We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Many governments would benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. Wikileaks will facilitate safety in the ethical leaking movement.

After all, nobody has posted fake or slanderous information on Wikipedia, and…wait, they have haven't they? But it's pretty easy to identify bad information on a site devoted to recorded facts like a public encyclopedia, while a site for posting information never intended for public eyes is exactly the opposite. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project of Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and writer of the blog Secrecy Newswas invited by Wikileaks to join the site's advisory board and declined. "I just think they're naive," Aftergood told Time magazine. "They have a very idealistic view of the nature of leaking and its impact. They seem to think that most leakers are crusading do-gooders who are single-handedly battling one evil empire or another. Anyone who's been in the business for any length of time knows leakers leak because they are trying to advance an agenda of their own, or because they have some personality or psychological quirk that leads them to disclose information out of official channels."

Wikileaks removes the essential requirement of courage from whistleblowing, allowing the World Wide Web to do the same kind of indiscriminate unethical information-laundering performed by the Robert Novaks of the media. What that will produce is anyone's guess, but the informed guesses are not hopeful. "[Wikileaks] is problematic because it's going to be the preferred cloak of a malicious person," said Guy Dehn, director of Public Concern at Work, a British advocacy group for whistle-blowers. "Whistle-blowing works when it is done openly," Dehn argues, correctly. "That's what helps drive the accountability." "Lots of people like a salacious rumor and may not care whether an expert thinks it's true or not, and it may cause substantial damage in the interim," adds Professor John Palfrey, a Harvard specialist in international law.

Beyond naïveté, there are other ominous hints that those behind Wikileaks may not be entirely ethical. Blogger John Young was contacted by Wikileaks to engage in fraud on its behalf.

"We expect the domain to come under the usual political and legal pressure," the e-mail to Young stated. "The policy for .org requires that registrants details not be false or misleading. It would be an easy play to cancel the domain unless someone were willing to stand up and claim to be the registrant. This person does not need to claim any other knowledge or involvement. Will you be that person?"

Instead of agreeing, Young published the e-mail on his site, www.crytome.org. He believes that Wikilinks itself is a scam, perhaps created by the C.I.A. or a foreign intelligence organization. Naïve or sinister, real or fake, Wikileaks is a website that has the potential to do tremendous harm while giving the unscrupulous, the unethical, and the cowardly the cyber-playground of their dreams.