you can decide whether you want it to go to point "new york times" or the guardian. you can also offer a series of digital mail box yesms they don't have to choose between large and small leaks. point key idea is that by separating the receipt of the documents from their publication, open leaks solves the problem of central zation that allows assange to create too much power and focus on his personal aggrandizement. open leaks provides a valuable alternative and genuinely neutral technology for whistle blowers. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011]

>> my wife and i have been in china the last come months. the chinese authority use the same rationale for their very, very sweeping depression going on now as serious members of the government would do. as if these details were freely disseminated, public order would be threatened. so the basic foundation is the first amendment. the checks and balances systems is there should be some checks on institutions that want to

preserve information. so we see benefit in the transparancy that wikileaks in some cases is able to provide. equally obvious collaboration is that unless you are willing to make a total nilist type argument that no information of any store should be secret in any circumstance, then you should see the dangers here. in addition to the real world cases jeff was giving, if you are giving thought experiment to pose, for example, that in the recent documents there was information on where osama bin laden had been hanging out, that this over time could have been leaked as opposed to trying to ease gaddafi out of libya. i would argue it would be bad all around if those were publicized. real-world circumstances i know about, the u.s. embassy and beijing is in touch with dissidents in china. they would be at tremendous risk if that were publicized.

i think some of that information is now in the pipeline. in domestic circumstances, disaster preparedness, ways you can that i think of, we would all be worse off if the nilist view prevailed. what strikes me about the journalism here is that at the end of a decade or two, in which everything about the mainstream media has seemed under assault in its finances, in its own presentation of itself, increasingly in circus-like ways, in all the other forces, we know that have made main ssstream news jeopardize, nothing, i think has reinforced the sentralt of institutions like "the new york times" or the "guardian" than their dealings with wikileaks. they have been the place to draw this reasonable balance. saying, this is in the public interest to disclose, this is not. oddly i think we have seen a reassertion of traditional

journalistic ideas because they have had to make these judgments. just one more point. a positive technological alternative for allowing people to express dissent without having all the disadvantages of a purely nilist point of view, i don't know what the technological barrier will be in in the future some counterpart has direct access and is able to get all of his information up there immediately and there is not the information at the times or whatever, i think that is going to be a different filtering challenge that i don't know a solution to, but perhaps my colleagues do. >> i think we should distinguish the problem, the general contextual problem from the specifics of wikileaks or a specific way in which it was dealt with. the general contextual problem is we have moved from the age of leaks, which evogse volks the idea of a faucet and a little drop coming down from a faucet to the age of the tsunami where

what is actually confronting policymakers is a time when leakers are taking huge amounts of data and dumping it out there. the challenge in the age of the tsunami is to figure out how responsibly to serve this essential public function of facilitating leaks to criticize the government for things the government should be criticized for. that is a generally hard problem. at one extreme you can imagine turning all this over to the government and saying to the government, you tell us what you want the least, and their answer would be nothing, and on the other extreme would be publishing it on the internet, and that would be terrible, too, for all the privacy reasons jeff is mentioning. so the question is, how do we find a balance between these he can treems that deals with this fundamental problem that we're going to be at an age where it is not 10 pages or even pentagon -paper source material, but it is gigabytes of date thatia this

nobody has the time to actually investigate. my understanding of the history of wikileaks is a little more charitable than i think jeff's. i think the early version of wikileaks was actually a grotesque, owe oblivious, nilistic view where they put the data out there. i think this was an idea in wikileaks to try to determine how to protect the right kind of entities. part of that, jim, is what you were saying, turning the archives over to six or seven journalistic entities and saying to them, you tl tell us what should be out there. in that case wikileaks is making available the material which the journalists say ought to be made

available. at this stage you could say the journalist wrs more interested in getting out the salashese -- salacious newspaper selling facts. surprise, surprise. the criticism should be directed against the journalists and not so much against the cashe server that is making the stuff available. the entity i want to criticize is the policymaker, the government in response to this. the government should be asking, ok, we're in a world where people will be dumping tons of behavior out there. we should find a way to encourage good behavior, that means trying to encourage entities to create well or create relationships with entities to behave well so they behave well in the future again. our government did nothing like that. our government tried to blow

this up by threatening prosecution, threatening the death penalty, threatening suppliers. what if nix wronon had said to the paper suppliers of the "new york times" and said if you don't shut down the supply of paper to the "new york times" we will punish you and 20 other paper producers? that would be an outrageous response, but that is what our government did in response to wikileaks here. our government turned to the entities making wikileaks and threatened them in a way to force wikileaks back into' different position. my question is it is stupidity. it breaks the opportunity for creating the right kind of relationship that could encourage entities like wikileaks to become quasi-responsible entities. so it reminds me of in the early

days of when napster first happened. there were moments in the history of napster when they said, we'll give you $1 billion if you let us survive. we'll give you $1 billion. juth just let us survive. and the recording industry said no, we're going to blow you up. and they blew them up. the consequence was that 30 other napster-like event its appeared immediately after wards and they were much less controlable and much less potentially profitable for the recording industry. so the recording industry got less of what it wanted, didn't get any money from napster, and napster was blown up. and it was out of spite. it seemed to me that's the way napster responded. there was a mature response. ok we're in the 21st century, how do we deal with this, and

then there was a response of fit of spite. how do we blow them up? how do we make it so these people fear us? and the second response is, it is self-defeating. it will not produce the thing they wanted to produce. it will produce a world where there will be one, open leaks, and 30 other anonymous and 30 other entities out there just trying to do as much harm as they can because they can gept away with it. >> so i think if you are the american government you have plenty of reason at the moment for the current situation to feel pretty good about things. i don't know how many people in the american government contemplating wikileaks are feeling good at things. so my hope is to put some american government types at ease. that is because the backdrop is a national security apparatus gathering as much data as

possible. the sort of human, sort of follow someone along, consult haight vate a source close to the president. those days may be here, but the real volume is in the vacuum cleaner and what you can slurp up from all around the world and process as best you can. i imagine that many people near that vacuum cleaner, if they think about it, are pretty amazed at the shear volume of what they are getting and what it translates to in terms of just how much intel the united states has about the plans and strategies of the various people and institutions and government that they want a heads up on what's going on out there. that information in order to be useful to policymakers and others has to be shared. that's the post-9/11 mandate. there is a security apparatus that has been developed at great cost to try to share it as much as possible without letting it escape the boundaries of the people that are charged with

protecting the information while making use of it. if you look at that, there is a rough cat gore zation -- categorization. and to the order of magazine tute, a million people are trusted with access to that, so much so that in retrospect maybe this was too much, that an army private could go and read state department cables. maybe there is some good cross-fertzation that can go on there. bradley manning is sort of like, you know guys, there is information you missed here. but it was sort of cost effective. the state department was using the defense departmentses networks and bradley manning was able to walk out with cd-rom. how rarely this happens should be a reason to take hard. because out of those million people if any one of them wanted

to walk out with a cd-rom, they could. my guess is it hasn't happened because the people pie identify with the mission. and perhaps, one hopes, if they see some abuse of this extremely powerful mechanism to gather data and to learn about what is going on in the world, possibly for bad end, one hopes there are internal channels with which to complain. to the extent that there aren't you see so far one person making the choice. whether it was a reasonable one or not will be exammed, should he go on trial, making the choice to go through channels rather than whatever beef he had that led him to do what he did. that's incredible. talk about a glass 999,999 full

rather than .1 empty, all he needed was -- as one man said, all he needed is a hairless cat to be the perfect villain. spew it out and let people comb over it? no. this guy gets into a collaboration with "the new york times" and der speigel and the big known parties. "hey, i have classified documents from the government." then you read the times. after 18 months of careful consideration k we've decided to tell you that the government is spying on people. details remain murky, but an anonymous person went on record to say this. that is all. and we wonder why journalism is in trouble.

[laughter] i'm just saying even on this first pass, it is not all that napster like. napster was a little more careful than julian assange was. now billions of dollars are being spent so it will become extremely inconvenient if you are part of the national security establishment and there will be no cd-roms allowed in your secured area, in which case you will bring your iphone and do your real work outside. all this is to say the government has ways, because the government is meant to live in a bubble to take the really big secrets and categorize them in a way that it doesn't get shared with a bunch of people. not much to see here. ok. the thing the government -- one

hopes the government would be learning from this s. that just as we are asking members of the government to identify much of the project that they should keep the secrets, even if there were a way to leak them, there ought to be a way to importune our citizens scompentities around the world to be enough of an identity with the government that they have an interest -- no interest in spewing osama bin laden's information, even if it were available. i think we can get there. the big picture is how to create an establishment where you see enough trust of the government in people, including proactively increasingly releasing information that has been habitually classified as secret, and i defy someone from the government to say, there is not enough classification. anyone you talk to is going to say, there is too much. let's figure out a way to get that stuff processed and out there, and should there be a

leak, let's make that possible. that's the way we move forward. >> thanks very much. i would like to ask you a couple of questions here. i'm a little embarrassed to admit i read a whole bunch of articles that were written by all -- i would ask whoever wrote this to elaborate on it. there was this concept of

targeted transparancy versus naked transparancy that either one of you referenced or one of you wrote about. >> someone on the panel is a murderer. >> right. right. whoever the murderer is, please speak up and elaborate on that. i thought it was fairly interesting. it dealt with complex change. >> so i take responsibility. >> the naked transparancy movement. it is unrelated to wikileaks. it is a way of thinking about

increasing transparancy in government. some of it is good, but some of it is ambiguous. for example, of course we need to have all sorts of information about what campaign contributions every member of congress takes, but all that transparancy gets used to produce all sorts of cynicism about the way congress works because everybody thinks everybody has been bought because you can always find a connection between the money they receive and the way they vote. and some people like the cynicism. other people, i would like to find a way to produce government where we weren't cynical about it. transparancy alone is not going to do that. i take responsibility for that part of it. we have to recognize that just throwing it all out there, and this was jeff's first point. just throwing it all out there doesn't necessarily produce more

understanding. it lven produces -- it often produces more scandal and more missed opportunities. that should lead us to think more sense reply about -- sensibly about the right right way to respond. >> the debate on wikileaks is clearly around first amendment agenda. when it s classified related to national security and when is it not? where ask the balance there? >> the standards are drawn with exquisite precision. this is part of our hard-won battle. there were a series of prosecutions during the post-world war i era when people

were prosecuted for their speech. in a series of heroic dissenting opinions by oliver wend he will holmes and my hero louis brandeis, the supreme court said you need a speech that poses a serious threat of lawless action, and in this that issuely means the publication of troops and movements. the espionage act itself is not controversial. even if we should accept limited requirements requires that you know that you are leaking classified national security information and that you intend to harm the government at the same time. efforts to invoke this act have been remarkably unsuccessful. you remember the scooter-libby leak, and the reason they were prosecuted for false statements rather than leak of information is it would have been impossible

for them to prove that he knew the information was classified and that he intended to harm the government. more recently the obama administration tried to prosecute an official named drake and reeled they could not because of the espionage act. that's where the law draws a line. the question now is -- the pressure now is to expand that definition and allow for the prosecution to allow not only for leakers under this definition but also publications themselves. that would represent a tremendous threat to the first amendment. i agree with many people who conclude that such a law would be unconstitutional and violate the first amendment if it passed. so for all those reasons, i don't think prosecution is a productive angle. >> you just wanted to say something? >> yes, i wanted to say that our political and government cultures make it difficult for people who because they are precisely in authority and maybe

have a chance to execute some discretion on whether to bring a prosecution or make an exception, there is a lot of pressure once they are in authority not to do it. there was something going around right after wikileaks happened that surmised if you were a law student and you had heard about wikileaks and maybe were going to click through to the handful of cabes that actually had been published of the 200,000, only a small fraction have been published, our students were told if you ever want a job in the federal government, you are not to read the pages. they are one link away. a child could click on them and read them, if the child could lead, but if you do that, your computer is not as classified machine, it is taken in, and

that exposes it to compromise by the enemy. that is manifestly absurd. the people in the government who gave anonymous quotes to the newspaper asking, you know what, if you are a zent student, don't click through on the cables. was it ok to read "the new york times"? well, it might not be good for yourself. if you read "the new york times" you are ok ba because you are not downloading them to your machine. the government officials who said that realized how absirdsurd it was but did not feel they had the authority to belay the fact it was classified. i think we just passed the anniversary where only recently were the pentagon papers released and declassified. being able to somehow match the needs of the situation so you don't end up with those kinds of absurdities would mean a lot. >> not only that, it made my job

particularly difficult for today because i couldn't read any of it. >> if we were to read it, you would have to cover your ears and say la-la-la. >> and using my nonlawyer privilegeer, i did some writing on the absurdity. they would say, these things are in the "new york times." do not read them on your computer. someone argued back with the only sensible rationale, which is that if within the government if a government machine had what was still classified material on it, then all sorts of declassification routines would have to be applied to the machines in the department. if doesn't make sense for the graduate students that were allowed to read it but for the department of transportation, it seemed like a prophilactic point. here in journalism is sort of

the meliorist saying things are going to get better. i'm going to offer a somewhat more tragic view than my lawyer counterparts may have suggested here. this may come from the fact that in my job i am expowe posed to the older random wild opinions that come flowing in, even to the "atlantic" and what we see from those. first it was i think larry russ tick who was pointing out the irrationality and piques that came in. even the president who is famous for his calm on all matters, it strikes me that in this relevant many, when it comes to anything involving executive authority and national security, president obama has been just as prone to pique and to a sense of how dare you challenge my executive authority as any of the successors. i think we saw that in a refusal to involve congress in a libyan

decision. so i'm suggesting number one a situation where a president is going to take on this mantle when he's in office. on john san's good news, the glass is all but one millionth part full, it strikes me that the un one millionth part eavetyementy -- empty is significant, because even the one millionth part was able to do quite a bit of damage. if you have a exposure to the american public, you realize if there is an absolute minimum of cynicism, there will be a large number of people who are outraged, angry, want to kill people in authority, et cetera, and so there is always going to be enough people to have the motivation. >> employed by the federal government. >> it will be more than zero. the vution thing is zero or more than zero. i suggest that more than zpeer

owe is likely. therefore its leak of possibly damaging information is in the same category of nuclear weapons and if any one of them goes off, we're in trouble. the world is full of pie owe toxins. there is a large category of things that any danger is a big danger. >> wow, a further note of gloom. there was a troubling note of opt nism when jonathan said citizens can be trained to appreciate their government and submit the information responsibly. and also larry's hope, which is an ernest one that people look wikileaks could be tamed and all the leaking organizations might act responsibly. there is a nuclear arms race and

sals as long as the alternative exists, the other stuff will go out in. -- out there. the latest gaut mow bay -- guantanamo bay trials prove this. there was a leak and assange retaliated by publishing by publishing all the files on the web immediately. he got angry and to prove he could do it, he did it. obviously that wasn't good for all the detainees. some will find it harder to be accepted by their countries for repatriation now that their criminal files are up there. what will be the consequence in this world? i want to put this on the table. larry in his brilliance talked abouted cost of a world where

everything is out there. i any of the great novel where hero was totally discredited when the government recorded his conversations with a friend and broadcast them. all of a sudden the whole country tells dirty jokes, saying things he doesn't mean to let off steam in private, and he's totally discredited. i wonder if this world is irresistable, if if it is, it is one that makes me very gloomy in deed. >> i share some of your concerns, particularly in the invasions of privacy that may be made possible peer to peer. that's a sue nba.comy problem we have with or without a good espionage act. the one piece of optimism i am clinging to is the prospect that

four of those precious secrets, and i don't want to lump everything together, you announce a zero toll rens policy. .

this is that. >> information is now in the same cry glory. -- category. it is very difficult to protect that.

what is a sensible strategy? and is not to stick your finger in the eye of the enemy. it is try to find a way to bring them a long. he will fail. the economy, it is subtle and sophisticated. i am with you. >> i understand the horrors of what we're looking at in the

future. way and worst way to react. to the questions from the audience? what are the implications of high profile in formation breaches of the general concept of freedom? >> it is one more reminder of the timeless balance that has struck. in general, the public should have a strong bias toward publication. there are exceptions. there is harm that can be done. it is impressive that the news organizations did try to correct this. >> i firmly agree. i firmly agree with the panel. the main reason not to prosecute him is that it is a cause rather than a symptom. the real thing we should be

focusing on is how we should be managing data resources. if you treat toothpaste and diamonds the same way, you will lose fewer toothbrush's but more diamonds. that is where we should be responding to this wikileaks thing. we are not. i have a response to my column that was a legal response.

they said you cannot distinguish him for possession of stolen property. this lawyer said the if you look at the s&p and not act -- the s&p an odd fact, and there is an intent to harm, you can prosecute. if you look at his writings, he moves gradually to becoming more like a journalist. in his early writings, he is much clearer. he said that he failed because the bases on first amendment. as a lawyer, what is the answer? >> is currently does not allow for the prosecution of publishers. you could amend the act to allow for the prosecution of prosecutors.

he might say assange and tended harm. once they're vulnerable, they might be subpoenaed. i see that some mr. lieberman is not concerned about maintaining its. what about the news organizations that should be to the? he wants to amend it to cover the times. allowing it to be the only defense, there's no defense at all. >> please, stay your name.

>> the traditional media were the ones that disseminated the information for wikileaks. when you put on top of that the fact that the traditional model is broken and there is a lack of financing, are we now in a world where traditional media can no longer afford to be independent investigators of abuse in crisis? is traditional media now regulated to a point where they are disseminate years much like the having to post -- december nader's -- disseminators much like the huffington post? >> this is absolutely the problem. they can afford to be journalists. newspapers were relatively

profitable. we are past that age. the business model of journalism is increasingly skewing the polar extremes. it turns out that pays. you get a more active audience that translates into better revenues. what is the alternative tax we do not have the business model yet. i am not sure there is an alternative yet. it is a way to fund this kind of journalism. it is a product of the increasing population in america.

the news shows that you came down the middle. that is what they did. they spoke to the middle. that is not the incentive of the economy of news. there are so many potential sources that you have to find your knee should -- your niche. this was only about 40 or 50 years. it is how we think of journalism today. >> this is a huge topic. i see the problem a little differently.

the business model of journalism is in tremendous flux. when it comes to international reporting, there is actually more investigating being done than during the golden age. the specific the years our state house coverage. -- failures are statehouse coverage. international, that is not quite the problem. we should have the panel. this is for later on. >> i am editor-in-chief of reuters. we have 3000 journalists around the world. we invest heavily.

>> i have never heard of you. >> if we had four 25 year-old on a stage that were active, would this be different? that seems see some of what is going on. it is a major way in which information is shared. some of the establishments this problem not is what is in the air. >> i think this goes nicely. it links up nicely with president obama of you has been the transparency.

he has to play his role. he has a big burden about protecting this. this is good. there needs to be other people in the mix. all the way down the spectrum, you have 25 year-old among the least responsible people in the world. this is how they will be. they will generally be talking about how great it is that stuff can go free. there ought to be more where it comes from. it it is probably worth it for the establishment to digest that the establishment. it is a new world in which we

are being forced. this is a corporate issue. begin do your best to maintain that the hypocrisy. they are aspiring to something more refined. he might have to reconcile the bases and hope that the world's is more forgiving -- and hope that the world is more forgiving. >> there is the claim the younger people do not care of privacy. there is celebrating the

benefits. if you look at the polls, and people want to be able to share in a protected way. they are upset when they lose jobs over face the pictures. >> they are not teenagers. >> young people are harms. [unintelligible] i imagine that younger people would be just as synthesized at other people. this was a necessity of filters.

>> here's one important difference. story consumption in the 1970's and 80's was very passive. he listened to the news. with your close friends to my talk about one in two subjects. your job was not to take a story and give it your 20 best friends. now i share it with the facebook page and give you my view on it. you can be critical responses -- or responsive. what happens with the news media, they say how do we say things as other people's will

want to spread for us? how do we get people to share it with others? this produces a generation that feels much more connected to talking about it and been critical about it than i was. >> this is constant human nature. there is leverage for it. even back in the day, we would share stories. >> back to the basics. the big question, back to basics. all governments live. that is what secretary gates

admitted to. the government tell a lie is exposed by a --governmental lie is exposed by a leak. should this be expressed? >> it to be less troubling. in the process of exposing the government to a life, you are exposing a billion other facts that our people in ways they should not be harmed. how you filter that? >> there is a new book out. he paints the story about how the effort to suppress a governmental lie led to this complicated series of secondary and tertiary false statements. by the time it got to the prosecution achieve a staff about when he barred the identified -- when he learned the identity, you have one journalist in jail and others who lost millions of dollars in legal fees.

the costs of prosecuting these lies is so overwhelming. i am very troubled. >> this calls to mind the dialogue that jeff and joe have. what should the constitutional standard be for when you can prosecute a leaking the government official when the document in question are clearly marked classifieds. but they're not harming the national security or lies. can you still go to jail as the leaker? if you projected on one of these

screens that have this to be the lunch menu but it is classified. i think the answer is that you cannot be prosecuted of that under the constitution. the pentagon case never went to trial. it ended up in a mistrial. we never quite resolve that. at least the supreme court was not willing to say the fact that it was classified in the release its was enough to go to

jail. it is enough for you to lose your job but we did not want to protect lies or affected the flow of information in a negative way unless we have to. >> it is worth restating the difference in the pentagon papers. that was a narrative. it had its own narrative. >> he did not make it all. he did not feel it is all in the public interest. >> i am on the business advisory council. if you talk about wikileaks as a proxy for the block this year -- blogosphere and move this into the corporate around, so much can be on this posting. to could be the filter? -- who could be the filter when

the news hits whatever it is going to hit? if you say the ceo was sick or there would be -- >> or sleeping with dogs. i don't care. >> my motif is that someone who is a huge fan of technologies, these are new instances of all problems. there is new leverage information out. they could be responsible news organization. they can be given prominence or not. >> has the law caught up with this?

>> my sense is that it will make it much worse. they would be threatened. they will be enlisted as well. i keep the dangers of over criminalizing might be just as great. >> just to push back a little bit. there is no justice in that statement. this is an old problem with new technology. the problem can be much greater with new technology. in the old days, you start a room about some chairmen on a board today a rumor of thousand chairman on the board -- you

start a rumor about some chairman on a board, the people will not repeat it. there is layers of responsibility. it can be everywhere. it builds the character that they have been effective. it is unjustly affected. that is a significant difference. it is a very different technology. you are assaulting all the networks with fake documents. cannot is doubtless been them -- you cannot establish them. this is very different from the idea of the marketplace of ideas. i do not know that we know the answer to that. it is stunt to link it to what will be the solution.

there will be venture capitalists here. their stock for the campus on the machine. -- they are stocking for the campus on the machine. they will not know which was the real credit card from the right one. >> this is not an answer to the problem. there will be so much. it is permanently attached to his name.

he is now running for president. the first thing that comes up is unspeakable sexual practice. he declined. now the name is associated with this practice. >> we miss you. can you give me an idea of the legal questions share -- here? what kind of prosecution is possible? >> i do not think we have a sense of that.

it to be so differs. the reality is recognizing that they cannot architect the activism. it is interesting. other field -- others feel like they will hit the strike and then retreat. maybe it is a way to call off the dogs. this might be counter to what i said. there will be an arms race. it is not clear that the big guys will win. >> there's so much information. it makes you not know what to even expect any more. this is no way to live. this is also not in equilibrium.

>> we have an interesting morphing. we recognize there are internal issues of information. we're not going to fight these out on a new technological battlefield. we will keep trying. >> and nothing i could sum it up even better. it is somewhere in the middle. i think the discussion this morning has elaborated with these panelists. it has increased our understanding about what this is. let's give these panelists a big round of applause. [applause]

>> they're holding a forum on the future and media. live coverage is on c-span2 at 9:30 eastern. in a few moments, and today's headlines live on "washington journal." then the martin luther king memorial project luncheon. and about 35 minutes, nicolas and about 35 minutes, nicolas