Ethics and the Privacy Harms of WikiLeaks

Shortly after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, the controversial transparency
organization posted around 300,000 emails of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. Then
last Friday, Wikileaks posted nearly 20,000 emails and 8,000 attachments from high-level
officials in the Democratic National Committee. The latter, they proudly called part of their
Hillary Leaks series. In response to the so-called Erdogan emails, Turkeys internet
governance agency blocked all access to WikiLeaks throughout the country. Many Westerners
saw the national block as yet another case of government censorship of the highest order.
After last Fridays WikiLeaks DNC email dump, supporters of former presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders angrily (and some would say rightly) pointed to the collusion amongst
Democratic Party staffers that may have tilted the playing field against Sanders.
In both cases, WikiLeaks claims to be exposing widespread government corruption. And
in both cases, in part at least, its safe to say they are. But leave no doubt; both leaks are
irresponsible, unethical, and parallel many of the issues privacy pros deal with almost daily.
There's a reason, as of the writing of this post, Facebook has blocked all links to the DNC data
dump.
Professor and social critic Zeynep Tufekci points out that the Erdogan email leak
exposed massive databases of ordinary people, including a special database of almost all adult
women in Turkey. Indeed, the leak includes a spreadsheet of what appears to be every female
voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, she writes. This includes their home addresses and, in
some cases, their cellphone numbers. Tufekci continues: Their addresses are out there for every
stalker, ex-partner, disapproving relative, or random crazy to peruse as they wish. This is also a
country, she points out, in which hundreds of women are murdered and thousands go into
hiding on an annual basis. The Erdogan emails also contain sensitive data on AKP members
(the ruling party in Turkey), including their full names, citizenship IDs, and cellphone numbers.
This is significant because these are the same people who belong to a party that just faced a
bloody coup; they could easily become future political targets.
In the U.S., the so-called DNC leak has already lead to the resignation of DNC
Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, long seen by Sanders supporters as a figure who
prevented Sanders from getting the nomination over Hillary Clinton. It's also muddling up this
week's DNC in Philadelphia.
Yet, like the Turkey email leak, WikiLeaks violated the privacy of countless innocent
people in the process. The leak included 19,252 emails from some of the top representatives of
the Democratic Party. Some of those emails included personal information of donors, including
credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and even passport numbers. Plus, the leak
needlessly exposed well-intentioned emails from politicians and professionals trying to do their
job. Just think about those professional emails you write to colleagues; you're not expecting the
whole world will see them when you're writing them, right?
I understand that groups like WikiLeaks want to expose corruption and make corrupted
official accountable, but does that good counteract the harm created by violating the privacy of
thousands of other people potentially exposing them to identity theft, embarrassment, or even
physical harm? It doesnt appear that WikiLeaks has taken this collateral damage into
consideration.
The free press has traditionally been the institution to weigh such information flows and
to work to do the most public good with the least possible harm.[] Clearly an organization
such as WikiLeaks doesnt employ privacy professionals. But their actions demonstrate the

careful attention organizations need to make when disclosing data. Information is more
powerful in the Digital Age than ever. Those who have that power must do so with great care and
responsibility.

https://iapp.org/news/a/ethics-and-the-privacy-harms-of-wikileaks/