Hillary Clinton will recover from WikiLeaks' data dumps. LGBT individuals around the world may not
be so lucky
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-wikileaks-assange-lgbt-outing-20161015-snap-story.html
WikiLeaks, the transparency website founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, has waded into the waters of partisan politics with its release of thousands of private emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. There’s a principled argument for this kind of radical transparency. Assange himself made it more than a decade ago on his then-blog: “The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.”
The reality, however, is that some secrets exist for a reason. While Assange may be basking in the limelight for embarrassing Clinton these past two weeks, some of his recent actions may have caused significant collateral damage — particularly to members of the LGBT community.
In July, WikiLeaks published documents from inside the regime of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following a failed attempt at a coup. That leak, however, included the private information of thousands of Turkish women, including their home addresses. In publishing Saudi Arabian diplomatic cables, the site outed two male teenage rape victims in Saudi Arabia, and published the name of a man imprisoned for “sexual deviation.” One survivor was reportedly “raped by a man while abroad” and one was “so violently raped (that) his legs were broken,” the cables said, according to the Associated Press....
When it comes to reporting on LGBT lives, redacting sensitive information is extremely important. The practice of outing, revealing someone’s sexuality before the individual is willing or able to come out publicly, has been criticized by LGBT activists as an invasion of privacy, but this is only part of the story. Outing can cause severe psychological harm, it can lead to youth being expelled from their homes, and it can even get someone killed.
= new reply since forum marked as read
