This is a very reasonable point, and I have some real questions about the recent failure to redact in the Wikileaks releases. That said...
> The question is not whether we should give corrupt organizations a pass (we shouldn't)
The majority of the criticism I've seen absolutely misses this step. It treats "Wikileaks is shady" or even "Assange might be a sex criminal" as a rebuttal to "this thing in this email you sent is incredibly unethical". Time and again, the discussion of Wikileaks ethics comes up only when they embarrass someone, as a defense for the person embarrassed.
I'm not sure what to do about that. Ideally, I think we'd do it the opposite way - the published emails that weren't ethical embarrassments are a way bigger violation of privacy. I'd like to see Wikileaks held to account for publishing harmless and personal messages, while seeing the leak subjects held to account where the things they did were actually bad.
> The question is not whether we should give corrupt organizations a pass (we shouldn't)
The majority of the criticism I've seen absolutely misses this step. It treats "Wikileaks is shady" or even "Assange might be a sex criminal" as a rebuttal to "this thing in this email you sent is incredibly unethical". Time and again, the discussion of Wikileaks ethics comes up only when they embarrass someone, as a defense for the person embarrassed.
I'm not sure what to do about that. Ideally, I think we'd do it the opposite way - the published emails that weren't ethical embarrassments are a way bigger violation of privacy. I'd like to see Wikileaks held to account for publishing harmless and personal messages, while seeing the leak subjects held to account where the things they did were actually bad.