Wikileaks (#cablegate) - Crikey, what a story | Carne Ross

1) this will damage US diplomacy, for sure; 2) it will damage several governments mentioned in the cables, especially Yemen (see this devastating telegram); 3) it will take a while and a lot of promises by US diplomats that their comms are really really secure this time for other diplomats to trust US diplomats with confidences again; 4) the cables released so far seem to be very few, so I'm assuming there's a lot more still to come; 5) I don't understand the criteria for selecting those released today (eg lots of Iran, Middle East stuff); 6) the Wikileaks phenomenon is a product of our collective distrust of government after a decade of being told mistruths about the war on terror, Iraq, Afghanistan but 7) Wikileaks is a very imperfect and potentially dangerous mechanism of transparency so 8) the clear conclusion is that more transparency is needed, but through the proper mechanisms of democratic accountability