The Limits of Secrecy, Hacking and WikiLeaks
During the last two months, the online whistle-blower WikiLeaks has been in the news for making available more than 77,000 US military documents about operations in Afghanistan.
Although I recognize the need for secrecy in military operations, I must admit I was happy to see some of those documents released, especially the ones detailing abuse cases and wrongdoings of the NATO forces and their intelligence services. I’m not talking about the US only; many of the NATO forces, including some European ones, are to blame for cases of corruption and abuse and some for paying insurgents not to attack them.
The US withdrawal from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) jurisdiction in 1986, only accepting its involvement on a case-by-case basis, makes it necessary to find other ways to ensure the transparency in the activities of the US government overseas. Without proper supervision, any country could be in violation of international law. I don’t believe the US military forces are involved in any wrongdoing by choice, but there are cases of members of those forces that, for several reasons, committed serious offenses against civil populations, and those cases should be punished and made public. It is interesting to note that he ICJ has had an American judge, Ms. Joan Donoghue, since Sept. 9, 2010. Her previous position was Principal Deputy Legal Adviser of the Department of State.
It’s also interesting to note that the Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been recently accused of rape by the Swedish authorities. Although I don’t believe the Swedish prosecutors would make up a fake case against him, this came right after the US Department of Defense demanded “that nothing further be released by WikiLeaks, that all of the U.S. Government classified documents that WikiLeaks has obtained be returned immediately, and that WikiLeaks remove and destroy all of these records from its databases."
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