The Foreign Service Journal, March 2011

abroad (e.g., development, scholar- ships, demining, cooperation on crime, etc.). Perhaps the compilers of this data dump prefer military options that may have to be relied upon as a result of diplomatic failures. Simply put, the world is not safer or better informed because of this release. But the Foreign Service can perhaps take some small consolation from the fact that more people now know that we do good work. Let’s get back to it, when the phones stop ringing. T. Joe Reik FSO Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization Washington, D.C. The Value of Privacy A friend’s relative, inherently suspi- cious of government, thought the dis- closures by WikiLeaks were a wonder- ful thing. I asked him how he would feel if he had consulted a lawyer about a very personal matter, such as a bank- ruptcy or a divorce, and then found a full copy of the lawyer’s notes to his file now available for public viewing on the Web. I then suggested that my friend’s rel- ative should see the Foreign Service as acting as the nation’s lawyer abroad, consulting with our adversaries as well as our allies, and realize that the results of our consultations deserve the same privacy and respect as he would want his own consultations with his own lawyer to have. The result? Probably no decrease in his mistrust of government, but per- haps some increase in being willing to acknowledge that private communica- tions deserve to be protected from 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 1 1 S P E A K I N G O U T I am less troubled by what WikiLeaks has revealed than by the precedent the posting of our cables establishes.