In the last week have increased efforts to block the objectives of Wikileaks. Among others, Amazon removed the contents of Wikileaks from its servers and PostFinance Swiss bank has blocked the bank account Assange. In the political arena, Senator Lieberman has spread threats from Wikileaks to the New York Times, considering that it can prosecute those who publish leaks.
“If the government acts with the companies that provide servers and requires removing the contents, it is a direct attack on our ability to speak in the Red”, El Pais said Dan Gillmor, writer and director of Project Citizen Media Law.
Last week, Gillmor was one of the first to warn of the consequences Wikileaks censorship may have on freedom of speech and press in the United States. “They are waging a mighty war against freedom of expression,” Gillmor wrote in Salon.com.
“Wikileaks is a publication, a new publication, but in any case, publication, and that makes this an issue of press freedom. We like it or not, Wikileaks is fundamentally a local newspaper and, as such, deserves our protection” , also said the journalist and media expert Matthew Ingram.
Clothilde Le Coz, head of Reporters Without Borders in the United States also argues that Wikileaks deserve such protection. “You’re a reporter on the value of the information you have, not having press accreditation,” he said at a conference in Washington on 30 October.
Those are the two keys. The ability to publish to Wikileaks and the type of information disseminated.
As posed by journalist Joseph Elola COUNTRY, who interviewed Assange on Saturday, the greatest fear of the founder of the website is to be extradited to the U.S.. But, if tried in that country as a professional journalist or public information, what would differentiate the professional New York Times?
The Espionage Act of 1917 protect Wikileaks if it becomes seen as a means of communication. Since The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, the law condemns the leaking of classified material, but not its publication, to be of public interest. So the U.S. could detain the soldier Manning, accused of the leaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not by Assange disseminate them through their website.
“The greatest threat that has emerged from Wikileaks is not information that has spread or may spread in the future, but the reactionary response that is growing in the United States, which promises to repudiate our legal tradition and freedom of expression, if not punish him, “writes Wired’s director, Evan Hansen, in an editorial.
The problem is not that Wikileaks has published some information, but it was filtered. And that is where U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman wants to draw the line. Last week introduced a bill, SHIELD Act, which makes federal crime disclosure of a source of intelligence for the United States.
“The legislation will help to hold accountable the perpetrators of the crime that is threatening to information sources that are vital to our national security,” Lieberman said in a statement. Their proposal is actually an amendment to the Espionage Act, but extends the prohibition to publish information related to “espionage activities of the United States or any other country”, or “sources classified or secret service informer” American .
“The media have some idea of it should recognize what is at stake. Goes beyond short-term interests of each. To begin with, it is your ability to do its job. If it can obstruct the journalism, and now the government wants to do, we will have thrown overboard our freedom of expression, “says Gillmor.
Reporters Without Borders also condemned what it considers “the first attempt at international censure of a site whose primary purpose is transparency.”
Emily Bell, former director of digital content for the British Guardian, one consequence is clear: “Journalists need to know what they would do if you found this information on his desk and the Government pressured to remain silent.”
Although a legal case against Wikileaks could affect media and journalists, American professionals have expressed some of the harshest sentences from the web.
“You want to prevent this from happening again,” asks columnist Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. “Show the world to a man who can not sleep in the same bed two nights in a row because they fear the long arm of American justice. I’m not asking us to recover our KGB agent in a London street killed a Bulgarian dissident with a rod of a poisoned umbrella. But it would be nice that people like Assange have to worry every time he goes out in the rain. ”
Time magazine, Joe Klein called for no Americans abroad pay for Wikileaks: “Assange is criminal. He is the one who should be in jail.”
The Wall Street Journal Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein Assange yesterday condemned as “an agitator with the sole intention of causing harm to our Government, whose laws do not agree, no matter who gets hurt.” And refuses to be a journalist or protected by the Constitution: “Just as the First Amendment does not give license to yell” Fire! ” in a crowded theater, nor is a license to endanger national security. ”
U.S. media and the public still do not have a common vision if Wikileaks is good or bad, if necessary or not, whether to censor or not. But everyone agrees that the impact of the leaks will mark a before and after for the media and not only those who had access to leaks. Many define the publication of the documents as a crucial moment in journalism. For the first time, an organization rooted in the Internet serves as an intermediary between a source-filter also classified data, and journalists. And for the first time it has tried to censor news reports on the Internet, and would have succeeded if not for a group of journalists has become an intermediary between web readers and Assange.
Related posts:
- Computer, Internet Addiction Center Opens in the United States A new rehabilitation center called ReSTART was officially opened in...
- How the Internet Created Pseudonym Journalists With the advent of the Internet technology, anyone can write...
- Journalist Group Shuts Website After the Cyber Attack Beijing, China: A journalist group said Friday it has shut...