One of the most important and influential innovations over the past two years has been the creation of the organization "Wikileaks". This website is a non-for-profit media source that publishes confidential documents from anonymous sources. These documents tend to revolve around American issues and conflicts, such as the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The governments that are in question, such as the United States, states that “We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.” The United States government has strongly opposed Wikileaks because they claim that the documents are meant to be highly classified and it could be a national security risk to the entire nation.
This goes along well with what we have been discussing in our American Studies class. With the Perilous Times project, we have been asked to investigate civil liberties issues in our specific wartime era. The question is this: Like in our Perilous Times project, are the government's attempts at censoring Wikileaks a violation of our free speech? Personally, since we are at a time of war, I do not believe that this is a free speech issue. Since Wikileaks is a free source, that means anybody, including terrorists in the Middle East, can obtain these files. In order to carry out our duties in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that our enemy not obtain any information that could compromise the mission at hand. So I do agree with the government's desire to stop these harmful documents from being released, as it actually is a matter of national security for us all.
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