News Report #2

The new report that I found was about classified U.S. documents to be published by WikiLeaks. The title of the article is “Massive Cache of Iraq War Docs to Be Published by WikiLeaks and it was written by Kim Zetter on September 9, 2010. The source is wired.com (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/iraq-war-docs/).

The news report is about a massive amount of classified information that was leaked by PFC Bradley Manning to a hacker in May, and in turn the hacker gave the information to WikiLeaks. The documents cover over 500,000 events from the Iraq war between 2004 and 2009. The database of information includes reports, dates, and casualty figures. Iain Overton, editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit British Organization that is working with WikiLeaks on the documents, said that they are working with major television networks and print-media outlets to produce documentaries and stories based on the cache of information.

When you first read this article it appears to be about the leakage of military information, but the deeper meaning of this story is how dangerous internet information sites can be. Owner and publishers of Internet sites need to know when certain information does not need to be published to the public due to the ramifications it could cause if that information is released. Major news media companies in the United States will work hand in hand with the military to a certain extent, but internet sites have no boundaries. By leaking this information, terrorists can easily obtain classified information with informant’s names, reports on U.S. and friendly force’s missions, and any other pertinent information that will aid them in the fight against the United States and their allies. With leaking this information it could devastate the progress the military has in the war on terrorism.

These are the dangers with internet source sites; they do not work like regular news media companies work. When television networks and new media outlets publish something, for the most part it does not reach the entire world; only people within that region. When web sites post information it is not only on the internet forever, but it is open to anyone in the world to view. Internet sites, especially international web sites do not have any rules or standards to abide by when publishing information, and the information they post also does not have to be truthful. The only upside to this story is at least WikiLeaks are going to redact some of the information to avoid giving certain names for the protection of the informants and their families involved.

An incident like this is a perfect example of how dangerous web sites can be when having free reign to publish whatever they want without having to answer to anyone. There is no solution to this problem because you cannot monitor every web site and set standards for every web site in the world to abide by. The only hope is for people to do the right thing when being handed information that could endanger thousands of people.