WikiLeaks

Wikileaks is a really unique site which enables anybody to anonymously submit sensitive documents and publishes them for the world to see. Examples include the 2004 U.S. Army manual of operating procedures at Guantanamo Bay and the 2007 Apache helicopter attack in which two Reuters reporters were killed in Baghdad.

Run by former hacker and now internet activist Julian Assange, the site strives to increase transparency among governments and hold them accountable for their actions. Wikileaks dedicates most of its technology to create an uncensorable and untraceable submission process, going to extraordinary lengths to protect the identities of its sources.

While a great idea, the biggest concern I have about Wikileaks is that all of the documents and stories it publishes on the site are hand-picked by an editorial committee, thus greatly influencing what the public actually sees. This puts a lot of power into the hands of those running the site and results in an inevitably biased transparency based solely upon which documents the Wikileaks team deems important enough for us to see.

Conversely, allowing anybody to upload virtually any type of information and disclosing too many of those documents raises serious privacy and security concerns. What is stopping someone from hacking into an innocent's personal email or bank account and posting its contents online? Although the editorial policy at Wikileaks states that they only publish documents that have political or ethical implications, I still worry about where that line is drawn.

Lastly, because its purpose is to generate public awareness and maximize social impact, many of the documents are given sensationalized titles like "Collateral Murder", shortened for more convenient mainstream consumption, and edited to include captions written by the editorial team. If this is a site that truly supports transparency, shouldn't it remain completely objective, simply present the documents as they are uploaded, and let the public form its own opinion?