While I have absolutely no sympathy for Wikileaks founder I find this latest development rather puzzling particularly have listened to the Ecuadorian President’s here reasons behind withdrawing the Asylum status from Julian Assange. Most of the reasons given with regards to continuing relations between Julian Assange & Wikileaks and the interference of Wikileaks in internal affairs of nation doesn’t pass muster and here’s why;
- The core foundation on which Wikileaks is based upon as a whistleblowing organisation is by definition activities that involve interference in internal policies of other nations, then what has really changed is something we don’t really understand.
- Ecuador has just discovered continued relations between Wikileaks and Assange, this after over 6 years with all the indicators given by the Ecuadorian President himself in the speech above. Really???
In my personal opinion the concept of having whistleblowers is not in-of-itself a bad thing when it is used to uncover political corruption. However it becomes problematic when 3 specific things happen;
- When highly classified material is dumped into the public space without any proper vetting or when this vetting process is either incompetent or biased.
- When whistle-blowing organisations begin playing politics by being deliberately selective in time/content in releasing information to directly influence the outcome of national processes like election. This can also happen as an outcome of nations becoming active players in these whistleblowing activities.
- When whistleblowing organisations begin engaging in disinformation campaigns either deliberately or unintentionally.
So I guess the take away from this post are the following points;
- We need to know more about the real reasons behind revoking the Asylum status of Julian Assange.
- Whistleblowing only becomes problematic when it goes rogue and attempts to influence outcome of political processes
- However people feel about Julian Assange he needs to be granted due process in defending his actions and the allegations against him