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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Insight-inducing Wikileaks article in the Guardian today:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/01/julian-assange-wikileaks-afghanistan">http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/01/julian-assange-wikileaks-afghanistan</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span lang=EN>"Well, anything might happen but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen … In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged. On the other hand, we have changed governments and constitutions and had tremendous positive outcomes." Julian Assange.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN>In reference to Wikileaks exposing massive corruption in the Kenyan government:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN>"1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak." Julian Assange<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN>These are not necessarily contradictory statements. When he says “no one” he doesn’t actually specify to what “one” refers. We ordinarily think it means humans, but perhaps he meant not a single aardvark was harmed, not one platypus or walrus displaced. Or if the slain and displaced Kenyans were all corrupt bureaucrats, then they are not human, so they don’t count, or they had it coming. Or if a person saved or benefitted counts as a negative person harmed, then one’s score could be positive overall, analogous to a job saved or created is a negative job lost.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN>If I have any complaint about the article, it tries to reduce the work of Wikileaks down to a single number, positive or negative, when the question is far more complicated and nuanced. Increased transparency both benefits and harms both good and bad people. Julian’s comment that no one has ever come to physical harm from Wikileaks is absurd. But I will buy the notion that plenty have benefitted. I even buy the notion that the overall impact has been beneficial. So if some transparency is an overall positive, then more of it is still better, ja?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN>There is no clear end to that line of reasoning, no point where still more transparency becomes cumulatively harmful. Or does it work like a transparency Laffer curve, where there is somewhere an ideal level of transparency? If so, we could have info-liberals who favor more transparency than we have now, and info-conservatives, who favor less, and info-libertarians who think all information wants to be free, and info totalitarians who think Wikileaks and the whole internet thing should be regulated or shut down, and info-hypocrites who want the other guy exposed while keeping her own secrets, and info-(?) who hide among a jungle of false information or intentionally create doubts about the veracity of their own history. What would that be called?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>