Ask no questions...

The WikiLeaks story is one that just won't go away, no matter how much the diplomatic corps of the U.S, Saudi Arabia, the U.K and friends may wish it to. Every day the steady drip drip drip of information brings us a new headline of a salacious communiqué, and with a grand total of 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables this may continue for some time. By this time next week, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Americans are terrified of Sweden's far left appropriating the country's herring income and spending it on a dirty bomb. Those who would go out of their way to profess their love for freedom of information and a free press will say that this torrent of information is a godsend, that it is a privilege to be able to see the unadulterated psyche of a nation, and it probably would be if we were actually doing that.

We must remember that the information we are so gleefully consuming has been ferried between embassies and is the view of the people on the ground. It's true that the people who sent the cables are representatives of their country, but so too was John Prescott a representative of Britain, and we can't all agree on his Ginster's Pasty bill as it never even made it to the House of Lords. It also has to be borne in mind that the people sending these messages did not think for one moment that there was any danger of them entering the government domain. Now when I am on a night out with my friends, I will act somewhat differently than when I accept an OBE from Her Majesty. These diplomats may have views about people and countries that may or may not reflect their parent country's views, and they may not express them in public in order that relationships with these people and countries will carry on smoothly, much like relationships in people's day to day lives. If China asks the UK whether her bottom looks big in this dress, the UK will say no regardless of whether it does, although the UK might tentatively raise the question of how that dress might infringe on China's Human Rights. If somebody happened to leak all of my personal communiqués between my friends, I can't say that there wouldn't be repercussions. If somebody came out of nowhere and made it known amongst my red-headed associates that I belittle their skin tone and freckles at every opportunity, it would make life more difficult. Freedom of information is fine and all of that jazz, but governments, and people, very rarely have nothing to hide.

Now this diplomatic process of saying one thing whilst thinking another has been blown out of the water, and there are those who are jumping on the “this will change the face of diplomacy for ever” bandwagon, but not I. I am going to leap upon the, “This will change how diplomatic communications are handled for a while” bandwagon myself. Granted that 251,287 cables of information on goodness knows how many leaves of paper is a little less kinder to Mother Earth than the same number of zip files, but it's also a lot harder for one man to run off with. On a side note, how the hell can the government who spend $533.8 billion, a fifth of their budget on defence, be so shockingly careless with such sensitive information? The Alaskan voice of reason Sarah Palin is calling for Justin Assange to be hunted down and killed, like the rabid moose that he is. He is part of a rebel alliance and a traitor, but if she believes that, then there should be many other people's heads rolling connected with the whole affair, people who have at best been criminally negligent. I am not saying the same sort of cock up couldn't happen in the UK, mind. We seem to have suffered a similar spate of things like sending the benefit details of 25 million citizens on cds by second class mail (optimistic at best) and accidentally couriering laptops with the Trident codes to Lagos. The current WikiLeaks website (I say current because the cyber ninjas of many of the world's governments are constantly forcing them to change IP addresses) condones the leaks by saying transparency creates better society, and this may be true to a point. Government is essentially meant to serve the people, and should be held accountable for fouling up, and that if it's harder for them to lie, then all the better. However, if we and our governments were unable to lie, there would be either a lot fewer words spoken, or a much higher mortality rate.