In the wake of the media and political fallout from the leaking of the US diplomatic cables by the WikiLeaks website, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies held a three-day symposium to examine the issue of open source on the internet, focusing on the leaking of the US diplomatic cables as a case study. The event, which brought together Arab diplomats and researchers from various Arab countries, was intended for the discussion of a number of different points related to the emergence of the WikiLeaks phenomenon. Some of the themes of the discussion included:

• Open source material, information leaks and challenges to the media: this was a look at how media, and particularly the printed press, was being impacted by the open-source model and by the phenomenon of information leaks in general.
  
  
• The Leaked US Memos: Participants discussed the importance of these memos from a historical point of view. Here, the leaking of the documents was seen not only from the point of view of historical narrative, but also as an event in itself, one which was related to several other political developments on the world stage, as well as an event which will influence the future shape of both secret and announced diplomacy.
  
  
• The Procedures of Diplomacy: The third theme was a focus on the Arab world, as seen through these US diplomatic cables, with particular attention being paid to issues of security and human rights.

The discussions throughout the symposium were lively, and the participants walked away with a consensus on the importance of Open Source materials to ending the monopolistic control of the media and information by Arab regimes. The symposium guests also got a chance to have realistic, policy-specific discussions about Arab-US relations and Arabic government policies as well.