President Bill Clinton discussed Wikileaks in a keynote speech at the Dreamforce conference today.
Clinton used the Wikileaks issue to illustrate the theme of his discussion, which centered on instability in the world.
“What you do not see is how many people were exposed,” Clinton said about Wikileaks, referring to informants providing information about their native countries to the United States.
As a result, people may be killed and careers will be ruined, Clinton said.
He discussed the leak and the role U.S. Army Bradley Manning had in sharing the data with Wikileaks. He said it turns out Manning was angry with his father, a lifetime member of U.S. Army. He said Manning “broke into” the data he leaked, which had been given to the U.S. Department of Defense by the U.S. State Department after 9/11.
It is unclear if Manning broke in and we do not know how much the role his Dad played in why he released the data.
Clinton spent most of his talk discussing the world, the state of the economy and politics. He used Wikileaks to ilustrate the issues in the world – more than anything else.
But it is clear that he views the damages as more significant than the opportunities that may come, now that the Wikileaks data is available on the Internet.
