Menace or Assurance? :
A Rhetorical Perspective on the Issue of WikiLeaks
Founded in 2006 by Australian journalist Julian Assange, the website WikiLeaks had quickly risen in infamy over the past few years (Majerol 19). The controversial website had posted hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan war, revealing government cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians among many things. The release of these confidential documents has produced two opposing views on whether or not WikiLeaks is a good thing (Pilger 18).
In an article highlighting the benefits of WikiLeaks, Steven Greenhut explains that Julian Assange and his website have “done our nation a service”. Greenhut asserts that by distributing the details on how U.S. government runs its foreign affairs, WikiLeaks is embodying the true spirit of a transparent government, one that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. A truly open government, he says, is the “cornerstone of a free society”. The government, he says, will always pull out the “’endangering lives’ or ‘protecting security’” card in order to protect its own interests and conceal its past transgressions. He insists that there is no proof that any information released by the website will endanger anyone. The only people who will be negatively affected, Greenhut says, would be the government officials whose “hypocrisy and corruption” would be shamefully exposed (Greenhut 1.)
In the opposite side of the argument stands S.E. Cupp. In an article, she says that WikiLeaks and its proponents are jeopardizing innocent life by recklessly releasing unfiltered information for the entire world to access. She argues that by irresponsibly posting classifi...
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... Entertainment, and Gossip - NY Daily News. 1 Sept. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .
Cupp, Sarah Elizabeth. "Official Website of S.E. Cupp." Red S.E. Cupp. Web. 17 Mar. 2011.
Greenhut, Steven. "WikiLeaks No Threat to Free Society | Government, Information, People - Opinion - The Orange County Register." The Orange County Register : The Orange County Register. 3 Dec. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .
Majerol, Veronica. "Is WikiLeaks like the Pentagon Papers?" New York Times [New York] 21 Feb. 2011, Vol. 143 ed., Issue 10 sec.: 19. Print.
Pilger, John. "WikiLeaks Must Be Protected." World Citizen [Minneapolis] 23 Aug. 2010, Vol 139 ed., Issue 5015 sec.: 18. Print.
McCraw, David, and Stephen Gikow. “The End to a Unspoken Bargain? National Security and Leaks in a Post-Pentagon Papers World.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 48.2 (2013): 473-509. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Is the American government trustworthy? Edward Joseph Snowden (2013) released to the United States press* selected information about the surveillance of ordinary citizens by the U.S.A.’s National Security Agency (N.S.A.), and its interconnection to phone and social media companies. The motion picture Citizenfour (2014), shows the original taping of those revelations. Snowden said that some people do nothing about this tracking because they have nothing to hide. He claims that this inverts the model of responsibility. He believes that everyone should encrypt Internet messages and abandon electronic media companies that track personal information and Internet behavior (op.cit, 2014). Snowden also stressed to Lawrence Lessig (2014) the importance of the press and the first amendment (Lessig – Snowden Interview Transcript, [16:28]). These dynamics illustrate Lessig’s (2006) constrain-enable pattern of powers that keep society in check (2006, Code: Version 2.0, p. 122). Consider Lessig’s (2006) question what is “the threat to liberty?” (2006, p. 120). Terrorism is a real threat (Weber, 2013). Surveillance by social media and websites, rather than the government, has the greater negative impact on its users.
Smith, Michael. "The Downing Street Memo." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 16 June 2005. Web. 05 Apr. 2014.
It is the way of life in this age, to search the internet for leisure, research and general amusement. When you are not able to communicate with someone face to face, you pick up the phone. When you venture out of your house for any reason and into populated areas, you are recorded by businesses, photographed by red light cameras, and recorded by traffic cameras. The government has the capacity to watch all of this use. Last year, Edward Snowden’s leaked documents proved it that Big Brother is indeed watching. (Orwell 1)
"The Triumph of Technique – The Logic of the NSA." LibrarianShipwreck. WordPress.com, 22 June 2013. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
Keck, Zachary. "Yes, Edward Snowden Is a Traitor." The Diplomat. N.p., 21 Dec. 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2014
With the introduction of the internet being a relatively new phenomenon, the act of cyber espionage is not something that has been properly acknowledged by society. The American Government has done a stand up job of keeping its methods in the shadows and away from the eyes of its people since its documented domestic surveillance began on October 4th, 2001; Twenty three days after the Twin Towers fell President George Bush signed an order to begin a secret domestic eavesdropping operation, an operation which was so sensitive that even many of the country's senior national security officials with the...
Pentagon Papers: The Truth to War. On June 31, 1971, President Nixon picked up a copy of his New York Times newspaper and found the 1st story on the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers was a hidden government document that had information on the Vietnam War. It was also a government study in Southeast Asia. Daniel Ellsberg knew that the government was hiding something.
Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (N.S.A) subcontractor turned whistle-blower is nothing short of a hero. His controversial decision to release information detailing the highly illegal ‘data mining’ practices of the N.S.A have caused shockwaves throughout the world and have raised important questions concerning how much the government actually monitors its people without their consent or knowledge. Comparable to Mark Felt in the Watergate scandals, Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden joins the rank of infamous whistleblowers who gave up their jobs, livelihood, and forever will live under scrutiny of the public all in the service to the American people. Edward Snowden released information detailing the extent of the N.S.A breaches of American privacy and in doing so, became ostracized by the media and barred from freely reentering America, his home country.
Similarly some information are kept from being publicized to the whole world by the government. Wikileaks has done otherwise: material that they disclosed to the world was sensitive material that belonged to the g...
Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/politics/23cnd-wiretap.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 STEPHEN BRAUN, A. F. (2014, May 9). Secret to Prism program: Even bigger data seizure. The big story, p. 1. Wu, E. Y. (2014, April 28). 3 DOMESTIC SPYING AND WHY AMERICA SHOULD AVOID THE SLIPPERY SLOPE.
Why Edward Snowden Is a Hero? The New Yorker. N.p., n.d. Web. The Web.
It is reasonable to argue that, governmental institutions or people with authority are subject to withhold a great deal of information from society. Many may argue that secrets are kept to ensure the safety of the nation. Thus, upholding the governmental duty of protecting the nation against possible threats. On the other hand, many believe that secrets may exist which violate our constitutional rights. Over the last year, Edward Snowden, has made headline news for leaking sensitive governmental information to the press. Edward Snowden is a 29-year-old high school drop-out, who was a tech specialist for the National Security Association. Snowden had discovered and later exposed the NSA for monitoring the nations e-mails, phone calls, and internet searches. As the allegations spread like wild fire, Edward Snowden sought asylum in Russia for one year. Snowden had a valid and justifiable reason to expose the NSA to the world because they were in violation of our fourth Amendment rights to unreasonable searches and seizures. The government called him a traitor, while others viewed him as a hero for exposing the government. Edward Snowden is a whistle blower because he felt that it is up to society to decide if governmental practices are just or unjust. Snowden does “express the highest respect for the law”, and he wanted to protect the right of privacy for American citizens.
The gossip industry has become popular in the last few decades. Our society enjoys knowing about the lives of celebrities. We obsess over celebrities on gossip websites, and even obsess to the extent of stalking these celebrities. This industry has impacted our culture immensely. It has tainted our culture in several ways from creating bad role models for our children to making stalking an everyday affair; either way, the media has changed our society greatly. The gossip industry has brought new entertainment for our pleasure, but it has come with negative consequences.
Gonchar, Michael. “What Is More Important: Our Privacy or National Security?” New York Times. New York Times, 17 Sept. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.