A quick update to that Wikileaks story from the other day. The site says that the recent arrest of a U.S. Army analyst who had contributed to the site won’t negatively affect the site at all. More importantly, the arrest shouldn’t prevent future whistle-blowers from shining the light of truth on humanity’s darkest secrets. (That sounds ominous, no?)
At the same time, Wikileaks did not confirm whether or not SPC Bradley Manning was, in fact, one of the site’s sources. That makes sense: the whole point of Wikileaks is to give people a forum to publish information that otherwise would never be published. It goes back to the old idea of journalisitic source protection:
All staff who deal with sources are accredited journalists. All submissions establish a journalist-source relationship. Online submissions are routed via Sweden and Belgium which have first rate journalist-source shield laws. In Sweden, not only does the law provide protection against any official inquiry into journalists’ sources, but it allows a source whose identity has been revealed without permission to initiate criminal prosecutions against an unfaithful journalist who has breached his or her promise of confidentiality.
That said, Wikileaks told the BBC that they would be interested in defending Manning if it comes to that.