The Power of "Wikileaks"

Before the "Wikileaks" expose on CNN, I had heard about it weeks ago while on lunch eating a sandwich and listening to NPR.  The idea of Wikileaks as much as many governments would love for it to go the way of the dodo bird, is in fact an awesome tool of democracy.

Just imagine a tool such as Wikileaks that is the database of all whistle blowers and information that keeps our corporations and governments "honest".  Our old checks and balances as well as our old privacy is in danger, however with new organizations and people setting up such information databases, it keeps in balance all the information that the world's governments have on individuals and the lack of transparency to the American Public.

This new tool would be able to keep governments around the world from lying to their citizens, what else could be more democratic and American than that?

The worst thing any government or corporation could do is to attack the concept of Wikileaks, because in the minds of the people...those governments and corporations would be seen as the bogeymen that they should not trust.  Of course, many corporations and governments would try to shut down such a site, however if they do...it only goes against the message they are trying to "not send".  With information comes responsibility, if the world's governments and corporations are gathering information and intelligence on individuals, companies, nations, etc.  They are also accountable for that information stored, because let's say that the information that is stored in our government or corporate databases are stolen by foreign powers...what kind of abuse could happen there? Also, if the wrong people in our own nation were to abuse all this stored information, that would also be a problem.

Currently other than the CIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, and other US Government organizations that collect data, there are private companies that do the same thing, such as Blackwater and similar non-governmental entities. There is an integral danger in the massive use of outsourcing of military and intelligence that should be taken a look at by our own govenrment.  For example,  what is there to stop a foreign power to "hire" Blackwater as it's own military to defeat our military in the USA?  Or, what is there to stop a private corporate intelligence agency such as Blackwater to "out smart" our own CIA?  These are dangerous new territories that are being produced by the rapid growth of technology.

In an interesting way, our own government agencies would be protected against private corporations with treasonous intent by having vital information keeping them honest appear on sites such as "Wikileaks".  That way, they would not be manipulated by private corporations that may not have loyalty to the United States.

Sometimes blessings come in forms we do not recognize.  In this case, having a checks and balances such as Wikileaks only makes our nation stronger.  However, treasonous leaking of information is different than what should have been leaked in the first place to our own people.  For example, top secret information should never be leaked if it is meant to protect the country, however there are circumstances that would have been good for everybody to know, such as the way that we had prior knowledge of "Pearl Harbor" before the Japanese striked.  If the Internet existed then, we may not have had a World War...