Noah Baron, Associate Editor
Ideology: Religious Progressive | Writing From: New York, New York
Recently, WikiLeaks, an organization dedicated to the publication of confidential government and corporate documents, has been forced to severely cut back on its major operations due to budget troubles. The website is only a few years old — it was launched in 2007 — but it has already gained international notoriety: it 2008, it received the Economist Freedom of Expression Award; in 2009, it won Amnesty International’s New Media Award. Over the past three years, it has successfully fought, according to its website, over 100 “legal attacks,” including numerous full-blown lawsuits. Yet its success thus far is no indication of a smooth ride, and its current financial woes suggest that those who bring the organization to court may get their druthers, even if they didn’t see victory by judicial fiat.
WikiLeaks, however, is by no means uncontroversial. In 2008, the site published a full list of the membership of the British National Party, a far-right wing political group in the United Kingdom which grants membership only to whites. Shortly after, many wondered: is it possible that the dangers of making party membership rolls publicly available could outweigh the free speech right to do by WikiLeaks (and others)? Similar questions — and comparisons between the two incidents — arose when, after the passage of the marriage equality ban in California and the unmarried-couples adoption ban in Arkansas, activists posted websites listing the donors to the referenda’s respective “yes” campaigns. The comparisons and the questions which arose are in many senses legitimate: one of the central features of democracy is the ability to identify as a member of a group and express oneself freely. Yet there are major differences between the situations as well. In the United Kingdom, because racism and xenophobia are so socially unacceptable, members of the British National Party face the prospect of intense social pressure and shunning by the vast majority of the country by virtue of mere membership in a political organization. By contrast, homophobia appears to be America’s most popular bigotry, followed closely by anti-Muslim prejudice, and has been for the past few decades. As a result, it is little surprise that such websites have faced relatively few lawsuits.
Yet the question remains: given the legitimate complaints of members of the BNP, is it fair for WikiLeaks to post the group’s rolls? I would argue, though not enthusiastically, that it is. While perhaps many might find the publication of such data to be distasteful, at the end of the day it would be a terrible precedent to set when analyzing free speech. Free speech should not be limited when the possibility is merely embarrassment for holding certain views or belonging to a certain party — and indeed, this would be very unlikely to harm the right to association. Even if a government or opposition party were to get their hands on the membership rolls of a given party, it would be difficult for them to embarrass party members for their own beliefs.
And, indeed, at the center of this entire issue is the fundamental question of freedom of speech. One of the reasons that WikiLeaks has managed to survive the legal offensive launched by dozens upon dozens of corporations and individuals is that the First Amendment and freedom of speech is on its side. But as I noted earlier, that doesn’t mean that it is without cost. On occasion, the website has been forced to shut down. Though upon appeal such decisions are without exception reversed, the damage is nonetheless done: when a user attempts to visit a website, only to find that it is not there, they are significantly less likely to return. Likewise, because the site operates by accepting confidential documents from individuals around the world and ensuring the anonymity of those who submit those documents. When the site is shut down, this promotes the perception that the organization or website is unstable, and discourages submissions of additional content. And, lastly, there is the issue of lawyer’s fees. Even those lawyers who are willing to work for the organization pro bono cannot do so after a certain point: they have to feed themselves somehow. Non-stop litigation is a sure-fire way to shut down a group otherwise protected by the legal shield of free speech.
To lose an organization to such strategies, or, indeed, any other way, would be a great loss to civil society worldwide. WikiLeaks is not only a venerable example of the exercise of free speech: it serves as a means by which to hold corporations and governments (both domestic and foreign) accountable. It is a well-known fact that every government and every corporation has its secrets. Some of these secrets — such as evidence of knowledge of polluting the local water supply in a third world country, or the documentation of decades of government lying about the nature and purpose of its military involvement in a foreign nation – are far more valuable and dangerous than others. WikiLeaks enables the publication of such materials in a fashion far less dangerous to those wishing to make these materials public. Even without the publication of materials, the existence and popularity of organizations such as WikiLeaks serve as a threat to corporations and governments, making them more conscious of their actions and aware of the possibility, or perhaps even likelihood, that any wrongdoings perpetrated by them will be uncovered and presented to the world.