The WikiLeaks disclosure of United States military documents about the Afghanistan war last weekend has been denounced as a criminal act and hailed as the future of investigative journalism in equal measure, Olivia Lang writes on the BBC News web site. More than 90,000 documents, dated between 2004 and 2009, on the war in Afghanistan, have been released, but the whistle-blowing web site will not disclose the identity of any of its sources. “In the aftermath of one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history, the U.S. Government will surely not be the only one wondering how this happened,” Lang writes. After scrutinising the papers WikiLeaks passed the documents to The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian before public release. WikiLeaks, which has a policy of protecting its sources, has not revealed how many sources it received the documents from, or when it received them. Lang writes that media speculation has so far focused on 22 year-old Bradley Manning, an army intelligence analyst who is accused of mishandling and leaking classified information. “Specialist Manning, reportedly known by his screen name bradass87, was charged ... with eight violations of U.S. criminal law and four violations of army regulations. These include the leaking of a 2007 video of a deadly American helicopter attack in Baghdad.” Manning is being held in pre-trial detention in Kuwait after being arrested while working in Iraq. But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that there was “no allegation, as far as we can determine, that this material is connected to Spc Manning”. “In any case,” Lang writes, “did he alone leak the sheer volume of records that has been released? If not, then will it even be possible to find out who did?” She writes that how it was done was most important. “The true perpetrator of aiding the disclosure of confidential files is technology itself. Such an initiative would have been far harder if at all possible – and more dangerous – 20 years ago. As the WikiLeaks web site says itself, ‘with technological advances – the internet, and cryptography – the risks of conveying important information can be lowered’.” The site was born in December 2006. It has servers in countries that include Sweden and Belgium, where it benefits from press secrecy laws. “The idea behind the site is the need for transparency, with the basis being that it allows anyone to upload content, which will then be looked at by a group of volunteers, all journalists, who decide what to publish,” Lang writes. - BBC News

Two weeks ago the Minister of Justice, Simon Power, announced he intended to review the law over the ‘claim of right’ defence that three men had used successfully in their jury trial in Wellington earlier this year. The trio had damaged the Government Communications Security Bureau’s satellite monitoring facility at Waihopai, in rural Marlborough, in 2008. They defended the charges of intentional damage and burglary on the grounds they believed their actions were lawful because they sought to protect civilians in Iraq from communications they believed were being intercepted and passed to the United States from the facility. “What is perhaps most concerning about Mr Power’s actions is the possibility that they are emotionally and politically-driven, rather than rational,” the Otago Daily Times writes in an editorial. “ … a jury has reached a decision on trial. Mr Power’s actions seem to be at least in part an attack on that process. Is the law to be changed every time the Government cannot accept a jury’s decision?” It says that the Waihopai case is a particular concern. “The fact the three men were acquitted did not absolve them from the possibility of a civil claim for the cost of the estimated $1.1 million damage to the base.” The Ministry of Justice’s own analysis of the case noted the law had been applied correctly and that the judge had correctly instructed the jury on how the law should be considered, it says. “What Mr Power is seeking, therefore, is a new law, one that effectively would remove the ‘political’ defence so as to make this form of protest vandalism solely a criminal matter, meaning the Crown would not have to prove that accused persons did not honestly believe their actions were lawful,” it says. “ … what will trouble most people is the prospect of a further possible curtailment of the right of conscientious protest in a democracy by threat of the state,” the editorial says. “Feelings that ‘they got away with it’ were aroused when the Waihopai defendants were freed, an unjustified though understandable response, and which has had much to do with the monetary value of the damage they caused; but as we have stated, the law provides for civil recovery.” It says that Mr Power has been provided with possible options to change the law rather than repeal it. “Most of these suggestions would place upon the defendant, rather than the Crown, the onus of innocence – the need to prove, as it were, the existence of a belief justifying the action, rather than requiring the Crown to show it should be excluded. “ That seems to be a step too far in basic human rights under our law: persecution rather than prosecution.” - Otago Daily Times

The trivialisation of the Australian General Election campaign began early with the question of boat people, The Sydney Morning Herald writes in an editorial. “Immigration and Australia’s population size are certainly important topics, but they have been peripheral to the main debate which has been about stopping boat people. Such asylum-seekers are a tiny part of any immigration intake. If they are a problem at all, it is equally tiny,” it says. Then Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s private life suddenly had become an issue. “Julia Gillard is not married to her partner. This not a secret. Nor is it unique: according to the Bureau of Statistics about 16 percent of all those living as couples are unmarried. And of those marrying these days, more than three-quarters live together beforehand. The proportion is increasing.” It says that those figures and trends might have shocked people in the 1960s, “but not now, 50 years on”. If re-elected, Ms Gillard will live with her partner in The Lodge [prime minister’s residence], as she has in her home in Altona [suburban Melbourne]. “How is this surprising? Those who choose to be shocked by Gillard’s unmarried and childless state will no doubt be so, but it is common enough among successful women in particular, and attempts to imply it is somehow unsatisfactory should be rejected. Indeed, all attempts to replace debate about substantial issues with personal trivia should be similarly rejected,” the editorial says. Serious issues will be decided at this election whether they have been debated during the campaign or not. “It seems the more important the issue, the less our leaders want to talk about it, lest they break into the voters’ dream world … Both sides have been content to downgrade what should be a contest of ideas to one of slogans and soundbites, and to abdicate the role of opinion leader for that of opinion-poll follower. We are the poorer for it.” - The Sydney Morning Herald