Assange Asylum

If you have not heard the name Julian Assange repeatedly on the news, Internet, newspapers over the past year perhaps you have been under a rock or in a coma. For those suffering from comatose or from being a recluse I will give a brief explanation of who he is, what his significance is, and what we can do with this information.

Julian Assange is an Australian activist. His biggest claim-to-fame is being the unofficial director of the notorious WikiLeaks website. The original website was published in 2006; it would allow users to edit, upload, comment, or share information that could be considered confidential or inconspicuous. Most notably, WikiLeaks released, in October of 2010, (The) Iraq War Logs. The Logs consisted of almost 400,000 secret and confidential government documents. As you can imagine, this caused uproar around the globe.

The documents ranged from government meeting minute notes, cartoon character names assigned to different world leaders, the names of family members of deceased soldiers. What I believe created the most outcry from US citizens and people from around the world was the ‘potential’ danger of having this information so widely available and could end up backfiring by having people’s lives threatened, especially if their information was contained in said documents.

In July of that year, WikiLeaks also released Afghan War Diary, which contained almost 80,000 documents pertaining to the War in Afghanistan. These documents were never public before they were broadcast over WikiLeaks.

In April of 2011, WikiLeaks released another set of documents, this time less than 1,000 relating to prisoners being detained at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. In September of 2011 Julian Assange’s autobiography was published. After being untraceable for a while and posting videos from anonymous locations around the world; Assange’s location was found out. He is currently waiting to be extradited to Sweden to face criminal charges. The US Justice Department wants to extradite and charge him with espionage or for publishing illegally obtained documents. As of September of 2011, ironically enough, Assange was among the list of people nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The government of the United States, who were major stakeholders in this event, reacted out of fear and ignorance. Although government officials would not admit to it, they shut down access to the website almost immediately after the released and forbid releasing the documents until “examined”. This is what I find to be problematic and a little reminiscent of formerly Communist Russia and currently Communist China.

I remember the release of WikiLeaks and the general response of people after finding out. Initially, people were outraged; instead of being concerned or questioning what are these documents really? Why do we not have access to these documents? Again, I feel as though the US government used fear tactics to get a response from the people and in turn, the government was given indirect permission to limit the information available to us.

After The Patriot Act and more specifically 9-11, US citizens seem to be okay with voluntarily signing over their rights, without hesitation, as long as its in the name of ‘protection from the “bad” guys’.

I would argue that the US is most often viewed as “the land of the free”; one of the few places on the globe you can entirely express yourself without feeling limited or constrained, or at least until now.

Personally, I feel as though our government was so embarrassed by the content of the WikiLeaks, namely how they had been conducting themselves during meetings as well as assigning code names like “Batman and Robin”; Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev respectively.

In my opinion, Julian Assange did nothing wrong. And to think he could be charged with treason truly disgusts me. According to Merriam-Webster, treason is “the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family”. For starters Assange is not a US citizen, therefore he has no allegiance to the US. So I ask this, if the exact definition of treason is attempting to overthrow the government of your allegiance how could Assange be charged with this without being a citizen? Furthermore, did he do anything wrong initially? He personally did not steal the documents. He received documents, which he felt were necessary for the public to know about. Do we now live in a world where you cannot share potentially important information?

I do not think people should have total access to all government documents. There should be some discretion with releasing sensitive or harmful information. However all governments, more specifically, the US government should be held accountable for their actions and be forced to be transparent. Forced by their intrinsic want to be open and honest as well as forced by the people who deserve to know what is going on behind closed doors.

There is no management theory that directly applies to this. However of the nine skills of leadership, the government did not use any as discussed in class. Hypothetically speaking if the government (as a whole) were a manager it would definitely be an authoritative leader with little to no input from employees (citizens) in this case. Even in terms of voting for elected officials, the government, not the people have the final say so in who is elected.

US citizens focused mainly on the ‘wrongdoings’ of Assange and not on the blatant censorship by the government. Not only is this troubling but it makes me question the future of transparency in the government, specifically when it comes to media outlets and what information they release to the public. I cannot accurately predict what direction this will go in however I do hope we, as a county, move more in the direction of transparency in media and less in the direction of denial.

Sources:
http://en.rian.ru/world/20101129/161542104.html

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/treason

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks (not used for facts, only for spelling and dates)

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/145977/bradley-manning-and-julian-assange-both-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize/#2

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/07/world/main7124779.shtml

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-in-london-high-court-for-bail-fight/story-e6frf7m6-1225972449507