I’ve writ­ten before about the var­i­ous machi­na­tions of Wik­iLeaks. The lat­est round is par­tic­u­larly troubling.

This week, Wik­iLeaks released a new round of diplo­matic cables. This time, they included infor­ma­tion iden­ti­fy­ing cit­i­zens of var­i­ous coun­tries, whose activ­i­ties place them at risk of impris­on­ment as polit­i­cal dissidents.

The orga­ni­za­tion pro­claims its inno­cence, alleg­ing (in a thinly-​​veiled man­ner) that The New York Times was respon­si­ble for dis­trib­ut­ing the unredacted data. But this doesn’t pass the smell test. If Wik­iLeaks is in pos­ses­sion of the unredacted data, and dis­trib­uted it to the Times, then Wik­iLeaks is respon­si­ble for dis­trib­ut­ing the data. This doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily absolve the Times of all respon­si­bil­ity, but Wik­iLeaks doesn’t earn a halo.

(more…)