It's no secret that WikiLeaks is one of the most controversial organizations in the world. "We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources anonymous, thus providing a universal way for the revealing of suppressed and censored injustices," reads the first paragraph of the group's website.
While the idea of bringing injustices that are typically swept under the rug to light sounds noble, WikiLeaks' recent actions have, more than ever before, highlighted the group's recklessness and hypocrisy.
The latest WikiLeaks scandal involves the release of around 250,000 dispatches from the U.S. State Department. Unlike previous controlled releases, these documents are unredacted and therefore contain the names of informants that provided the information to U.S. diplomats.
WikiLeaks chose to publish the trove of documents online in searchable format after it apparently lost control of a file containing the unredacted cables.
Many of the informants mentioned in these releases live under hostile governments across the globe and they and their families are now in danger. People could be imprisoned or killed as a result of this release, if they haven't been already.
By releasing the identity of informants, WikiLeaks is being counterproductive to its agenda of promoting openness because current and future informants now have a very compelling reason to stop informing. The fact that WikiLeaks itself relies on anonymous informants for its information, yet is careless with the identities of others' informants, is especially hypocritical.
WikiLeaks claims that The Guardian, a British newspaper, provoked it into releasing the documents when it published one of WikiLeaks' passwords as a chapter title in its book about the organization. WikiLeaks is now pursuing legal action against The Guardian, saying the newspaper violated a secrecy agreement.
The Guardian says it was told the password was only a temporary one and would be deleted soon.
Whose fault the leak is is largely irrelevant now that informants have been exposed. What matters is that WikiLeaks was foolish to play fast and loose with such a sensitive cache of information in the first place.
For a group that claims to have such a noble cause, WikiLeaks seems not to have shown even a shred of concern for those whom its actions have harmed. The group seeks to help people by exposing lies, forcing governments to become open, yet it doesn't seem to give a thought to the consequences of its actions.
WikiLeaks has become progressively more unstable, an unsettling development for an organization that has the ability to impact world politics so greatly.
Now, all five of the news organizations WikiLeaks once worked closely with — The Guardian, The New York Times, German magazine Der Spiegel, Spain's El Pais and France's Le Monde — have denounced their former partner. Thanks to a reckless leak of its own, WikiLeaks is more isolated than ever.
