Wikileaks sets back real whistleblowers

A few good whistleblowers now and again are good for democracy.

Wikileaks on the other hand has become little more than vandalism.

People that are affected will  avoid having frank discussions about important things.  The last thing that the world needs is for communication to become even more superficial because anything committed to writing has to be so politically correct that it can’t offend anybody, i.e., devoid of content.     Communication that is both true and important would always be offensive to somebody.

Wikileaks has done some things that I see as falling within the whistleblower mandate, such as publishing information showing a US gunship mowing down unarmed civilians.   Cover-ups ought to be outed.

Indiscriminately dumping information on the other hand is just wrong.

I have to wonder if a foreign intelligence service is behind the site.   Now foreign agencies can act on information published online without having to admit if they had a hand in securing it.

The end result of publishing many documents that aren’t a smoking gun for any government misconduct is that it is going to be made a lot harder for real whistleblowers in the future.