Wikileaks at War

When Wikileaks began, it was a site that published government whistle blowers. People who worked for governments sent in government secrets that sometimes helped us understand the ruling class.

Today, according to some, Wikileaks has added a second mission. It publishes material taken from private rather than government sources. Intelligence agencies claim that much of this new material comes from teams of hackers hired by governments to do mischief in other nations.  As Glenn Greenwald has said, Wikileaks does nothing to protect the privacy of the innocent. It disseminates private email--hacked by government spies--without verification or consideration. Greenwald doesn't argue that private, personal emails should be sacred, just that which ones to publish requires careful judgment. 

Greenwald is a journalist and he makes judgment calls on the material he uncovers. I'm not a journalist, so my concern is different. If, to invent an example, the government of France hires hackers to hack into the private files of Australian winemakers and then sends the files to Wikileaks, can we be sure the files are genuine? If we find in the files an email boasting that the way to make Australian wine is to buy wine from Chile and add water, how do we know if France has not thrown a forged email into the pile? We can't verify Wikileaks, and Wikileaks checks nothing.