WikiLeaks and the Damage to Global Security

[unhappycamper]

WikiLeaks and the Damage to Global Security
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany
By Stefan Kornelius
Translated By Ron Argentati
30 November 2010
Edited by Jessica Boesl

The United States has a well-organized diplomatic service. If there is anything at all to be learned from a quick and superficial reading of more than a quarter million State Department documents, it is this: Their ambassadors are doing their jobs well. The USA maintains about 250 consular offices throughout the world, where officials with political savvy and the ability to correctly analyze local conditions work. Sometimes they do so with patriotic exuberance, sometimes with enviable knowledge of their host nations and the local population, and sometimes they do so in a way that only strengthens the stereotype of the Ugly American.

After WikiLeaks released the stolen State Department dispatches, analyses, instructions and comments, the question now arises how much longer the United States will be able to enjoy the fruits of its diplomatic labors. The purloined information released by WikiLeaks destroys the connective tissue that makes normal communications possible — namely, confidentiality. Without confidentiality, there’s no information, no give-and-take, no access. Without information, there can be no knowledge, no judgment and no real basis for decision-making.

The damage to the United States since the document-leak is enormous. Nothing is immune from its effects. Diplomatic messages would just be snubbed. The diplomatic façade has crumbled, and we now see how coldly calculating the business of international politics really is. The American Foreign Service is no different from any other in the world. German diplomatic dispatches are probably only somewhat less humorous.

Outrage over the compromised data is great — that was to be expected. But the outrage should be primarily directed at all those who made the compromising possible, those who have degraded America’s data systems into a self-service shop used by low-ranking customers and hobby hackers. There is absolutely no reason why dispatches from the ambassador in Berlin should be accessible to a hesitant German chancellor or a disinterested foreign minister and a half million — some even say a million — uninvolved U.S. officials.

America’s information-gathering and evaluation systems are outmoded. Data security seems to be a foreign term to them. The volume of data collected by their intelligence services is so huge it can no longer be processed. In a vertical-mass bureaucracy where decisions are avoided and passed up the ladder to those few at the top, nothing is lost if the reports aren’t read by everyone.

[HillbillyBob]

1. We see that the US gov cannot keep state secrets secure

yet they insist on snooping and sneaking our private information and they cannot keep it secure.

[ixion]

2. The 'damage' comes from their fraud and corruption, not the revealing of it

I'm not sure why people can't see that point, but I guess if you're living in the fantasy-based community, points-of-fact are irrelevant.

[xchrom]

3. i have to laugh -- we have become Baroque.

we collect -- who knows how much -- all this information and do nothing with, or even need all of it.
we just suck it in.

our diplomatic sphere has become bizarre.

it just seems like we have 'outgrown' our meaning and that's a shame.