I've had about enough of Wikileaks

Well, I've been off silently fuming every time I hear the name "Wikileaks," which is why I haven't posted anything recently. But as promised in my previous post, this post will cover the blame part of the whole Wikileaks issue. (However, as this topic continues to annoy it will not be as lengthy as promised.)

So, here we go. The scenario is simple: Person X (I use an an anonymous name as I have no idea who actually did the leaking, but there are some suspects) had access to the US Diplomatic cables. I think its a safe assumption that X had some sort of clearance and/or was told not to share these cables with any unauthorised person(s). Another safe assumption would be that unauthorised persons includes me, possibly you and of course Wikileaks. Despite this, X decided to give the cables to Wikileaks.

We can see that this is obviously wrong, as in you will go to jail wrong. Blatantly illegal. Now the exact legality depends a few factors, such as if they had access to all the cables or some. If it was one person or many., the post the person is in, if the cables were classified and so on. Knowing now of these we cannot say much more and that is where I will leave it.

Moving on to Wikileaks, the law becomes a bit more grey. There are several issues involved here, the greatest of which being what jurisdiction does Wikileaks fall under? Which nation state's laws apply to them? This is quite a complex issue and still needs some resolving and legal catch up. Countries tend to be very cooperative on certain matters pertaining to the Internet, but there is still no really good legal framework. I still maintain that they are giving away stolen data, so intuitively that is wrong. See previous post for the whole whistle blowing or not issue.

Seeing as how they are now back in the news concerning the release of certain records from Julius Bär or Julius Baer Group. These records where leaked by former employee Rudolph Elmer. Elmer has since been detained and is being extradited to Switzerland to stand trial. Wikileaks has yet to publish the records, so we shall wait until they do so.

And on that note, I will leave this whole mess. I may or may not post something about any further revelations by Wikileaks. It all depends on how I feel about it at the time.