What WikiLeaks’ Syria emails really mean

While Julian Assange hides in a broom closet in Ecuador’s London embassy, no doubt desperately craving a Foster’s Lager and a vegemite sandwich, the whistle-blowing site he helped make infamous appears to be soldiering on without him.

On Thursday, WikiLeaks revealed it has received a cache of 2.4 million “embarrassing” emails related to the Syrian government and said it plans to release them in batches over the next few months, along with the help of a half-dozen or so cooperating news agencies.

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The latest release, though, was a little less than exciting: Just 25 emails having to do with a business deal involving the sale of radio communications equipment between the Syrian government and Selex, an Italian firm that also sells to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Embarrassing? Maybe. But unless viewing parts lists or spreadsheet invoices gets your blood pressure rising, the first word that comes to mind is “boring.” Yes, major multinational corporations supporting repressive regimes is nothing to condone, but it’s not exactly news. Companies like Microsoft and Cisco have been helping China censor the Internet for years, to cite just one example.

Generally speaking, if you’re trying to say, “Hey, we’re still relevant even if our founder and leading spokesperson is a bit of an asshat,” you generally want to lead with your best. If this is the most shocking revelation lurking in the Let’s Just Go Ahead and Call It SyriaGate email, I’m going back to waiting for the Summer Olympics to start.

The more interesting aspects of this story to me have less to do with the content of the emails (so far) and more with what this says about WikiLeaks. A few quick observations:

• WikiLeaks doesn’t need Julian Assange. The release of the email cache was announced in a 12-minute news conference hosted by Sarah Harrison, who has been described as an “assistant to Assange,” whatever that means. While it’s possible Assange is still pulling the strings from a payphone inside the Ecuadorian embassy, it’s not his style to give up the spotlight so easily. He’d invite the news cameras in or try to do it via Webcam.

  I suspect either a) the Ecuadorians nixed Assange’s desire to Webcast from inside their diplomatic territory, or b) the rest of WikiLeaks is saying to Julian, “Hasta la vista and be sure to wear plenty of SPF 500 bug repellent when you go strolling through the rain forest.”
• The mainstream U.S. and U.K. press are sour on WikiLeaks. Remember, when Assange got hold of those 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, he had the New York Times and the UK’s Guardian doing the journalistic heavy lifting. This time the list of media partners is — well, “obscure” would be one word for it. The only name anyone on this side of the pond would recognize was the Associated Press — and the AP’s name was later removed, which suggests it was just as surprised to hear about this as the rest of us.

• WikiLeaks hasn’t learned from its mistakes, the largest of which in my humble opinion is a reckless disregard for the privacy of individuals. I think it’s fine to blow the whistle on government misdeeds and corporate malfeasance, but to out the bureaucratic functionaries and company drones whose names appear on these emails simply because you can is beyond the pale.

  For example: News organizations like Italy’s Espresso Republica blanked out parts of the email addresses that would allow readers to identify senders and receivers; WikiLeaks did not. I see no journalistic reason why these people should have their names exposed simply because they were doing their jobs.
• This leak has the smell of Anonymous to me or possibly one of its allied groups like the Peoples Liberation Front, which has been actively attacking the websites of freedom-crushing Middle Eastern regimes. A hack this complex, involving email addresses from some 680 different domains, is either the work of a fearless insider or a group of talented miscreants; and the links between WikiLeaks and the Anons are long established. As long as the connections between those two remain strong, WikiLeaks will always have material to draw upon.

As I’ve said about a zillion times before, I endorse sites like WikiLeaks in principle, but I can’t abide many of its practices. Perhaps those will change once Assange finally shuffles off toward his Ecuadorian exile.

Is SyriaGate a big deal or just a desperate attempt for WikiLeaks to remain relevant? Post your rampant speculation below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “What WikiLeaks’ Syria emails really mean,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.