Personal privacy versus Government secrecy

WikiLeaks has had more scoops in three years than the Washington Post has had in 30. - Clay Shirky

It is for this reason that Wikileaks has become an incredibly important news source with their commitment to providing the public with information that is deliberately withheld, by governments and corporations, to expose corruption.
Their recent release of classified diplomatic cables divulging what our governments are really talking about behind closed doors has created a great divide in public opinion about just how much we, the people, really have a right to know.
One side of the debate says that the documents should never have been released and that secrecy in diplomacy is actually in the public interest. Our PM Julia Gillard sits in this camp, despite admitting that an investigation by the Australian Federal Police concluded Wikileaks had broken no Australian laws in publishing the leaked documents, Gillard called the website “grossly irresponsible”.
In the United States opposition to the publication of the diplomatic cables is more extreme, with some commentators choosing not to attack the website but rather its editor, Julian Assange. Ultra-right-wing politician Sarah Palin used Facebook to ask why Assange is ”not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”.
More drastic is the opinion of retired United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters who told Fox news that the Wikileaks editor-in-chief should be assassinated:

Julian Assange is a cyber-terrorist in war time. He is guilty of sabotage, espionage, crimes against humanity. He should be killed.

Surely the crime is not in exposing corruption but in committing it and indeed, the leaked diplomatic cables implicate many governments as complicit in crime and corruption. Should our governments be allowed to keep secrets if those secrets involve participation in actions that would be unlawful if undertaken by a regular citizen? Brett Solomon speaking on Fox News said:

The space between the citizen and the government needs to be reduced. We’ve seen essentially, and as Glenn Beck says, you know, Assange is the man of the millennium, why? Because it stops government’s from lying to their people.

Solomon represents the other side of this debate, the one that acknowledges the importance of transparency in government and the right of people to know what their governments are planning on their behalf.
Independent journalist and activist Stuart Munckton spoke on the importance of recognising the difference between personal privacy and diplomatic secrecy.

We need to be able to tell, quite clearly, the difference between the right of an individual to secrecy, and the right of us to know what governments, that supposedly represent us, that we elect, and that we pay out taxes to, are doing in our name.

It is this difference that many opposing the publication of the leaked cables fail to acknowledge. We are not talking about exposing conversations between private citizens in their personal lives – these are conversations concerning diplomatic matters by people who represent our elected governments. Exposing these sorts of conversations means that accountability can be demanded.
Some commentators fail to understand the difference Munckton speaks about, slamming Assange as hypocritical for being unhappy with The Guardian for exposing details of his personal life when they published sections of a police report regarding sexual assault allegations. The Georgia Daily news said:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s lawyers and supporters are up in arms that someone leaked the confidential police report detailing graphic rape allegations against him.
Irony is not their strong suit.

Also failing to see the difference between conversations of diplomats representing our countries and the private life of a journalist [Assange] is former American conservative politician Susan Molinari who told MSNBC (as quoted on FDL):

Well, obviously he doesn’t think he himself fits into the whole question of transparency.  I think one can only conclude, based on what we’ve seen that he is hugely anti-American, somewhat anti-capitalistic, although obviously WikiLeaks enjoys the benefits of an open capitalistic society where the media is allowed to engage in accessing these leaks and putting them on the front page and then disseminating them … Here’s a man who is destructive, and who sets guidelines for the United States government, and clearly only the United States, by rules and regulations that he feels he himself doesn’t have to live by…

Failing  to recognise the difference between personal privacy versus government secrecy is like comparing Wikileaks to PerezHilton.com. Do we have a right to know what goes on in the diplomat’s bedroom? No. But when it comes to the government boardroom, that’s a different story. Secret diplomacy has no place in true democracy.

Stuart Munckton’s speech on Wikileaks and secrecy:

Source: Activ8change