By now you’ve heard the speculation by the DHS and the Obama administration about the recent publications from Wikileaks. Maybe you even heard Mike Pence hand-wringing over recent Wikileaks this past Sunday. BUT — have you heard the latest from GOP Senator, Marco Rubio? It’s all over CNN, MSNBC, AND ABC. JUST In case you missed it, here it is:
"I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks," added Rubio, who is up for re-election. "As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process, and I will not indulge in it." — Marco Rubio, Oct. 19th, 2016
These claims are not new. The growing bi-partisan support for keeping heads in the sand is new.
Rubio’s statement mirrors the one made by a majority of the US intelligence community with an important addition: that Marco (and presumably the rest of us) should resist Russia’s attempt to ‘meddle’. Yet, we aren’t even 100% sure it was Russia who did the hacking. This has been covered extensively by journalists such as Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept and authors at The Daily Beast, but the Russian rhetoric continues unabated.
So let me ask the $6 Billion dollar question: What if these important files detailing U.S. corruption were given to Wikileaks by an American or a foreign national?
After all, the statement used to prove Russian involvement offers no evidence and no warrants. The intelligence communities claim is based on the "scope and sensitivity of these efforts" and lumps all the hacks (DNC, Guccifer 2.0, and current Podesta leaks) into one category.
The Sunday before last, shortly after the beginning of the now weeks long Podesta E-mail leak, the current DNC Chair and now controversial figure, Donna Brazile cited the DHS statement and added the following:
“I refuse to open these documents. I refuse to allow a foreign government, a foreign -- or … communities -- to interfere and meddle and manipulate information. So I don't know if it's true or not true.” — Donna Brazile, Oct. 9th, 2016
This is incredibly suspect. Again, there has yet to be a release of specific evidence indicting Putin or his administration — let alone evidence of the contents being manipulated within what was released. Plus, most reports omit how Putin has denied it outright. That hasn’t stopped media outlets from repeating speculative claims as fact. Some have gone so far as to accuse wikileaks — who has published over a quarter million documents on Putin's government— of being an arm of the Kremlin. Furthermore, since Donna Brazile is directly implicated in these dumps her statements are not apolitical and a bit nonsensical.
How can Mrs. Brazile not know if she did or did not send something and if it had been manipulated?
Specifically, how does she not know if she sent a then secret debate question to John Podesta? That the chair of the DNC can go on nation television without confirming or denying (or even being asked about) her own correspondence is borderline Nixon-esqe.
We can’t expect her to speculate on emails that are not her own — but problematizing the legitimacy of these documents serves her interests, politically and professionally. Not questioning her further sets a dangerous precedent. One that I’m sure Marco Rubio, Reince Priebus and many in the GOP love.
So to the heart of the ‘censorship’ issue:
These statements really are a far cry from censorship — more of an appeal to self censorship. However, when third party governments such as Ecuador are cutting off internet to an individual in asylum, specifically the founder of Wikileaks, for fear of ‘foreign meddling’ — it’s hard to deny we should be having this ethical debate.
If one thinks certain ideas are dangerous to hear or judges the legitimacy of claims purely based on who makes them — one doesn't really believe in Free Speech. Beyond the overt attempts to contain the spread of information released by Wikileaks, encouraging people to self-censor information is not Democratic. That is the sort of thing I expect to see and hear from Kim Jong-Un about the U.S., not from the U.S. about Russia. The same goes for actively accusing a publication dedicated to transparency of conspiring with foreign governments to harm us.
So how should we deal with Wikileaks? We should report on and ask for responses on each issue. Those striving toward truth should evaluate arguments based on their three simple parts:
Most all claims made by our government should have their warrants (reason the claim is true) and data (which backs up the warrant) interrogated. We should do no less with John Podesta’s emails and the responses they give to address them. Especially if claims they’re illegitimate come steeped in militarism and national security rhetoric. Failing to do that leads to some dire implications:
1.) Rhetorically constructing foreign actors as malicious, and framing Wikileaks as such, moves past Politicization into Securitization.
To quote Lene Hansen and Helen Nissenbaum from International Studies Quarterly, December 2009:
“Security frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics and a spectrum can therefore be defined ranging public issues from the nonpoliticized (the state does not deal with it and it is not in any other way made an issue of public debate and decision) through politicized (the issue is part of public policy requiring government decision and resource allocations or, more rarely, some other form of communal governance) to securitization (in which case an issue is no longer debated as a political question, but dealt with at an accelerated pace and in ways that may violate normal legal and social rules)” — page 4, “Digital Disaster, Cyber Security and the Copenhagen School”
Which is exactly the argument both Donna Brazile and Marco Rubio are making to the American people. That, due to the fact this is a foreign government presumably acting with malice, we shouldn’t report on them, talk about them, or even read them. Yet, the problem with national security logic isn’t just censorship and the breakdown of legal and ethical norms — it also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as we discursively create a new social reality.
This is exemplified by both Hillary and Obama. Both have explicitly responded to this hack with militarized discourse — Obama going as far to order cyber retaliation. Hillary, on the other hand, said of the earlier DNC hacks, “America will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.”
All the while, we’re at DEFCON 3 and Moscow’s UN ambassador says Russian-U.S. relations have devolved to the worst place since 1973.
When Hillary Clinton was asked about her vote for the Iraq war years later, she apologized. She realized that there weren’t WMD in Iraq and that the evidence presented (aluminum tubes) was speculative and ignored internal skeptical voices. Yet, if she were truly sorry she would have learned the larger lesson which is — don’t blindly follow the military-security complex.
If the escalation over this incident shows anything — it shows Clinton has learned nothing.
2.) Attacking Wikileaks as a Russian Agent de-legitimizes Wikileaks and provides cover for Human Rights Abusers and Authoritarian Regimes
As I mentioned above, Wikileaks has released documents on Putin and his administration, as well as Putin’s allies. So there’s every reason in the world to believe they would act regardless of who gave or why they got Podesta’s e-mails. Yet, as is the case with securitization, evidence to the contrary — both public and that of experts and insiders — is tossed aside.
Not to mention, wikileaks serves a vital function for whistle blowers and doesn’t focus exclusively on governments. Painting them as propaganda or partisan undermines Julian’s core goal. In his 2006 Essay, “The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance,” Assange says:
“Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power. Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization. Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.”
Regardless of the lasting implications of these specific leaks surrounding the DNC, Wikileaks is a project now a decade old. I’m no expert or historian, but I do believe the press and the people should orient themselves in opposition to power. When we fail to do that, we allow abuses of our shared legal and ethical systems to flourish.
Just imagine if you were a whistle blower considering leaking to Wikileaks today — would you take the risk knowing the full weight of the US military and American media isn’t far behind? And if you did leak information about human rights abuse and stayed anonymous — the accused would just dismiss and point to American media and the arguments made by American political leaders in order to call it opposition propaganda. Again, the GOP likely approves.
3.) Protecting Podesta and the DNC Cements a Double Standard on Privacy for Americans.
Perhaps one of the less popular arguments against reporting on these Wikileaks was made on air by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in an interview with Glenn Greenwald about the privacy rights of John Podesta. When Hayes asked, “does John Podesta have a right to privacy,” Greenwald said:
“Of course everybody would say that the more powerful you are, the less privacy you have. It doesn`t mean he has no privacy. Some of that stuff should not have been published. And that`s the problem with WikiLeaks is they don`t curate. They just dump everything. But of course the more powerful you are, the more transparency you deserve.” — Glenn Greenwald, Oct. 12, 2016
Again, Greenwald is coming from a school of journalistic ethics which thrives in the antagonism between public-private information. The bright line between what is ‘acceptable’ and not is if it serves the public interest. Reporting on John Podesta’s leaked e-mails — and the unethical and illegal behavior they uncover — are unquestionably in the public's interest. But does someone being a public servant mean they have no privacy?
Of course not. So, if there is a major criticism of Wikileaks to be found — it’s that they released his signup e-mails for foot locker and his professional correspondence (Podesta teaches at Georgetown University). The majority of the rest should have been published, and it’s up to the rest of us and Journalists to sort and report. When we fail to do that, we reinforce the idea that the privacy of the powerful is equal or greater than our own. It creates a double standard of privacy that only selectively applies to citizens.
—
If we censor foreign journalists (or government) from our elections we mirror how foreign governments censor American Journalists and our government from commenting on their actions and elections. In the name of stopping manipulation, we’re justifying some fairly twisted media manipulation by our enemies.
This double standard is dangerous for the U.S. because we use our inclusive, democratic ethics as a means to fight authoritarianism and extremism; and if you think maintaining our ethics is irrelevant to fighting those issues globally — you’re part of the problem. Heck, the white house admits the war against ISIS is waged with semiotics.
To be clear, I'm not arguing foreign governments have unlimited free speech. I'm saying that, without concrete evidence, the risk Wikileaks was released by an American or Individual whistle blower outweighs any potential benefit to self censorship or retaliation. The rhetoric used to address the controversies within the e-mails is evasive, at odds with democratic principles, and is escalating tensions towards war with a nuclear power. Continuing this strategy of externalizing blame helps legitimize violence abroad, and creates a double standard to our own privacy here at home. When we allow people like Donna Brazile and Marco Rubio to control the limits of discussion and attack Wikileaks — we risk more than just an election.
If I had released these documents to Wikileaks I would be scared nearly to death of coming forward. Obama has already justified cyber retaliation; Hillary invoked military responses. The way our public officials speak about these issues matters and has lasting consequences.
To quote Walker Bragman, who put it perfectly in his recent article:
“The problem with focusing on Russia’s potential influence in America’s election, besides lack of concrete evidence, is the fact it diverts attention away from how much corruption exists in our country… Rather than blaming Russia for interfering in our elections, perhaps it is time to acknowledge that there is enough corruption in our system for transparency to be weaponized.” — Paste Magazine, Oct. 18, 2016
Every concerned American should read the Wikileaks, as should every American journalist and politician. If only to be able to challenge and give context when we hear questions about them; to address them by their warrants with evidence. All Americans and believers in free speech should challenge authority when it tells you to stick your head in sand, and if you can’t do that — we protect the right to speak truth to power. So, to answer the title question: Should we Censor News that Might Influence a U.S. Election Based on Foreign Government Involvement?
The answer is no. No, we should not.
—
About the Author:
Samuel Ross is an independent drafting contractor who volunteer coaches High School Policy Debate in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He and his partner were the 2009 Virginia State AAA Policy Debate Champs. At 25, he barely clings onto calling himself a ‘young person’.