31 Dec 10 | News and features
With maybe hundreds of human rights activists named in the WikiLeaks files, and frontman Julian Assange threatening to throw them open to the world if “forced” to do so, it’s time for fair assessment of the potential threat to whistleblowers and free expression advocates argues Rohan Jayasekera
When WikiLeaks turned from publishing battlefield reports to secret US State Department cables, the initial effect of seeing state-to-state relations shorn of traditional diplomatic obfuscation was electric. The lasting effect was more like reading your teenager’s Facebook page, initially shocking but ultimately predictable, and for those with the right experience, actually pretty familiar.
Again, there were fears about exposure and endangerment. The Atlantic magazine even alleged that WikiLeaks had exposed Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to treason charges by revealing his views on sanctions, as if Robert Mugabe had ever felt that he needed “evidence” to jail someone.
Some regimes are passing laws to extend the meaning of treason to cover economic “attacks” as well as military or political ones. In that particular hall of mirrors simply voicing sympathy for a tourism boycott can get you bundled into the back of a van.
And any association with the US looks bad to a lot of people in some parts of the world, especially when done in private. WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange hardly helped this week by telling al-Jazeera TV that many officials visiting US embassies are “spies for the US in their countries”.
Generally though, the diplomats and politicians named and shamed (and sometimes praised) in the WikiLeaks cables tended to escape chastened but safe from the experience.
The risk is far greater for the many ordinary human rights defenders and civil society activists who have risked a visit to US embassies in their home countries. They come, often in suprisingly large numbers, to make advocacy cases to what they hope are sympathetic US ears, and until WikiLeaks, away from the dictators’ prying eyes.
Mercifully, it seems — though Assange now suggests otherwise, to al-Jazeera at least — the rights defenders have been saved from being cited in US embassy CIA staff reports.
Intelligence officers have a reputation for boosting the significance of their reports by making more out of routine contact with dissidents than the exchanges actually deserve. But the CIA removed them all from the SIPRNET digital shoebox of US diplomatic cables that alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning drew from.
But the risk remains, as I was firmly told by a US embassy political attache in an Arab state this month. A veteran human rights campaigner had already warned that many local rights activists expect more support from US diplomats than they will actually get; in the vault-like security of a typical US embassy they speak more freely than they possibly should.
The embassy attache was adamant. It was only a matter of time before a human rights defender was exposed by WikiLeaks, and jailed or killed as a result. “Then in that case,” he said grimly, “you may ask Mr Assange exactly what he thinks he has done for ‘transparency and human rights’”.
Weirdly, almost on cue, Wikileaks released a cable that might have proven his point, in which the name of the source — a public critic of a particularly reprehensible head of state — was redacted by WikiLeaks. However the redactor, presumably unfamiliar with the dissident’s work, failed to recognise a giveaway clue cited in the cable’s title.
Even with the redactions, anyone with reasonable knowledge of the country concerned could have guessed who was being quoted giving off-the-record, publicly unatributable, deep background information — or so he thought — to US diplomats about top-level state corruption.
Again, dictators don’t need evidence to jail people, and the key equation at the heart of the work of free expression defenders supported by Index on Censorship is simple: risk balanced against effect.
The risk posed by exposure by WikiLeaks is one more fresh edge to the multi-faceted threat they, their families and friends already face.
But WikiLeaks is supposed to be helping, no?
Redaction of data was never meant to be WikiLeaks’ prime duty, so it should be no surprise that they do it unwillingly, and when they do, that they can do it badly or obscurely. Index on Censorship raised the issue of the giveaway clue in the title of the otherwise redacted leaked cable with WikiLeaks directly.
They replied sympathetically, but noted that the redacted name was already out there as author of a critical book about the head of state. “…(S)o we feel that too much redaction is futile,” said the reply. “However, we do feel it is better to be safe than sorry and so have redacted the title…”
Well, OK, but the root of the question is the same as that raised everywhere, very specifically at an Index on Censorship debate between WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and UK journalist David Aaronovich at London’s City University this year.
Since WikiLeaks decided to take editorial responsibility for selecting, redacting and publishing the content, what editorial criteria do they apply, what process is followed, what in-house oversight is there of their work and what qualifies for redaction under its “harm minimisation procedure”?
WikiLeaks itself said this was a problem, solved by opening up the data in advance to selected international publications, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times among them. That relationship has since splintered over coverage of Julian Assange’s personal issues, but the relevance of adding external expertise to the process — expertise that WikiLeaks doesn’t have — still stands.
Assange repeatedly maintains that “(WikiLeaks) must protect our sources at whatever cost. This is our sincere concern”. But while he says his organisation presently releases files in a “responsible” manner, he fears extradition to the US and makes a clear threat to everyone involved, willingly or otherwise. “If I am forced we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to.”
It’s easy to underestimate how much time US embassy staff spend talking to dissidents, opposition leaders, human rights and civil society activists. Hundreds could be named in the WikiLeaks collection of diplomatic cables still unreleased. It might be helpful to provide advance warning to dissidents about to get their moment in the WikiLeaks sun, and prepare the various organisations charged to defend them.
The WikiLeaks core principles, at least as they were when Index on Censorship honoured the organisation in 2008, are good ones. But surely it’s possible to bring together independent groups of advisors, or draw on the advice of local human rights defenders. Maybe just three experts, easy to find, who before redacting or not redacting a name, will have at least read one of the redactee’s books or are more personally acquainted with the threats he or she faces?
Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor and Deputy Chief Executive of Index on Censorship
25 Nov 10 | Uncategorized
It sounds alarming: the “Internet kill switch”. It also sounds alarming that under a law passed over 60 years ago Barack Obama (or any US president) has an opaquely defined authority to shut down sections of the Internet in the event of a national emergency.
At its inception the law addressed state control over telephone and telegraph networks. Obviously the law made no mention of the Internet, but made vague references to means of communication. Specifically, it is cited that provisions in the Communications Act give the president the power to “suspend or amend the rules and regulations applicable to any or all facilities or stations for wire communication”.
In June, the Obama administration introduced a bill which strove to give a newly created National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications significant control over the Internet in times of national emergency. The bill, having been approved, is now due to go before the Senate.
Presidential power in the event of an attack on America seems not to be the predominant objection amongst the bill’s critics, but rather it is the lack of specification that raises concerns. A letter sent in June to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs by the ACLU and 23 other groups expressed such worries. They sought assurances that “cybersecurity measures” would not “unnecessarily infringe on free speech, privacy, and other civil liberties interests” and asked for the committee to “clarify the scope of the legislation”.
In terms of how these powers would be employed, it has been suggested the president could make use of them to combat a hostile assault on the computer systems of America’s utility companies or Wall Street financial services. This is neither an abstract threat nor a provision for the future: This year US government agencies have been hit by an average 1.8 billion cyber attacks each month — and that number is constantly rising.
The many suggestions of discomfort and unease about the prying capabilities of Google Street View demonstrate a similar strain of thinking about the private sector. The disquiet around the hyperbolically named “kill switch” is again not a case of libertarian horror towards any assumption of influence by the state. In fact, a recent survey suggested that 61 per cent of Americans supported the president’s right to shut down parts of the Internet if their nation came under cyber attack. Regardless of whether the moves to monitor and control come from the private sector or the state, people (ever concerned with the balance between security and privacy) want these powers clearly outlined and legally delimited.
