User:Wnt/Work1

This is a reduced version of a rebuttal to User:Elonka/Work1 - the original was since deleted and the present version is about totally different things. Maybe there are some general points worth keeping though. However, this information hasn't been updated since December 2010 and actually as I recall there is presently (2013) yet another malicious little bill out of Lieberman trying to lock tight the door on that rotting old barn....

• WP:RS: Wikileaks does not meet the criteria to be branded as a "questionable source" or "self-published source". In extensive media coverage there is no serious suggestion that they are making up cables from scratch. WP:RS says that "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in reliable, published sources are covered". For example, the CFID cable was an official government document created by the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.

• WP:PRIMARY: Wikipedia has no policy against using primary sources, nor should it. I do not contend that a Wikileaks cable should blindly be accepted as genuine; however, extensive news coverage can demonstrate that it is genuine. (discussed at [1]).

• "Editorial control": this comes from WP:RS "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight." Who denies that Wikileaks checks the facts? Their editorial oversight is mysterious, perforce, but they have apparently done a great job of weeding out false "leaks".

• Copyright on classified documents: I have not seen this claimed in the news coverage, and given the eagerness with which public officials have been looking for arguments, that is a substantial omission. Elonka said "Government documents that have been created by government workers in intent for release and publication are usually public domain, but classified documents are obviously not intended for publication". But classified documents are intended for publication eventually.

• On workers losing security clearances: There is a significant possibility that this could turn out to be true - as we know, public and private employers in the U.S. can discriminate for all kinds of crazy reasons. The same is true, for example, if Wikipedia editors make comments describing homosexual experiences, or offer too much praise for Fidel Castro. Even so, bear in mind that one source in discussed, citing a State Department official who strongly opposes the leaks, said:

But the employee's warning, "does not represent a formal policy position," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Saturday.

"This sounds like an overly-zealous employee," Crowley said in an e-mail. "Our focus is advising current employees not to download classified documents to an unclassified network. While we condemn what WikiLeaks has done, we cannot control what is done through private Internet accounts."^[2]

• On classified information remaining classified: I trust the ACLU statement that "The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information."^[3] They say this concerning Wikileaks and other journalists who first publish classified information, which gives quite a bit of confidence regarding secondary and tertiary publications. As cited in the CFDI article, Business Insider has already republished the full list in the United States, and many other sources as cited there have republished sites from specific geographic regions.

• Linking to illegal material: as described above, it is not illegal for us to quote leaked cables in full here, so leaking to them shouldn't be a worry. Newspapers like The Guardian who post many of the cables on their own site should always be welcome for Wikipedia, and I would like us to develop no less of an appreciation for Wikileaks itself.

• On ethics of the links: The New York Times and others agreed to redact material that they think is dangerous. Wikileaks, so far as I know, has made the exact same redactions; at least, many of the cables have XXXXXXs through certain names. It isn't reasonable to say that because the material was "dangerous" before these organizations redacted what they thought was dangerous, that it can't be linked to or used afterward. In general, I would dispute that even the unredacted documents are truly dangerous, because the brutal fact is that the U.S. government kept these documents under such poor security - accessible to 500,000 users of SIPRNet - that they actually had someone with no link to any foreign government giving away the information for free. I can't believe that all the unredacted information has already been leaked to foreign governments, including those with many Islamic extremists in their employ, and it is my belief that allowing principals named in the cables to know that they have been exposed would actually save more lives than it would cost. But that is not something Wikipedia can do anyway, because we have only ordinary access to Wikileaks.