wikileaks – Jason Griffey

Here’s just one example of why the Wikileak cables are important and deserve to be released, analyzed, and that transparency in government is valuable. From BoingBoing:

Spain’s Congress is about to vote on a new and extremely harsh copyright/Internet law. It’s an open secret that the law was essentially drafted by American industry groups working with the US trade representative.

….

The first 35 of the 115 cables have been released, and they confirm the widespread suspicion: the Spanish government and the opposition party were led around by the nose by the US representatives who are the real legislative authority in Spain.

Here’s a link to an English translation of the El Pais article.

Library of Congress blocks access to Wikileaks

This is evidence of the insane world we’re currently living in…the Library of Congress, ostensibly the Library of Record for the United States, is currently blocking access on it’s staff computers as well as it’s guest wireless network to Wikileaks.

From the above story, the Library issued a statement, saying:

The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.

Oh, really? Is that so?

Anyone online realizes this is a senseless act, and that anyone with any knowledge of the Internet will be able to get around this sort of filter trivially…this does absolutely nothing to protect classified information. As far as I can tell, it does nothing except make the Library of Congress look asinine. Perhaps the librarians running the LoC should take another gander at the Library Bill of Rights to remind themselves what exactly it is that they should be doing.

I hope that there is serious fallout for those who made this decision. ALA Council…here’s a discussion worth having.