Wikileaks cannot keep its secrets

Jessie Hoffman/Staff Writer

“This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community.” U.S Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said.

The attack she is referring to is the recent scandal involving Wikileaks.

Wikileaks is site in which documents normally kept under wraps by governments and agencies are leaked to the public.

I think that Wikileaks is not a good site to have because there are things that should be kept secret from the public in order to reduce panic. It’s not just hurting America, it’s hurting everyone.

The founder, Juilan Assange says that he wants to diminish the power that the governments have and show their inadequacies.

Assange was being held in London on several charges most of which happen in Sweden. He was charged with unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape.

The recent leaks have brought about several aggressive actions from the United States and other countries in order to prevent more harmful leaks.

Actions such as Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal all cut off their customers from donating any amount of money to Wikileaks.

This brought a new group of activist from the shadows named Anonymous. The group has attacked many people who they think are to blame for the money cut offs with Mastercard and others. Assange told his mother while in jail, “we now know that Visa, Mastercard PayPal and others are instruments of US foreign policy.”

I agree with MasterCard, Visa and PayPal for not processing the donations. I do not think that there should be a ‘donations box’ for a company that’s only goal is to bring down government and to basically get rid of democracy.Giving the site donations is like giving a child a reward for doing something wrong.

All of the scandal between Assange and the world has left the countries scrambling for answers.

“People wanted to know on what legal grounds the ban was taken, but no one could answer it.” Robert Marshall, the chairman of the Icelandic Parliamentary General Committee said.
“ It violates the secret of diplomatic relations and puts people protected by diplomatic secret in danger.”

Assange though will not back down. “We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained US government classified materials.” Assange said.

This attitude has brought down many with him such as US Army private, Bradley Manning, who leaked US documents over the Iraq war earlier this June.

Now after hearing all of these allegations about WikiLeaks, I was horrified. I believe there are some things that just need to be kept a secret from the country – and the world for that matter. If there is something the government is hiding, there is most likely a good reason for the secrecy. I would not wish to have a global panic because of a website attacking governments and countries all over the world.