Trend European Desk Commentator Elmira Tariverdiyeva
The country which has always fiercely defended the position of protecting freedom of speech, had to endure all the "charms" of full publicity. A quarter of a million of secret diplomatic telegrams and letters from U.S. diplomatic missions situated in various countries to the U.S. State Department, puts the reliability of the country, as a partner, under question.
According to the White House's statement, transferring "stolen" letters and telegrams to the media outlets is "reckless and dangerous act". The administration warns that some telegrams may completely disrupt the activity of the United States abroad, and jeopardize work and even the lives of confidential sources of U.S diplomats in case of publication.
Some documents received by New York Times and several other influential U.S and European media have been written recently. The documents marked as "secret" disclose details of the correspondence of President Obama's administration on crisis and conflict. However, the greatest impact caused harsh statements of U.S. diplomats about presidents of Muslim countries, European leaders, snatches of information from supposedly private conversations between the leaders of countries and U.S. officials and demands of Clinton to organize surveillance over the members of the Security Council from Russia, China, France and Great Britain.
The information that Clinton was trying to obtain biometric information on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and credit card numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers of UN officials looks quite impartially. According to the documents published by WikiLeaks, U.S. intelligence officials were sent to the UN missions in New York, Vienna and Rome, as well as 33 embassies of various countries, including the diplomatic missions in London, Paris and Moscow.
The fact that the next portion of discreditable material from the ubiquitous WikiLeaks will affect the relations between Washington and many countries is obvious. One thing is to realize that the conversations in the margins of the U.S government are far from the protocol events, another - to get closely acquainted with the harsh remarks of the U.S diplomats and assessments of U.S. officials. But it does not deal with WikiLeaks's information. Other thing frightens.
The material published by the website WikiLeaks is not new. Almost everything, written by diplomats in the telegrams to the State Department and secret documents, evaluating world leaders, was known. But the real news was the fact that such a strong power like the U.S. failed to prevent the leakage of secret information relating to confidential tasks given by the State Department to diplomats and the delicate moments of the U.S. diplomatic missions' activity abroad. The fact that the next documents, published by WikiLeaks, will become much more dangerous information that could cause a real threat to the security of many countries must get the international community to think about freedom of speech.
The main question, raised by WikiLeaks for mankind, is the line that turns the concept of freedom of speech and right to information in a potentially dangerous trend of disclosing state secrets. A leak of information from the agents-illegal immigrants, working in other countries, is punishable by the law. But why is the disclosing secret documents, published for the entire world, classified as the resident's right to information? Do ordinary citizens really need this information? That is, can the information on estimates given by the employees of diplomatic missions, the assessment, by the way, very subjective and based on personal impressions of a particular person, really have at least any value to the U.S or European citizens? The editions publishing this discreditable material insist on this.
Most likely, these publications are designed to satisfy the curiosity of citizens. Food and performance remain the main pillars of existence like thousands years ago. Editors-in-chief of the influential media do not understand that this performance causes great damage to the country itself.
They ignored the main postulate of morality - the oath of allegiance to their state for the sake of ratings and the notorious "freedom of publicity".