Monday, December 06, 2010

State Department Refused to Protect Their People

This paragraph from a recent Time Magazine article on WikiLeaks and the State Department really stands out to me.
Assange said that all the documents were redacted "carefully." "They are all reviewed, and they're all redacted either by us or by the newspapers concerned," he said. He added that WikiLeaks "formally asked the State Department for assistance with that. That request was formally rejected."
Look, the biggest criticism we've seen against WikiLeaks is that they're 'putting people in danger.' That the State Department would refuse an offer to help redact information they view as critically important to national security, or the safety of their own intelligence sources, either means they don't care about that safety, or they care more about getting WikiLeaks taken down than they do the safety of their own people. Either way, the criticism that WikiLeaks is 'putting people in danger' is no longer credible given this information -- particularly given the fact that WikiLeaks still went out of their way to carefully redact this information despite the lack of participation of the State Department.

President Obama eloquently spoke about the need for his government to keep open communications with enemy nations while campaigning. The government would be much better off if Obama's administration opened communications up with WikiLeaks and tried to work with them to redact what they truly think needs to be redacted, rather than attack this nation's very first amendment -- the freedom of speech.

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