"Give me your after-action reports, your démarches on Darfur,
Your muddled mess of data yearning to be HTTP'd,
The risk-mitigated refuse of your teeming SIPRNet core.
Send these, the NOFORN, SECRET-classed to me,
I will torrent it along with all my porn!"
For the third time this year, Wikileaks grabs headlines by disseminating a trove of data lifted from the United States. Stuff never intended for the sun's light. This time truckloads -- or at least a USB thumb drive's worth -- of the State Department's diplomatic dispatches. Although some foreign service officers might be titillated to have their obscure analytical works out in the wild, the overall effect is similar to having a teacher intercept and read aloud embarassing notes you've written about your friends. Too much candor.
Already some heads of state, from Sarkozy to Karzai to Ahmedinejad are straining to shrug it off with a collective "I'm not mad at'ya."
As a longtime fan of Wikileaks, which has operated quietly and Quixotically as a repository for secrets since 2006, I'm riveted by the smart analyses and comprehensive primers now available on topical foreign policy matters. From what I've seen it looks like an impressive body of work prepared with balance and judgment. The kind of stuff civilian politicians completely ignore.
Of course the information is already being spun to fit.
The utility of any information stripped of context and comment is dependent upon discriminating consumers. Dislodged from the collective body of work and intended audience, information such as this is easily misrepresented or abused to fit unrelated agendas. Too busy wrapping their consumer hauls from Black Friday, most are satisfied letting others tell them "what it all means."
All things tend toward entropy, and all information should be free. Even when the truth -- or its closest approximation -- steps on a few toes. But who does it empower? In the United States, the Freedom of Information Act is overwhelmingly used by corporate lobbyists, with requests filed by journalists and citizens trailing far behind.
That said, this vivisection of international diplomacy deepens our physiological relationship with the Internet as a magical buffet to feast upon limitless music, pornography, movie torrents and personal appeals from Jimmy Wales. Through our voyeur's window, tripartite negotiations over Iranian centrifuges doesn't seem much different than Jersey Shore.
Philosophical implications aside, almost all of today's missives pertained to world's most "newsworthy" players -- Iran, Pakistan, Russia.
Here in Southeast Asia, we can look forward to the full archive. According to Wikileaks' database, Thailand ranks relatively high with 3,516 diplomatic cables. Whether its up to them to be pleased or offended, Cambodia (1,010) and Laos (448) rank quite low.
- Quantity of documents by nation, in descending order:
1. Iraq 15,365
2. Turkey 11,086
3. Iran 10,093
...
23. Thailand 3,516
24. Indonesia 3,478
26. Burma 3,431
27. Vietnam 3,165
Given the distribution of data (Both Okinawa and Japan at 6,722?) I would surmise these are cross-indexed, meaning most are likely to be the same document 'tagged' with multiple nation identifiers.
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