Midwinter’s WikiLeaks Letdown

First, I continue to be concerned that there are members of this association, from the least of us to the very top, who refuse to own the comments they make by hiding behind “Anonymous.”  If  we have no sense of intellectual courage, we have no right to intellectual authority.  I suggest ALA remove the option of anonymity from the site.

Secondly, we took on a leadership role relative to intellectual freedom and rights of access to information with the CIPA and the USAPatriot Act challenges.  WikiLeaks is certainly a challenge to our comfort zones, but I think it is important to engage in informed, intelligent debate about the topic.  WikiLeaks raises a number of issues.  We had our first public debate at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee last Friday.  I hope these debates continue and we get past the kind of intellectual posturing designed to shut down discussion, whatever side of the issue we are one.  Thanks.

Wow.

This is my first visit to this site.  Somehow I expected a more mature level of discussion, after reading the article.

I’d expect followers of Fox News to believe the utterly false propaganda that Wikileaks is distributing things like items people check out of libraries, troop positions, people’s medical records, military secrets, “treasonous internet materials” (whatever they are)…..

But I didn’t expect that of librarians.

Wikileaks has carefully consulted with the established media outlets about the materials they release, which is less than 1% of what they have.   They’ve offered to vet things with the federal government, which has refused.  The government, trying mightily, has yet to come up with a single instance of any substantial harm to anyone, from what Wikileaks has disclosed.

Somehow I expected a mature discussion of this.  Instead I encounter a bunch of children.

Mr. Kagan said, “Several of the American Library Association’s core values are directly relevant to this discussion; “access,” “democracy,” “the public good,” and “social responsibility” are four of our 11 core values.”

Number 2 on the list of core values  is Confidentiality/Privacy.  How can we, as an association or a profession, expect people to respect our value on privacy if we do not respect theirs? 

If someone had posted individuals’ names and their items checked out from federal, state, or local libraries to WikiLeaks, would you still have “…urged libraries to link to WikiLeaks websites?” 

  Is this country supposed to have no security agencies?  Should we post troop positions online so enemy combatants know where to attack?  If I go to a doctor paid by federal funds are my medical records fair game to be made public record?  Where does it end?  There should not be complete government transparancy and it would be terrible if there was.  As a librarian I support freedom of information and freedom of speech but all freedoms have to have limits or chaos is the result.

What is the difference between shouting fire in a movie theatre and shouting military secrets to terrorists?  Both put lives at risk.

And really, every person in the American public knew the kinds of pratices our government was engaging in.  What does it matter if we know the exact details now?

While I admire Al Kagan’s deep commitment to social action, I’m afraid he’s off base in his analysis of the ALA Council actions at the Midwinter Meeting in San Diego. Al identified the issue in his lead-off sentence: “One of the key problems of our time is lack of government transparency, and therefore restricted public access to U.S. government information.”

The ALA Council did, in fact, directly dealt with the very issue that Al identified. Council approved a “Resolution on Access to and Classification of Government Information,” (ALA CD#19.1) In Al’s own words (although he meant them as criticism) the resolution “commended President Obama for his efforts to reform the documents classification system, urged Congress to pass better whistleblower legislation, and defended freedom of the press and the principle of public access to government information.”

So why is Al upset? He thinks that “Council abdicated its responsibility concerning both the process and the content of the two SRRT resolutions….” In short, the Council did not pass more specific resolutions dealing with WikiLeaks, and, in fact, did not even debate the resolutions on the Council floor.

In Congress much of the real decision-making goes on in subcommittees and in one-on-one talks; in the ALA Council much of the consensus-building goes on in the Council forums and in one-on-one talks. The WikiLeaks resolutions were discussed extensively in both Council Caucuses and the consensus of those discussions was (1) that WikiLeaks was a complicated issue that had been overly simplified in the resolutions from the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT), and (2) that the forum participants greatly preferred the broader Intellectual Freedom Committee / Committee on Legislation resolution about over-classification and public access to government information.

Once the Council passed the motion to approve the broader IFC/COL resolution about over-classification and public access to government information, the fate of the two narrower WikiLeaks resolutions was sealed. They were not going to pass. Although I supported the first SRRT resolution, I moved that both SRRT resolutions be tabled. Although the Council normally does not like to close debate or table resolutions, only about 12 out of more than 175 members opposed tabling, meaning that more than 90 percent of the Council voted to table both.

Did this mean that those resolutions did not get a fair hearing? Hardly. The issue had already been discussed in two forums and a consensus achieved. Nonetheless, many SRRT members feel that absolutely every resolution should be discussed until everybody has said everything to be said. However, when a governing body holds only three meetings every six months, time is a precious commodity. If the Council spends time on one resolution that doesn’t have a chance to be approved, it has less time to spend on another resolution that has a chance to pass.

Some SRRT members, including Al, charged that since no minutes are taken at the forums, there is no official record of the arguments made on either side. Discussing the resolutions in the Council wouldn’t have proved any better, since the Council minutes usually don’t summarize the debate, much less record the individual arguments.

The SRRT Action Council must take some responsibility for its own legislative defeats. That group includes a number of “true believers” who would rather have their resolutions defeated than to find a compromise. They can hardly take that attitude and then complain when, in fact, their resolutions fail. After the forum discussion the mover of the SRRT resolutions incorporated the suggestions made in the forums, but she was met with resistance from members of the SRRT Action Council.

No wonder Al Kagan is frustrated. He and the SRRT Action Council have to decide whether they want to be firebrands who are not effective in the ALA Council or whether they want to develop a legislative strategy that will help them successfully influence ALA’s policies.

LARRY ROMANS is head, government information services, and political science and communication studies bibliographer at Vanderbilt University Libraries in Nashville, TN. He has served on the governing Council of the American Library Association for many years and served on the ALA Executive Board, 2007-2010. He is a member of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) and has been active in GODORT, GLBTRT, and ACRL. He can be reached at: larry.romans@vanderbilt.edu.

There is a great piece in yesterday’s Huffington Post on Wikileaks, David Wojnarowicz, and public communication by a Weimar historian:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/merrill-cole/wikileaks-and-david-wojna_b_8…

‘But is WikiLeaks art? I’m not sure that WikiLeaks or Assange would agree with me, but my answer is a definitive “yes.” WikiLeaks calls itself “innovative,” and I agree. This innovation reads to me as an Internet Age version of photomontage. By changing what is at stake in expression and communication, WikiLeaks promises to alter very realities with which it works — and indeed, has already begun to do so.’