In a cubicle of the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is taking refuge, he must now have more than enough time to reflect on the extraordinary story of his life, beginning as an obscure little thief of others’ intimacies (this is what a computer hacker does, although the label tries to inject some dignity into this ignoble profession) in the land of kangaroos and eventually becoming a contemporary icon, as famous as soccer players or the latest rock star, to many, a free expression here at the center of an international diplomatic conflict.
There is such a web of confusions and lies about this character, created by him and his fans, and propelled by the avid journalism of the scandal, that there are millions of people in the world convinced that the awkward Australian with yellow-white hair who appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in the neighborhood favored by Arab sheiks in London—Knightsbridge—to give lessons about freedom of expression to President Obama, is a person politically persecuted by the United States, saved in extremis by no less than President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, in other words, the government that, after Cuba and Venezuela, has committed the worst offenses against the press in Latin America, closing radio stations, newspapers, taking to servile courts journalists and dailies that dared to denounce the traffic and corruption of his regime, and presenting a gag law that would practically seal the disappearance of independent journalism in the country. In this case, the old refrain is true: “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.” Because President Correa and Julian Assange are made for each other.
In reality the founder of WikiLeaks is not even the object right now of a judicial investigation in the United States, nor has that country made any request asking anyone to take him to court. The supposed risk that, if he is handed over to the Swedish police, the government of Sweden could send him to the United States is, for now, a presumption devoid of any basis and has no other objective than to surround this character with an aura of a freedom martyr that he certainly does not deserve. Swedish justice is not asking for him for his hacking deeds—better said, his betrayals—but rather, because of accusations of rape and sexual harassment against him by citizens of that country. That is how the Supreme Court of Great Britain has understood it and thus decided to move him to Sweden, whose judicial system, in all respects, is equal to Britain’s, one of the most independent and reliable in the world. So Mr. Assange is not actually a victim of freedom of expression, but rather a fugitive who uses that pretext not to respond to the accusations weighing on him like a presumed sexual criminal.
The popularity he enjoys is due to the hundreds of thousands of private and confidential documents of different divisions of the U.S. government—starting with the diplomatic corps and ending with the armed forces—obtained through theft and piracy, that WikiLeaks disseminated, presenting them as a great feat for freedom of expression that brought to light intrigues, conspiracies, and behavior at odds with legality. Was it really like that? Did WikiLeaks’s denunciations contribute to airing the criminal depths of U.S. political life? So say those who hate the United States, “the enemy of humanity,” and are still not happy that liberal democracy, of which this country is the prime defender, won the Cold War instead of Soviet communism or Maoism. But I think that any serene and objective evaluation of the oceans of information that WikiLeaks disseminated shows, besides petty, bureaucratic, and unsubstantial gossip, abundant material that justifiably should remain within a confidential preserve, such as that which affects diplomatic life and defense, through which a state can function and maintain due relations with its allies, with neutral countries, and, especially, with all of its manifest or potential adversaries.
We will never know how all of WikiLeaks’s revelations served to undo the information networks laboriously and dangerously assembled by democratic countries in the satrapies that sheltered the international terrorism of Al Qaeda and its brethren, or how many agents and informants of the West’s intelligence services were detected and possibly eliminated as an effect of those publications, but there is no doubt that this was one of the sinister consequences of that famous operation of information discharge. Isn’t it curious that WikiLeaks made it such a priority to reveal the confidential documents of free countries where, in addition to freedom of the press, there exists a legality worthy of that name, instead of doing so with dictatorships and despotic governments that still proliferate around the world? It is easier to gain the credentials of a freedom fighter by practicing disloyalty, using contraband and information piracy in open societies, under the shelter of a legality that is always reticent to sanction the press’s crimes in order to not give the impression of restricting or placing obstacles to the freedom of criticism that is effectively an essential mainstay of democracy, than in filtrating the secrets of totalitarian governments.
WikiLeaks’s fans should remember that the other side of the coin of freedom is legality, without which the former disappears sooner or later. Freedom is not, nor can it be, anarchy and the right to information; it cannot mean that in one country what is private and confidential disappears and all of an administration’s activities should be immediately public and transparent. This would signify pure and simple paralysis or anarchy, and no government would be able, in such a context, to meet its duties or survive. Freedom of expression is complemented by, in a free society, courts of justice, parliaments, and opposing political parties, and these are the adequate channels to which one can and should recur if there are indications that a government is hiding or criminally obscuring its initiatives and actions. But to bestow that right upon yourself and proceed to forcibly dynamite legality in the name of freedom is to alter that concept and irresponsibly degrade it, turning it into an abuse of liberty. This is what WikiLeaks has done, and even worse, I think, is that it was not in line with certain principles or ideological convictions, but pushed by frivolity and snobbishness, the dominant vectors of the reality-show-obsessed civilization we live in.
Mr. Assange has not practiced in the institution he founded the complete transparency and integrity that he demands of the open societies against which he has fought so fiercely. The defections WikiLeaks has experienced are due, fundamentally, to his resistance to account, to his collaborators, for the several millions of dollars he has received as donations, according to what I have read in an article signed by John F. Burns in the International Herald Tribune, dated August 18/19. It is a good indication of how complicated and subtle things can be when they are observed up close and not through the lens of commonplaces, stereotypes, and clichés.
In the current circumstances, there is no reason whatsoever to consider Julian Assange a crusader for freedom of expression; rather, he is an opportunistic freeloader who, thanks to his good instincts, sense of opportunity, and computer skills, assembled a scandalous operation that brought him international fame and the false sense that he was all-powerful, invulnerable, and could allow himself all excesses. He was mistaken and now is the victim of such. In truth, his journey seems to have brought him to a dead-end street, and it is not impossible that, once the storm that brought him fame has passed, he will be remembered for the involuntary help he gave, thinking he was acting in favor of freedom, to its staunchest enemies.
Salzburg, August 2012