War Logs

There’s a tendency in some circles to see disclosures like the Wikileaks publishing of 90,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan as an inherently good thing.

Many people – from all parts of the political spectrum – see the release of secret government information as desirable as a rule because it allows people to look into the inner workings of the state apparatus and its agents. This makes governments accountable. Others, more insidiously – especially in technology and new media circles – welcome events like this mainly because they involve the internet.

The Afghanistan war logs are a watershed moment in government control over intelligence data. It’s not that battlefield information was published – that’s nothing especially new – but that the release of the information was so huge and co-ordinated between three countries and on the web simultaneously.

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