WikiLeaks

Unless you just woke up from a coma or you've spent a past few weeks in a cave, you have certainly heard about the WikiLeaks. There's not much to add to the ongoing discussion, the whole affair has been over-analyzed, many contending points of view have been made, all possible angles have been examined. Surely, as in many other controversies, there is a growing tendency to complicate the matter more than necessary. This is a strategy so often exercised by people with some sort of a hidden agenda, in order to confuse or manipulate the public opinion in one or the other direction. Whether it might be also the WikiLeaks case, that I don't know.

Those recent events, strangely enough brought back the memories of my mother. She was a simple, uneducated woman of a few words, but anything she had to say always held a strong underlined message of wisdom and common sense. For instance, she would believe, that in many arguments people tend to draw their elaborate conclusions, while overlooking the basic and the obvious at the same time. With provision for this notion, my personal take on the WikiLeaks issue is quite plain and rather unsophisticated.

The vast amount of the classified, private documents (never intentioned for the public record) have been obtain illegally, to be afterwards gradually released on line.The actual content of the materials is irrelevant and I doubt anyone reads them anyway. The very bottom line remains, Bradley Manning have stolen thousands of private letters (embassy cables, if you will) and another crook, Julian Assange is now making them public. By definition, both of the gentlemen have committed the criminal acts, the first one is a theft and as for Assange, his contribution is nothing but a clear violation of a constitutional guarantee on the privacy of correspondence. It is no different than steeling the private mail from the postal truck, opening it and posting the copies on the Internet.

Predictably, it did not take too long before the army of hackers offered their computer expertise to either post the stolen materials on their mirror sites or to attack some legitimate businesses who distanced themselves from the WikiLeaks charade. Those "freedom of information activists", consisting mostly useless freeloaders living in their parents basements are confusing the law-breaking with some kind of moral right for a free speech. What they don't understand is the fact, they're becoming the accessories to the theft and fraud. In the simple terms - the common criminals, just like their admired heroes Manning and Assange.

Milo.