Published: December 7th 2010 - at 10:50 am

Is The Times ‘helping terrorists’ to attack WikiLeaks?


by Sunny Hundal    

Yesterday The Times newspaper, and today the BBC, are going big on the news that WikiLeaks published a list of ‘sensitive installation sites’. Apparently it was a step too far.

But let’s be clear on what happened here.

WikiLeaks is slowly releasing information to specific media outlets with the proviso they coordinate the publication of that information. A lot of the material has not been released yet (incl the bits on UFOs).

The newspapers make a judgement call on what is published and they help with redacting sensitive information (since WikiLeaks can’t afford to do this alone).

So yesterday, the Times published a news story saying that WikiLeaks had published a list of ‘sensitive sites’. They helpfully named some of those sites too.

As the Guardian’s investigations editor David Leigh said:

strange to see the Times publishing a sensitive #Wikileaks cable which the #Guardian declined to do. Murdoch is helping terrorists?

He later added:

Times calls #wikileaks cable an ‘invitation to kill’. But it still publishes the text for terrorists to read! http://tinyurl.com/29tzjo6

The BBC also followed suit – reporting on and tutting about the fact that this info was in the Cables, and helpfully linking to them, while saying nothing about the newspaper that first highlighted the information.

It’s diplomatic correspondent adds today:

In their own defence, those working with Wikileaks have pointed out that they deliberately removed details of names and locations from the secret list.

Furthermore, the information is old and outdated. In the UK for example, it lists three BAE sites that are all listed on BAE’s own website anyway. It also lists undersea cables and a satellite site that closed two years ago.

David Leigh is poking fun of course; The Guardian chose not to publish the info but to terrorists this will be as useful as the news that Berlusconi is regarded with disdain by others. This is why the security services have not responded with massive panic.

No doubt however, politicos with an agenda will try and use it as an excuse to say Julian Assange should be assassinated.

We have been here before


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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Civil liberties ,Media


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Reader comments


1. fg

Technology is a thread, it always was.. Always unstoppable/unpredictable.
But maybe this is a good thing….
We need proper steering mechanism to survive the global society we created with technology. Whould we have gone to Iraq over Weapons of mass destruction is we were part of the diplomatic cable discussion ? Will reading the cables prevent us from another stupid global decision based upon wrong leader ego’s/shortvision ? Probably our global society is in the long run better of with more transparency.
Shutting down the discussion/web is not an option. Its like banning books. Fact is that secrets are hard to keep. This case it’s can be good. At least the cork out of the bottle. post-it-all 1-to:world.CrCrises and the cable gate shows government is not so much in control of the global society.

2. margin4error

It is interesting to see the rather divergent views on this whole story. So far I’ve seen plenty of highly embarrasing stuff come out from wikileaks – and previously some evidence of illegal behaviour. But at no point have I felt as though anything published puts lives in real danger.

This is not the equivelent of leaking details of troop activities in warzones or revealing the names of operatives.

3. Richard W

News Corp. employees having a view on who is a terrorist or what is useful for terrorists can lead to funny situations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_543871&v=6przuCU822w&feature=iv

4. sally

Well seeing as The Times is owned by Murdoch, and Murdoch owns Fox which regularly has people on who support the killing of abortion doctors in the US by American right wing terrorists , then this is not a surprise.

5. Watchman

sally,

Argument by association is hardly sensible. After all, I comment on this site, and so do you, so you must be a right-wing free-markeeter as well.

Anyway, I doubt the Times is helping terrorists particularly, since the documents will be easily enough found elsewhere – probably without having to register for the Time paywall. In fact, this may just be an attempt to get a subscription out of Al’Qaida…

6. Laban

They just want a few more subscribers, and if they’re based in Tora Bora or Bannu, their money’s as good as anyone else’s.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

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  2. Lee Griffin

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  3. Manu Ekanayake

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  9. sunny hundal

    Is The Times 'helping terrorists' to attack WikiLeaks? http://bit.ly/hBmByR – why did it publish sensitive sites info?

  10. Wonko Le Sane

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  11. Angela Pateman

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  12. Paddy Eden

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  13. Paul Jakma

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  14. John Warrender

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  15. Therese

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  16. Gareth Bebb

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  17. Dictators Zijn Bang Voor Muizen

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  45. Minty fresh Jonze

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  53. Bas van der Giessen

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