It’s a classic battle of Left vs. Right. On one side, the activists: the ACLU, the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (all of which filed briefs in the suit brought against Wikileaks by Swiss bank Julius Baer). These groups see Wikileaks as a key fighter in the war against corruption, secrecy and human rights abuses.
Opposing them are a few behemoths: corporations and governments concerned about privacy, accuracy and copyright law. And saving their asses. Wikileaks’ recent run-ins with the Church of Scientology, JP Morgan and the Chinese government show that not everyone sees the benefit of full public disclosure.
Then there are the moderates: skeptics, curious observers and fence-sitters who get the potential of Wikileaks but still are a bit wary. Wikileaks releases damning data that could cause unjust harm if the info is untrue, raising ethical and legal questions with no easy answer.
Still, the response to Wikileaks has been overwhelmingly positive. The five Wikileaks-related Facebook groups, the biggest of which has more than 800 members, all tout the site as a leader in global justice, and most Web chatter is supportive of the site and its mission.
Journalists have taken an interest, too – especially citizen journalists at sites like Current.com and Wikinews.org (Wikileaks actually has no legal relationship with Wikipedia. They just use the online encyclopedia’s format and share its participatory philosophy). The Wikinews blog also comments frequently on Wikileaks.
Last but not least, the technologists. Mainstream media bloggers like the New York Times’ Jonathan D. Glater, a reporter who contributes to the Times’ blog on technology and society, followed the Julius Baer v. Wikileaks trial, and other tech types also picked up on the case and its implications.
