Wikileaks

Some quarter of a million US diplomatic cables have been published on the Wikileaks website. I can’t be bothered to look: the news that the Saudis (Sunni Muslims) don’t want the Iranians (Shi’ite Muslims) to have a nuclear bomb is hardly earth shattering. Nor is the information that Mr Sarkozy is thought a bully and Mr Cameron is considered lightweight.


The cautious, correct, conservative press is outraged. Some B-list opinion former on the radio described Mr Assange as a traitor. Here is The Spectator: ‘Just ask yourself a few questions. Will the West be safer if the Saudi leader cannot trust that a conversation he has with a US envoy will remain secret?...’

Let’s deal with this. The diplomatic cables were sent and received, and then the US put them all on to a giant intranet. They were not labelled ‘Top Secret’ but merely ‘Secret’. The number of people who had access to them from this intranet was in excess of 2.5 million. Two and a half million people could look at this information. And yet the USA is shattered, outraged, that one of these 2.5 million leaked the stuff.

So in answer to the question, a Saudi leader is now at least aware that any conversation he has with a US envoy is not going to remain secret, and is going to be far more cautious, and the world is thereby going to be far safer, with this knowledge.

Far from being a traitor, Mr Assange has done the world a favour. Only a couple of years after the USA threatened to stop sharing secrets with Great Britain on the grounds that it couldn’t be trusted, we now find that it has been spraying its – and our – secrets around the ether without the least care. And it is horrified when they become public.

Grow up is what I say.