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families at great risk. It makes it less likely
that in the future sources in conflict zones
will want to trust the US and its allies if
they feel their personal details will not
be protected.
“This can result in our intelligence
agencies knowing less about terrorism or
other threats on the ground that could be
in a position to do harm to our soldiers, or
who may be planning attacks in Australia
and elsewhere.
“Such leaks also damage general efforts
by our intelligence community to collect
information about threat actors if leaks
reveal collection methods, as in the case
of Snowden.
“The intel community is still struggling
with the ‘going dark phenomenon’
of various communication platforms
post Snowden.”
Despite warnings from his own people
about the indiscriminate dumping of the
US classified pentagon material on the
WikiLeaks website, Walsh says Assange
didn’t consider, or seem to care about,
the impact this might have on the people
included who were innocent.
“This is reckless activity, and not in
the tradition of what I think are real
whistleblowers, such as Daniel Ellsberg
(Pentagon Papers) and Sgt Joe Darby (Abu
Ghraib), who were motivated by ethical
concerns about the direction of their
country in Ellsberg’s case, or human rights
abuses in Darby’s case.
“In both these whistleblowing cases,
their decision weighed heavily on them.
In Ellsberg’s case, he tried to not release
information about sensitive ongoing
negotiations between the US and North
Vietnamese communist government that
was seeking a peaceful end to the conflict.
“I think a true whistleblower is driven
not by narcissism or ‘how can I get my
15 minutes of fame’, and more by the
concern over an abuse of power that
needs correcting.
“Their motives are more selfless
than Assange’s motivation, which was
fundamentally about doing as much
damage to US interests worldwide, rather
than specific policy concerns.
“I also think if Assange was a true
whistleblower motivated only – as he
claimed – by transparency and free speech,
then why was there never anything much
published on their page about abuses of
power in authoritarian states, where even
the idea of leaking classified information
would result in execution of the person
who leaked it?
“If you were interested in a balanced
view of keeping all powers honest, why not
hack into and release material from Russia
or China?”
Walsh says the conversation sparked by
Assange’s arrest is an important one, within
Australia and all liberal democracies.
“There is whistleblowing legislation
in Australia, but it’s more difficult in the
national security intelligence context
than, say, exposing police corruption or
corporate fraud, because the release of
such information – even if the motivations
are from an ethical framework – can
cause enormous damage to the security
of a country.
“This doesn’t mean that whistleblowers
don’t have avenues to seek redress in the
intelligence community.
“In Australia, we have a parliamentary
committee that has oversight of our intel
community. We also have the Inspector
General for Intelligence and Security (IGIS),
which is an independent oversight body that
has standing royal commission powers to
investigate the operations of agencies in the
intelligence community.”
Aside from the associated debate, Walsh
says there is very little to be gained from
the activities of someone like Assange or
even Snowden.
“In the case of Assange, he is at best
a hacker, at worst a useful idiot for the
Russian state.
“Someone who is just interested in
hacking government institutions but doesn’t
do it for any real positive reason, or one
that can result in a positive result, is of
limited value to the pursuit of free speech
and transparency.
“Assange and Snowden both influenced
a more critical debate now in liberal
democratic states about the role of
intelligence agencies: secrecy versus
transparency and privacy.
“So I suppose advancing this debate
has been helpful, but doing it the way
Assange and Snowden did it is not the way
to ignite this debate.”
In addition to the whistleblower debate,
there has also been extensive discussion
within the media as to whether Assange
should be considered a journalist.
According to Walsh, Assange is no
such thing.
“He has a long history of hacking rather
than journalism. I do not know if he has any
Someone who is
just interested in hacking
government institutions but
doesn’t do it for any real
positive reason … is of limited
value to the pursuit of free
speech and transparency.
journalism qualifications, but a professional
journalist would not just mass-dump
unredacted information on their website.
“They would sift through it, remove
names of people not relevant to the
story to protect their privacy and security.
They would seek to critically assess the
information first as well – try to value-add
to it and contextualise it.
“Assange does none of those things.
“It’s an affront to all those people who go
to journalism schools and work tirelessly to
produce good journalism in democracies.
“Secondly, Assange and his lawyers are
connecting his arrest as a ‘journalist’ to the
endangerment of free speech in general,
which is hyperbole. Free speech is not in
danger because of his arrest.
“Thirdly, I would say he is not a journalist
because no ethical or professional journalist
would actively conspire with a source to
break a secure password on a classified
computer to access the information from
a source.
“This is not journalism; it’s criminal
hacking for which the person involved has
a case to answer for.”
Walsh says as a result of Assange and
WikiLeaks, intelligence communities may
need to consider processes in the future
that allow genuine whistleblowers a secure,
confidential oversight forum to air their
grievances before going to the press in
ways that don’t minimise their concerns,
yet risk-manage the consequences of their
going public.
“Generally, in Australia and other liberal
democracies, things can go wrong, abuse
can happen, particularly in conflict zones,
but most people working in the intel
community are honest and ethical.
“But now and in the future, powerful
oversight of our intelligence communities
will be the best way to pick up abuses,
not via the Assanges and Snowdens of
the world.” ■
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