WikiLeaks – The Ugly Side of the Internet

I saw an interview with Julian Assange the founder of WikiLeaks last Sunday. In the interview, he completely defended the publication of classified materials as "freedom of speech". He even said that he went well within the bounds of the law that any newspaper publisher would follow.

In life, there are often things that we could do, but we just shouldn't do. WikiLeaks does not exist to promote some higher calling, but to bring down others. It appears to be a clear manifestation of an individual's ego and not some higher purpose of free speech. By publishing classified materials and threatening to publish other classified materials, I cannot imagine that anyone would think that good could come out of that. And we have already seen the damage that this can cause.

The Internet is a wonderful thing. We can make ourselves heard in a nanosecond across the world. But with that kind of power comes the need to have restraint. Just like in a conversation, we don't say everything that we could say but we exercise restraint in saying the things that we should say. The mark of a human being is being able to control his tongue.  The Internet has the ability as an unmonitored  conversation to wield great damage. WikiLeaks is nothing more than unbridled lack of restraint whose intent is to bring harm. It is particularly sad when such lack of restraint hurts innocent bystanders. It also serves to restrict the flow of conversation between the published parties which would seem to be the opposite intended effect.