I have been giving this a lot of thought lately. What to do and how to classify Wikileaks? I have come to the conclusion that Wikileaks is as terrorism is to warfare. It is asymmetrical and it uses modern technology to the fullest. But first let me preface everything I am fixing to say with this,”Wikileaks and Assange are not friends of the United States and I do not believe that they want the best for the United States. We should examin our laws to see what appropriate actions we can take against them.”

What do I mean that Wikileaks is asymmetrical? By saying this I am stating that Wikileaks, its founders, and its locations can’t be tied down to one specific place. Wikileaks is a website that can be hosted on internet servers anywhere in the world. If one place shuts it out of its servers all that Wikileaks has to do to go back online is look and find a place that will host the site. To shut it down would mean that the world would have to gather to shut down Wikileaks and any subsequent manifestation of it. To gain worldwide agreement on an issue is nigh impossible, and it is impossible to keep others from creating more Wikileaks in other guises. Also it is possible to host websites in one country and live anywhere in the world. All of this adds up to give Wikileaks its aysmmetrical attributes.

Wikileaks is also like terrorism because it can be seen as a “freedom fighter” or an insurgent whose intent is to destroy the fabric of society and countries.

There is a strong case to be made that Wikileaks is nothing more than an internet site that reports the news and wants governments and corporations to be as open to the public as possible. There is also a case to possibly be made that Wikileaks engages in espionage. It could be shown that they encourage and aid those that steal secret and sensative documents from governments and corporations. At the very least, it is true, that Wikileaks has shown some poor judgment in information that it has released because it has put more people lives in danger than otherwise would have been.

As for how I would classify Wikileaks, it is still up in the air. I first would be looking for and prosecuting all those responsible for the leaks to Wikileaks and then I would be looking to see if Wikileaks played any part in the espionage. But one this is for sure, if I was the government of the United States, other governments, or large corporations, I would look to improve my information security, security protocals, and I would revamp and who and how I gave classified information to people.

These leaks were far too large and far too grave.

Bart Wallace

Troy