This is one of the most fascinating news stories in a long time. I'm not talking about the 92,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks leaked, I'm talking about the Wikileaks itself. To me, no other organization (if Wikileaks can be called an organization) is as polarizing as Wikileaks. Fundamentally, it has a valuable mission; in practice it can be a dangerous breach of national security.
For those of you who haven't been following this, Wikileaks is an organization led by Julian Assange (an odd looking, vaguely Norwegian dude) that procures and publishes - from a variety of sources - classified and private documents. It's agenda is simple: to provide transparency.
It has broken a lot of stories from across the globe including corporate and government corruption and military operations. For me, it really came into consciousness when it published a 15 minute video of US soldiers shooting Iraqi civilians and Reutters reporters. It was disturbing footage.
Its latest leak was HUGE. As I mentioned above, it procured and published 92,000 classified US military documents that paint a bleak view of the Afghan war and point to inaccurate reports from our government and military.
Let me be clear: I, and TCD, am not taking a position on this story. Wikileaks fascinates me as much as it terrifies me and it really shows the power of our now totally connected world. We are going to see a lot more stuff like this pop up and a lot more secrets revealed before anything is able to be fully locked down.
No matter what you think about this, you have to imagine that the US government would love to get its hands on Assange. I wouldn't mind seeing video of that conversation leaked.
