Review – A Secret Australia Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposés

The book A Secret Australia Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposés, edited by Felicity Ruby and Peter Cronau, was released at the time where Julian Assange, creator of Wikileaks, was awaiting his extradition trial to the United States for the publication of classified and sensitive information relating to the War on Terror.

Media coverage of the fact that Assange is facing 175 years in jail for 18 charges, including 17 under the US Espionage Act of 1917, is closely tied in with what both Ruby and Cronau argue is a “propaganda campaign to smear the name of Julian Assange…from the information he has made available to all, about how governments lie and betray their own citizens”. The book, they note, is in response to the impact that Wikileaks, and by default Assange, has had on Australia. These impacts range from a diverse lot of subject matter such as human rights, freedom of press, war crimes, governmental secrecy. These approaches are always underpinned by the idea of Wikileaks and Assange as publisher and journalist.

The book features contributions by well-known Australian writers, politicians, academics, and those in the legal profession. Most of the chapters are succinct, and for readers interested in an evidence-based approach to some of the statements made, accessible with endnote references to support key insights and arguments.

The book’s first chapter,‘Wikileaks and Human Rights’, is written by Jennifer Robinson, lawyer to Assange. Robinson writes about the fact that Australia only has an implied right to freedom of communication. She argues that the protection of whistle-blowers is paramount to ensuring a robust democracy – particularly where governments are active in incursions upon established human rights standards. The continual detention of Assange, noted for publishing material that linked the United States to War Crimes is a controversial figure, to some he is the champion of free speech, to others he is considered to be dangerous, even a “high tech terrorist”. The continual publication of confidential cables related to States and their internal affairs drew the wrath of such countries as the US, UK and Australia who argued that their release threatened national security, with some commentators decrying treason and Assange himself as enemy of the state.

As each chapter is written by a different author, the book offers unique perspectives on Wikileaks and the impact the organisation has had on topics as diverse as Australia’s role in the Five Eyes Intelligence Oversight and Review Council, Australia’s foreign policy and of course, the concept of whistleblowing. Julian Burnside, barrister and human rights advocate, writes briefly about WikiLeaks as a case study into US implications of releasing classified and sensitive material – alleged war crimes footage – by noting the arrest and subsequent detainment of Chelsea Manning for “aiding the enemy”. Former senior Australian public servant and Adjunct Professor Paul Barratt’s more substantial chapter leans heavily towards setting out the Australian legal landscape in terms of national security classification of information and publishing of material. He contrasts this with the US governance of classified information, noting that “the state of the law and practice regarding the passing of classified information to journalists seems to be a mess in the US, UK and Australia”.

This chapter is followed by Associate Professor Benedetta Brevini’s chapter that further delves into both the US and UK’s responses to Wikileaks and the curious continued silence by the Australian government in commenting about the continued detainment of Assange, an Australian citizen. Silence from the Australian Federal Government, in effectively advocating for a detained Australian citizen, is a thread that runs throughout the book. Indeed, Dr Lissa Johnson outlines in her chapter ‘Torture Australian-style’ that despite the UN Rapporteur on Torture at the time, Nils Melzer, noting that Assange had been exposed to prolonged psychological torture, calls for his release or intervention into his detainment on medical grounds has so far not elicited a response.

The book ends most fittingly with a conversation between former politician Scott Ludlam and Julian Assange during the Festival of Democracy held in Sydney in 2015 and provides some interesting commentary on the subject of “despair and defiance” – an apt subject with Assange currently still in the UK awaiting extradition hearings that the United States is still pursuing, to which Assange and his supports are still putting up a strong fight against.

Whilst celebrating the range of voices writing on Wikileaks, some of the chapters are very brief, and could have been extended upon given the complexity of some of the subject matter. Yes, some are more strongly aligned as opinion pieces – without endnotes or references to designated them as such, however others could have been lengthened to provide more detail to satisfy readers curiosity. One such example is Andrew Fowler’s chapter on ‘All the Way with the USA’ which highlights the close relationship enjoyed by the US and Australia and highlights the Australian governments unwillingness to seek assurances from their close partner about treatment within the criminal justice system if Assange is extradited.

A Secret Australia Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposés provides interesting reading at a time when governments are quickly closing down conversations about transparency and accountability and provides a chilling insight into the power of States to protect their own machinations.

You can read the original version here.

Whatever happened to …?

This article was originally published at Election Watch 2013

Whatever happened to …?

Credit: Takver, Flickr

Both The Wikileaks Party (WLP) and the Pirate Party of Australia (PPAU) failed to win any seats, despite heavy campaigning and a solid groundswell of dedicated volunteers spruiking their respective platforms. So what are some of the theories as to what went wrong? What’s next?

There’s been much discussion as to the internal implosion of the Wikileaks Party and the departure of key people such as Leslie Cannold(link is external). Ms Cannold spoke candidly about the lack of transparency, accountability and backdoor power plays as well as the resignation of key members on the Wikileaks National Council due to the preference deals that saw right-wing parties preferenced over key allies such as The Greens.

The widespread internal disunity painted a picture of a party that seemed highly unlikely to be able to deal with the intricacies and politicking of government. It failed to deliver any seats, with a paltry 1.19% of votes.

Primary candidate Julian Assange has suggested that an international banking blockade on Wikileaks may have limited the ability of the party to raise money through donations. Mr Assange has vowed to run for the Senate again despite the result.

The Pirate Party of Australia (PPAU) also failed to win any seats with only 0.4% of votes, but for different reasons to the WLP.

The PPAU presented a unified front and were completely transparent about their preferences with arelease(link is external) announcing exactly where its preferences would be allocated. Despite having only a small number of volunteers on polling day when compared to WLP, the PPAU presented a strong online campaign and consistent messaging across platforms.

The failure of the PPAU to win seats may possibly be due to the fact that they are still unable to reach across the digital divide and appeal to the mainstream voter – the majority of which would have come across them only at the ballot box. The PPAU has indicated it intends to continue to campaign on its key policies and platforms.

So where to from here? Both parties could focus more on strategies that preach less to the converted and more to voters in the mainstream voting public. The challenge facing the Wikileaks Party will be to restore the sense of transparency and justice that it campaigned on. The major challenge facing the Pirate Party of Australia, as mentioned in an earlier article(link is external), is to convince the Australian voting public that they are a viable alternative to the major parties.

The Wikileaks Party vs The Pirate Party

This article was originally published at Election Watch 2013

The Wikileaks Party vs The Pirate Party

As we count down to election day, it’s worth making a comparison of some of the key policies and platform of two parties who, on the face of it, share a similar vision for Australian politics – the Wikileaks Party (WLP) and the Pirate Party of Australia (PPAU).

The Wikileaks Party and the Pirate Party are both running on a transparency platform. Both seek to instigate a shift towards the free-flow of information, whether it be in the form of advocating for a greater freedom of speech approach in law or demanding an open media market. Both parties seek to challenge the status quo on asylum seekers and call for greater accountability from governments on data retention and surveillance.

But is it realistic for voters to expect that the parties are able to effect the kind of changes they champion?

The Wikileaks Party catch-all is ‘Transparency. Accountability. Justice’ – it advocates for “…transparency of government information and action…” and will be ‘…fearless in its pursuit of truth and good governance.”

How it will go about achieving this is unclear, though the platform statement does offer a conciliatory gesture for voters wanting more information with an overview of principles that the party advocates for, such as pushing for change to current media policy, global integrity and greater Internet freedoms.

Any real information on the type of mechanisms or platforms they propose to instigate the transparency shift is light on detail. What mechanisms can the WLP employ to effect such change that is not already in use in some way or another? It’s also light on detail of other equally important areas of law such as education or tax.

The Pirate Party of Australia’s core tenets are based around freedom of information, civil and digital liberties and privacy. Like the WLP, PPAU advocates for transparency of government and participatory democracy. However in comparison to the WLP, the PPAU’s platform is much more comprehensive and goes so far as to provide details on proposed legislative exceptions and suggested policy text – in effect presenting the voter with scalable and workable solutions. PPAU also appears to be running a more comprehensive platform taking into consideration, for example, patent and drug reform and cultural participation.

PPAU’s hurdle is convincing the voting public that they are a serious party with a serious agenda, while the WLP appears to have internal transparency and governance issues that threaten to destroy it before it gets a chance to affect any kind of real change to the Australian political environment.

Read the WLP platform statements and the Pirate Party of Australia platform(link is external).

We Steal Secrets Film Review

This article was originally published at Right Now: Human Rights in Australia,

We Steal Secrets

Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks promised an in-depth look into the creation and inner workings of one of the most famous media organisations in the world. Gibney, of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) fame, marketed the documentary as providing insight into an organisation that is arguably one of the most (in)famous both in terms of publication output and the almost rockstar like following of it’s Editor-in-Chief, Julian Assange.

Disappointingly, it didn’t.

We Steal Secrets chooses instead to focus increasingly on the cult of personality surrounding Assange and seemingly glosses over the importance of the collateral damage video first released by Wikileaks and the cables published after.

The aim, presumably, of the documentary was to shed light on the creation, maintenance and ongoing struggles of an organisation publishing material that placed states and governments in a precarious position publically – the publishing of the secrets that existed behind the closed doors of decision makers, military and intelligence services. Secrets that we now know included details of corruption in Kenya, paramilitary training by the US to assist the overthrow of South American governments, Guantanamo Bay standard operating procedures and video and transcripts of US forces killing unarmed civilians and journalists in Iraq.

There is an uncomfortable feeling that no one actually wants to talk about the atrocities that Wikileaks was able to catapult into the public domain…

Instead, Gibney seemingly becomes transfixed by character references of Assange. The opportunity to analyse Wikileaks’ usefulness as an organisation – one that was able to catapult serious violations of international humanitarian law into the public sphere – is lost amongst the endless parades of cameos offering insight into Assange’s personality. Yes, there is discussion of the killing of unarmed journalists in Iraq, and excerpts are shown in the film, but this is countenanced and almost trivialised by Gibney’s infatuation with the cult of Assange. The majority of the documentary appears to be about the relationship between Gibney and Assange, and Assange and every other media organisation in the world.

Little discussion is given as to the worth, in terms of human rights and international humanitarian law, of the footage and documents released by Wikileaks as evidence of war crimes and Gibney in this sense, appears to follow the majority of mainstream media outlets in ignoring the obvious and wanting to shift attention to the personality behind Wikileaks. There is an uncomfortable feeling that no one actually wants to talk about the atrocities that Wikileaks was able to catapult into the public domain and the usefulness of such an organisation in the face of increased governmental and state secrecy.

The treatment of Bradley Manning in the film is also curious, in that it bizarrely shifts its focus on him from whistleblower to a person troubled by gender issues, spending a substantial amount of time building him up as an unstable, isolated individual whose conflicting traits are somehow responsible for his actions against the state. Again, the audience needs to keep in mind that these ‘actions’ are in reality proof of conduct by a state that is against international law, but appear lost amongst the chatter of Manning’s personality.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks is no in-depth expose on the Wikileaks organisation; it focuses too heavily on the cult of the personalities of both Assange and Manning to the detriment of actually providing insight into the usefulness and actions of the organisation. Gibney would have done well to focus less on personality and more on substance – the publication of footage that explicitly illustrates war crimes by a state is a topic that deserves more analysis than it received in the documentary.