02 December 2010

The Limits to Openness

Unless you live in certain countries or read certain newspapers, you will have been deluged over the last few days with “revelations” from those US diplomatic cables that have been released by Wikileaks (if you somehow missed all this fun, try this excellent “Wikileaks Cablegate Roundup”.)

On Open Enterprise blog.

4 comments:

FleaStiff said...

I've not seen any revelations that are particularly stunning. Some US diplomat comments that the Russian Government and that Russian organized crime are closely linked ... and this is then described as a revelation?

Glyn Moody said...

@FleaStiff: I agree, most of the stuff has been purely confirmatory (although the Spanish copyright stuff is new pretty damning).

But I don't think that's where the outrage comes from: it's not what the cables say so much as the fact that the people outside the charmed circle - you and me - can read them.

FleaStiff said...

>it's not what the cables say so
much
>as the fact that the people outside
>the charmed circle can read them.

Same as the Icelandic Banking cables that showed US embassy briefings were shallow as well as being full of historical errors and misspellings. Nothing at all deserving of a secret much less top secret classification.

Glyn Moody said...

@Fleastiff: exactly - the point is, much of this stuff shouldn't have been "secret" - and then it would have been easier to protect the really sensitive stuff