There was a time when Julian Assange believed in redacting personal information that could hurt individuals before his WikiLeaks organization flooded the Internet with hacked or leaked documents.
There was a time when he even was willing to meet with representatives of the U.S. government before he put out potentially damaging material from government files.
But these days Assange, holed up for four years now in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, fighting rape charges he denies, is more extreme. His original vision of “radical transparency” has morphed into something reckless.
And that’s unfortunate. Because much of his message is an important one: Secrecy promotes corruption. People deserve to know what their governments are doing.
But with his abusive Twitter presence and his weird behavior, he’s gone too far. Not long ago, WikiLeaks released vast troves of information that made public the medical records of individuals all around the world. Even the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has said publicly that a no-redaction policy is dangerous.
And at the same time, Assange seems to be playing disinformation games that might affect the U.S. presidential campaign. WikiLeaks had promised a big information dump on Tuesday morning that many thought would hurt Hillary Clinton’s prospects for the presidency.
But that never happened. It was all a big tease that had Donald Trump’s supporters salivating, and then crushed.
Later in the day, Assange said by video link that the information would be forthcoming before the election, but he insisted that its purpose is not to hurt Clinton.
Has Assange gone around the bend?
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, a strong advocate for transparency and civil liberties and co-founder of the Intercept, doesn’t see it that way.
“Any changes are of degree, not category or level,” Greenwald told me by phone Tuesday, and he said that, despite “vociferous disagreements,” he still considers himself a WikiLeaks defender.
Greenwald, who helped bring Snowden’s NSA material to light, views what happened Tuesday as entirely in keeping with WikiLeaks’ operating principle: “They don’t reveal what they have and they engage in disinformation to protect what they think is their mission.”
The mission is that information — unfiltered, unredacted, what Assange calls “pristine” — is inherently good. And nothing should be allowed to taint it.
“WikiLeaks’ view that sunlight is a disinfectant is absolutely correct, but it’s a question of where to draw the line,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy and technology project.
“There is a tension between transparency and privacy,” Wizner added. Good judgment is important in finding the right balance.
But if Assange recognizes that, he doesn’t seem to care.
And that’s where he parts ways with even those who believe most fervently that governments hide too much, and that democracy can’t flourish in the dark.
How much of this is driven by politics?
Greenwald, for one, certainly doesn’t see Assange as opinion-free but thinks his politics may be misunderstood.
“I think he has goals and objectives,” Greenwald said. It’s not that he’s trying to destroy any particular candidate or promote another one, but rather that his position is “in opposition to the power orthodoxy.”
If you don’t like the establishment, he pointed out, you’re not going to be in Clinton’s corner. But he called it “overblown nonsense” to say that Assange is promoting a Trump presidency or Vladimir Putin’s agenda.
Although Greenwald thinks Assange and company sometimes act irresponsibly for no reason, he still sees WikiLeaks as “on balance a net force for good.” A prime example was WikiLeaks’ release this past summer of the Democratic National Committee emails that gave citizens important insight into the deep flaws of that secretive organization.
Still, I can’t get past the harm that can be done when no reasoned thought is brought to bear.
Over the years, Assange has tried different models of carrying out his revolutionary vision. Where he’s ended up is a place most people — even those who most enthusiastically believe in transparency — find hard to defend. I know I can’t.
Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post.