal– someone else will step up, if we're all doing our jobs. Using that language is an insult to people in the word who are truly censored.
Lastly, we all click through EULAs and Terms of Use in a devil-may-care fashion– they are the great legal fictions of our age.
And there are plenty of winks and nods– and even high-fives, as Tableau Software initially crowed about Wikileaks viualizations— but in the end, words have to mean something, even if they are written by lawyers or (more likely) copy-pasted from some other Web site. If they don't, we really can't rely on anything.
One last thing– it seems that the latest release from Wikileaks may be actually dangerous rather than just embarassing. That sort of goes with the territory. It's like John P. O'Neill, the great seer of the Al Qaeda threat, who operated somewhat loosely and lost a briefcase. It seems one cannot be tight and open at the same time.