The Leaker Becomes the Leaked

The police report detailing the sex crimes charges against Julian Assange has been leaked. Poetic justice, or a debasement of due process?

In spite of himself the Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom says he’s rooting for Julian Assange, because he’s glad to see the peephole finally being reversed on surveillance-happy governments. “So here’s to you, Julian Assange,” Walkom toasts. “You may be a rat in your sex life. Yet for those of us who don’t have to sleep with you, but do have to live in this Big Brother world, you’re doing something to even the score.” If you do have to sleep with Assange (i.e., if he’s raped you), you presumably have Walkom’s sympathies. To be fair, Walkom admits that his feelings on WikiLeaks “aren’t entirely logical,” which is an understatement.

The National Post’s Kelly McParland and Lorne Gunter are amused by Assange’s protestations over details of his alleged sex crimes being leaked to newspapers. “Can you imagine anyone being so irresponsible as to callously release private information into the public sphere, just to satisfy their own personal agenda, without the slightest regard to the effect it might have on a citizen like Mr. Assange?” writes a not-so-incredulous McParland. “I mean, my heavens, is there no honour left in the world?” Alright, yes, anyone with a sense of irony can see the contradictions in Assange’s position. But it strikes us in The Mark Newsroom that McParland et. al can’t be against WikiLeaks but for the leak of details of Assange’s alleged crimes. If you support certain institutions central to our society, like functional diplomacy and courts that protect the right to a fair trial, you have to condemn both leaks equally.

In The Mark, M.J. Murphy argues that just as Napster unleashed filesharing on the world in 2000, WikiLeaks has unleashed document dumps, and it can’t be stopped. And just as with Napster, if WikiLeaks is struck down more elusive imitators will take its place. Murphy suggests it would be wiser “to negotiate with WikiLeaks … towards an ethical protocol for the leaking of future documents. Otherwise, instead of files appearing with names redacted, we will have pure document dumps onto obscure Mongolian servers with no concern at all for whose interests might be damaged.”