My feelings with regards to whistle-blowing have been broadened during our week of discussions regarding Freedom of Information/Speech, Whistle-blowing, and WikiLeaks. As defined in Tavani, p. 115; a whistleblower is an individual who makes “revelations meant to call attention to negligence, abuses, or dangers that threaten the public interest.” Talking about when and how to blow the whistle was where I am ethically torn. Using whistle-blowing as a “last alternative due to its destructive side effects” to what is considered morally permitted vs. being morally required is great guidance for all of us to consider. I personally do not feel that there is enough leeway to stomp out some of the corruption that goes on in our society if we stay within those guidelines.
Most think of whistle-blowing as an act that happens between an employee and their employer, but as we learned with Julian Assange, this is not always the case, as seen in his video interview “Why the world needs WikiLeaks” it was said that a small group of activist in WikiLeaks released more classified information in a year than all the world press combined.
Showing the video to family and friends, the reactions ranged from Assange being a spy that put soldiers and informants at risk to he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for having the courage to inform people as to what is really going on behind closed doors. One interesting comment was that he has raised the standard (bar) of the media forever.
Julian Assange, of WikiLeaks, provides whistle-blowers a medium to voice issues that WikiLeaks feels society has a right to know. Individuals can then choose what to do with the information provided. In some aspects he stands for the greater good as he talks about his core values being for nurturing victims and then goes on to say that he polices perpetrators of crime which therefore may negatively affect people that have been deemed perpetrators. For example, early in the video he was referred to as a hacker. Being called a hacker would have made him a perpetrator, and he was quick to deny the negative connation because he was being questioned in an open forum. That is in contrast to the people exposed on WikiLeaks, which do not have the luxury of defending themselves instantaneously on their actions or words on the WikiLeaks website. We can all think of times when we have been taken out of context on social media and the damage is sometimes hard to erase.
WikiLeaks influenced the December 2008 general election in Kenya. The report was being withheld by the government to bait Moi into backing President Kiabiki for a second term. WikiLeaks releasing the private report three days before the election in which Moi (former president) had announced his support of President Kiabiki’s re-election bid affected the outcome of the election, as the report was then released by other news agencies inside and outside of Kenya. This shifted the vote 10 points according to a Kenyan intelligence report. The results of the election were changed. The ability to measure the implications of this event is difficult, but we certainly know that it changed the landscape of politics in Kenya forever. You can imagine the implications if something similar had happened before the elections of say a President Lincoln (freeing of the slaves/Civil War), President Nixon (Watergate/Vietnam), or even Chancellor Hitler (Holocaust/WWII).
Having a website like WikiLeaks supports a common belief that the press is the watchdog of any free society. As quoted from Thomas Jefferson, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Why should the most powerful people in the world control information?
It is impossible to know if the dissemination of information has long term good or bad implications on society. My belief is the more information that people are exposed to the better choices they can make about the people we elect as leaders that make decisions that impact history forever, such as freedom, wars, economies, and social values.
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