A Modern Day Witch-hunt

As we begin reading The Crucible, a play about the Salem witch trails in Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692-1693, I remembered a person we discussed also in class a couple weeks back. Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks, has been hunted as he recently released 391,832 confidential documents of the Iraqi war. Here is an article from the New York Times which tells of his notoriety.

Julian Assange

According to the article, Assange "demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own the way other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends."

He has even referred to himself as the "James Bond of journalism." And he basically is one, by changing phones every day and having multiple aliases. He fears Western intelligence agencies who hunt him. He's risking being jailed for life or even executed to put out this information. The government has demanded that he return all US documents in his possession and no longer search for any more. Here are some of his chilling accounts of the Iraq war.

"'I’ve been waiting 40 years for someone to disclose information on a scale that might really make a difference,' said Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed a 1,000-page secret study of the Vietnam War in 1971 that became known as the Pentagon Papers. "

But even throughout all the chaos and consequences Assange has to face, is he doing the right thing? Should the public know the truth? Even if the way the truth was discovered was illegal?

I do believe the public deserves to know the truth, but the government should be supplying it, not hacking organizations. We shouldn't have to find out what's going on in Iraq through leaked documents. We should be given those documents. I understand that the government is trying to protect us, but we cannot live in ignorance. Especially, when the people we elect and support are committing things that are against our beliefs. And even more importantly, when we are affected severely by it.

I find it interesting that even though Assange is shedding light to what is going on over seas, some of his colleagues call him "erratic" and "imperious." Do you think Assange's practices are okay? Do you support them? Or do you believe he's taken it too far?