This house supports WikiLeaks - rebuttal speeches

Second Proposing Speech

The opposing team talked about authenticity of documents published on WikiLeaks. The team behind WikiLeaks first checks the source background. Unless falsifying his entire past, and recording this false past everywhere in administrative institutions, the source won't be able to lie on his past and job. Thus the only way of receiving false documents would be that the source who is judged reliable created them. Could you imagine one man (even a team) writing more than 400,000 documents of one page ?...

Second Opposing Speech

As Mark P. said in the commentary section, the latest developments in Wikileaks situation force us to reconsider the whole debate. And thus we have to differentiate not supporting Wikileaks and supporting all of its opponents –who are more and more numerous and extreme those days... 

Second Proposing Speech

Dear readers, after the two introduction speeches, I would like first to come back to the opposing's one. Then I'll try to go further in the arguing of our side.

First, the opposing team talked about authenticity of documents published on WikiLeaks. The team behind WikiLeaks first checks the source background. Unless falsifying his entire past, and recording this false past everywhere in administrative institutions, the source won't be able to lie on his past and job. Thus the only way of receiving false documents would be that the source who is judged reliable created them. Could you imagine one man (even a team) writing more than 400,000 documents of one page ? Spending ten minutes to make one document would take more than 7 years of continuous work for one man. Seven years ! Unless a whole group of thousands people work on it, this cannot happen. And you cannot create these documents like you write a text, each one has to be referenced with real people names, has to be linked to others in a certain way, etc.

Moreover, the team of WikiLeaks tries to cross reference each one of these texts, maybe only the most relevant ones. This is exactly the kind of job a journalist makes when he receives information : he tries to find other pieces of information to confirm its validity. Then the journalist propose his article to his superior, who accepts it or not, like Julien Assange does.

By saying WikiLeaks' documents are not necessarily authentic, the opposing team reappraise the whole journalistic system. Of course we saw cases in the past when false information was taken for true, but it was always because the verification process was not done properly, or with too little information. In our case, it is really different : with the sensitivity of the documents published, the team of WikiLeaks has to take great attention to the different documents and compare them well. Then these documents are another time cross-referenced by the journalists of these important newspapers such as Le Monde, El Pais, The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel. They know they cannot make any mistake : that is why they verify the authenticity very well. 

Documents published by WikiLeaks are as authentic as any documents published by journalists around the world. You cannot criticize the authenticity of WikiLeaks' documents without criticizing the reliability of all newspapers. 

Another thing said by the opposing team, that really surprised us : they said : “if these reviewers “with expertise” are able to check the authenticity of a leak, why have they not been able to publish that information until the source proposes it ?”. This is completely absurd for us. A journalist who is not on the field cannot propose the information before receiving it ! A journalist has the ability to check the information, not to create it from nothing. They receive different documents, cross reference them, and publish them. This is exactly the same for WikiLeaks. They receive several pieces of information, check their validity, and publish them.

Then, they talk about the leaker and the risks that affects him. For us, this is not a problem of WikiLeaks. These leakers could have been directly to any newspaper, and risk their lives in the same way they did with WikiLeaks.

For instance, when someone go to a police station to reveal a drug stash, or to tell he knows who is the killer looked for, he risks his life. This is a risk the person takes to help the police. In the same way, leaker thinks some pieces of information should be published, because it reappraises something important or insists on some illegal activities hidden by governements. This question of the leaker's risk is not relevant for this motion. WikiLeaks is not responsible for it, the leaker is. He could have gone give his documents to any media known on the earth, publish them on a blog... WikiLeaks is maybe one of the most secure solution, because if documents are given by hand, it is impossible to trace the identity like we can do with blogs, twitter, etc.

“And by the way, aren’t there any risks of leaks in the verification process of the documents ?!” Maybe, but where is the problem ? WikiLeaks 2 will publish the documents before WikiLeaks ?

The argument of the secret organization is also irrelevant, because of the thing I said earlier : it is impossible for a group of people to create from white papers more than 400,000 documents referenced, with real names of people on them, cross-referenced, etc. 

I have to thanks the opposing team for their last argument, it allows me to conclude. WikiLeaks received several prizes : 2008 The Economist New Media Award, Amnesty International's UK Media Award in the category “New Media”. Each time, the expression “New Media”. Julien Assange not only created a website, he created a new media. That means he is the first one to propose a new way of giving information to the public. The innovation is the type of information : it is confidential. Never before it has been possible to have such a large scale of distribution of this kind of information. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg gives the New York Times 7,000 papers showing that America lied about causes and conduct of the Vietnam war. In 2004, Joe Darby published on the Internet information about how America's army was abusing of Iraqi detainees. Each time consequences were heavy : the first time, America pulled-out, the second time soldiers were judged. We can see that each times consequences were good, simply because the will of state was not in agreement with the will of population.

WikiLeaks will force institutions “over-the-law” like states or some armies to act according to the law. WikiLeaks website can be stopped, but what created WikiLeaks cannot. Anyway, it must not be stopped, simply because this way useless wars can be avoided, injustices erased, things that before people did not have the ability to see and do.

I'm over with my speech, vote for us !

By TC-H

Second Opposing Speech

As Mark P. said in the commentary section, the latest developments in Wikileaks situation force us to reconsider the whole debate. And thus we have to differentiate not supporting Wikileaks and supporting all of its opponents –who are more and more numerous and extreme those days.

Not supporting Wikileaks does not mean that we are against freedom of speech. It does not mean that we want to take the site down by every possible means –cyber attacks, political pressure… It does not mean that we find it “criminal” like Mr. Besson says.  In his proposing speech, H.D. asks himself “if the attack on Wikileaks is an attack on freedom of speech.”  The answer is obvious; some of the attacks Wikileaks and his founder went through are or looks like attacks against freedom of speech and we are not supporting those attacks. But this is not the debate.

Is Wikileaks a good thing for our society? Is it useful? Can we trust it? Is it dangerous? These are the question we have to ask ourselves when it comes to supporting -or not- Wikileaks. A.S., in his opening speech, has already answered to some of those questions and I would like to highlight other points.

First, I would like to focus on the real interest of Wikileaks “revelations”. As said in the comments, “Specialists of international topics agree to say there is nothing really new or surprising in WikiLeaks revelations.” This can even be seen in the example H.D. chose and which is discrediting his own reasoning. Tunisia’s problems with democracy or Ben Ali’s predominance are not a secret; a lot of political analysts have already said or written those things. So what did we learn from Wikileaks release? Nothing but the fact that some US ambassadors are thinking like a lot of experts.  Is it useful? I hardly think so. Is it a threat for peace and diplomatic relationships in that area? It looks like it could be. 

Wikileaks is not the first in publishing secret documents. Journalists have already done that before –just remember the Pentagon Papers publication in 1971 by the New York Times- and state institutions have even managed to denounce their own government excesses –the Watergate scandal is a great example. The only difference is that Wikileaks is dealing with too many documents –one year after its creation, 1.2 millions reports had been submitted- and that there are not enough people in charge of selecting and checking them. In December 2009 the site decided to stop its activity for a few days because it could not handle this situation. This raises the question of Wikileaks ability to maintain its activity and its ethic –If it has one- in the same time.

The release of documents about the “Dutroux case” –a Belgian pedophile- in August 2010 is a great example of Wikileaks dangers. By publishing this report, Wikileaks broke the investigation secrecy but not only. This report did not bring anything to our society, it contained private hearings that were only concerning the victims’ families and only useful for the Belgian justice. Wikileaks aim was not to improve transparency. It just seems that it wanted to be a hot topic by revealing disgusting interview of one of the worst European pedophile of those last years and by strengthening the paint of all the victims’ relatives. This is the role of gutter press, not of a site that considers itself as serious.

Of course Wikileaks is likeable, as it is a small site fighting against a huge and international political pressure- like a new David Vs Goliath. Releasing secret documents and revealing scandal is a part of the role of investigative journalism and it is a serious job. Those professional journalists are respecting a code of ethics, they have time to check their sources reliability and to think about the usefulness of their articles. This is not the case of Wikileaks.

By LG