2015-06-09, New York Times
Posted: 2015-06-15 14:37:56
Last week, WikiLeaks disturbed many journalists with an initiative to
crowd-source a $100,000 “bounty” on the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade deal. In traditional newsrooms, the idea of offering a cash incentive for
the leaking of confidential documents is anathema. But WikiLeaks ... leaves us
no choice but to reconsider this prohibition.
The
TPP exceeds agreements like Nafta in scope and scale and involves far-reaching
foreign policy decisions. Its measures will touch the lives of every citizen in
the 12 countries expected to sign the pact. Chapters already leaked suggest
that the deal restricts fair use of copyrighted material, expands medical
patents and weakens public policies that govern net neutrality.
Members of
Congress can read the text in a secure room but cannot discuss its contents
publicly. Representatives from about 600 private corporations are said to have
access to the document. Yet the public is excluded. WikiLeaks has arrived at a
flawed solution to a very real problem. We have reached a point in the
evolution of global democracy at which secrecy and transparency are grotesquely
imbalanced.
Right now, the bounty may be the best shot we have at transforming
the TPP process from a back-room deal to an open debate. But we need a better
system to discourage unjustified secrecy, to protect sources and to encourage
public-interest whistle-blowing.
Note: The Trans-Pacific Partnership
may be a pending
disaster. But we do not know for sure, because its contents
remain secret. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply
revealing news articles about corruption in
government and in the corporate
world.
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