2 September 2011

It is heartening that Wikileaks has returned to its founding principle of courageous full disclosure of the cables, with more unfettered disclosure to come in the future. It should be as contagious as urged.

Wikileaks is escaping the trap-hole dug for it by its venal partners who whispered the allure of insider rigging.

The first five Wikileaks media partners are self-promotionally venal to issue a statement of condemnation about the release for it presumes they have acted in the best interests of the public without the evidence now available to the public to decide for itself what to learn, ponder and judge about the US Government and other governments. Mediation of this disclosure is not needed in a democracy.

The Wikileaks release of the unredacted and re-formatted cables will help compare the Wikileaks reconfigured version (60GB) with the original files (1.7GB) -- if both packages contain the same cables. These differing sizes of the package indicate considerable reconfiguration padding.

Still, for authentication of the cables, the original version is essential, presuming that the original is indeed the version provided to Wikileaks. And that there was no tampering with the package from its source to Wikileaks. Wikileaks and its media partners, now about 100, have admitted to tampering with the cables under various justifications, all of them self-serving. This is suspect and cannot be trusted, as indicated by the manifold versions that have been selectively published.

Editorialization, redacting and reformatting, like bowdlerization, translation and grammatical/syntactical "improvement," are notoriously unreliable due to inaccuracy creep caused by misunderstanding, prejudice and ignorance.

That the unreconfigured cables have become public is to be applauded and not condemned.

Reply · Report Post