Working Out the Ethics of WikiLeaks

For good ethics, we need good facts. In undertaking an ethical analysis of WikiLeaks, which questions do we need to ask?

At first, the more I read and thought about WikiLeaks, the more difficult it became for me to understand the ethical path to take with respect to it. Ultimately, I landed in the unfamiliar position of agreeing with Hillary Clinton. As she said, WikiLeaks is neither laudatory nor brave. On balance, it is a force for serious harm, even allowing that it could entail some good.

As an ethicist, I find the WikiLeaks moment in our history fascinating, if frustrating, because of the layers of difficult-to-answer questions it creates in our quest for ethical guidance. Some of these questions arise from the techno-science that makes WikiLeaks possible as a global phenomenon. Others come from the compounding difficulty, though by no means impossibility, of finding a consensus on the ethics that should guide us in an era of ubiquitous moral relativism.

At the most basic level, though, they result from the simple fact that good facts are necessary for good ethics, and we don't have all the facts needed to fully assess how much harm the leaks will cause. The possible consequences of the leaks have been the subject of intense disagreement. Predictions have ranged from the leaks having no serious consequences to their undermining “the functional integrity of the whole western security apparatus ... [on which] our very survival depends.”

At one end of the spectrum of possible harms, there are those who believe our civilization is under attack by those who regard the leaks as “the 9-11 of international diplomacy” that may precipitate a world war. In between, there is the growing consensus that the leaks, at the very least, have the potential to cause serious harm to western nations and their allies, to the advantage of their enemies.

Working out the ethics of WikiLeaks is also difficult because it makes a difference whether or not we see ends as justifying means. Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, obtained the leaked documents from a trusted person who had access and stole them. If we believe that this means of obtaining information was fundamentally wrong, and that even good ends – let alone seriously harmful ones – do not justify using wrong means, then using that information would be unethical.

If, on the other hand, we believe that laudatory ends can justify unacceptable means and we regard the WikiLeaks as having such ends, we might see use of the information as ethical.

If we do regard Assange's conduct as evil and capable of causing catastrophic consequences, what about others who make use of the WikiLeaks information? Are they complicit in the evil? Much depends on whether their use of the information is sufficiently disconnected from the evil such that it is not tainted by it. This is a distinction with real-world antecedents and implications. It has been considered in relation to using medical information that resulted from the horrific Nazi medical experimentation on humans.