This is a guest editorial by Denis Simonet, President of the Pirate Party Switzerland, and gives his personal view of WikiLeaks. 1

Concerns of the Pirate Party

I'll begin with the Pirate Party. We stand for democracy, free expression and media freedom. In order for a democracy to function the press must perform a watchdog function. By means of the media each individual citizen is informed of what is happening in the country. For this to function the media must be able to guarantee shielding of its sources. The Federal Court has recently once more confirmed this, as it decided that comments in on-line articles of newspapers fall under this protection. I have written about this.

Whistleblowing

Now we have the so-called whistleblowing platforms, the most prominent example of which is WikiLeaks. Wikipedia defines the concept of whistleblower in the following way:

A whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about alleged wrongdoing occurring in an organization or body of people. Usually this person would be from that same organization. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health/safety violations, and corruption.

Newspapers publish information every day that reaches them in all kinds of ways. Whistleblower platforms are doing exactly the same thing. The German magazine Der Spiegel, for instance, even published the diplomatic dispatches of Cablegate before WikiLeaks made them public. Why, then, do we need WikiLeaks at all?

The reason is obvious. Investigative journalism has for cost reasons been neglected in recent years and civil society actors like WikiLeaks have taken over their job. Nevertheless, WikiLeaks is not a platform that must exist forever. The challenge is, above all, to address the problem of a digital policy. My (and our) wish is that the media resume their investigative journalism and once again function as watchdogs of our democracy. Then whistleblowing platforms like WikiLeaks would be superfluous. For exactly this reason we must realize that a digital policy is important and should not be neglected any longer. And worldwide, for that matter!

And what has Switzerland to do with it?

As Switzerland, with its federalism and direct democracy, is a country that functions well, I see it as a predestined candidate to assume the vanguard role in this matter of digital policy. For this reason the Pirate Party Switzerland, together with politicians like Juso-President Cédric Wermuth or the Green's National Councilman Bastien Girod, ask that Switzerland seriously consider Assange's asylum request. It has nothing to do with the rape accusations coming from Sweden. As every other private citizen Assange also has a constitutional right to privacy. The details do not concern us. The assumption of innocence also applies. Unfortunately this has lost meaning of late.

I have no contact with WikiLeaks.

Even if I had the opportunity to meet Julian Assange I don't know where he is. I cannot contact him and I am in not in the least way in contact with WikiLeaks. I also do not have any intention of contacting anyone at WikiLeaks. The announcement of wikileaks.ch was not by agreement and I see no reason why we should talk with WikiLeaks. We are concerned about digital policy and Switzerland as a model democracy. We advised Assange with this in mind. We explained the advantages of Switzerland and how things function here. We wasted no words on wikileaks.ch.

To say it once and for all: We are not WikiLeaks and we possess no content from WikiLeaks. The Pirate Party simply operates a (legal!) forwarding service for WikiLeaks to emphasize that there are important digital policy affairs that are being ignored. We are not activists, we are a political party! We will underscore this again in our open letter to the Federal Council. Whistleblowing platforms are not unqualifiedly good.

It's important to me that WikiLeaks (and whistleblowing in general) be critically appraised. These platforms are in today's situation necessary. But the content must not be considered as 100% authentic and future leaks may contradict the basic principles of the Pirates. Representatives who work for and in the name of their country are in a large sense public persons. To date there has thus occurred no infringement of the rights of an individual. If WikiLeaks were to begin compromising the constitutional rights of the individual the Pirate Party (and I myself) would have to distance ourselves from it. I look critically on the announced publication of bank data. I hope that no account data, private conversations, or the like, will be made publicly accessible. In this case privacy rights would be violated, which neither I nor the Pirate Party can condone. Our objective is a prudent digital policy, not the publication of unsavory information about the United States. We call for Switzerland to act on questions of digital policy.

• 1. http://www.denissimonet.ch/2010/12/06/was-ich-uber-wikileaks-denke