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JULIAN ASSANGE, WE WILL GET YOU FOR THIS
Like some of you, I’ve been following the whole Wikileaks saga, to include the latest releases that have caused much diplomatic blushing, fist-shaking and threats of prosecution.
As usual.
Ever since the Afghanistan war diaries were released (and bear in mind that Wikileaks was around long before that, but no one cared), the mainstream debate tends to center less on the content of the leaks and more on whether or not Julian Assange can be/should be arrested and rendered to Gitmo (as well as, say, any journalist who publishes anything Wikileaks puts out).
Personally, I’m less interested in whether Wikileaks should be releasing all this stuff, and more interested in the fact that they’re doing it at all – or, more to the point, that they see a need to do it.
Govt secrets are as old as govts. That’s to be expected to a point, particularly with totalitarian govts. But in the US, the concept has achieved a sort of hyper-reality in the last 60-70 years or so that arguably ramped up during the Cold War Paranoia and Vietnam, then went critical mass under Nixon and then achieved a sort of weird national-security singularity event under the Bush/Cheney Posse.
I’m working off the top of my head with that timeline. But you get the general idea.
The point is that we now live in an age where govts feel entitled to do all sorts of things in secret in the name of national security – whether those things actually have anything to do with national security or not. And an argument could be made that a representative govt should be more open about what its doing on behalf of yr safety.
Sure, you probably don’t need to know everything – and certainly not the stuff that might tip the govt’s hand on a sensitive operation. But the govt – if it had its way – would just as soon not tell you ANYTHING. That’s why a free press is such a key element to democracy that the Founding Fathers stuck in the First Amendment. It’s there to watch the govt and tell you what yr govt is up to, good, bad or ugly, so that You The People can hold them accountable.
Only, as Jon Stewart likes to point out on weeknights, it doesn’t always work that way.
Which is why I see Wikileaks as kind of a high-tech reaction to this era of endless govt hyper-secrecy and media complicity – an experiment with the hypothesis that the trick to ending hyper-secrecy and bringing some balance to power is mass data dumps that, if nothing else, may prove that the world won’t end and the terrorists won’t take over if this stuff goes public.
Or maybe it won’t change a damn thing. The Hypersecrecy infrastructure is pretty much in place, and the US govt’s overall reaction has been to try and change the debate from “Is this content true?” to “Wikileaks is a criminal organization”.
In fact, Peter King wants Wikileaks classified as a terrorist organization. Which is stupid, but telling.
So I’m not losing a whole lot of sleep over Wikileaks, no.
But then they’re not leaking MY secrets, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Keep on leaking,
This is dF
EDITED TO ADD [11.30.10]: Dan Gillmor asks some good and relevant questions that journalists (or anyone, really) ought to be asking the US govt, Julian Assange and Sarah Palin about the Wikileaks thing.
A particularly good one for Assange:
As usual.
Ever since the Afghanistan war diaries were released (and bear in mind that Wikileaks was around long before that, but no one cared), the mainstream debate tends to center less on the content of the leaks and more on whether or not Julian Assange can be/should be arrested and rendered to Gitmo (as well as, say, any journalist who publishes anything Wikileaks puts out).
Personally, I’m less interested in whether Wikileaks should be releasing all this stuff, and more interested in the fact that they’re doing it at all – or, more to the point, that they see a need to do it.
Govt secrets are as old as govts. That’s to be expected to a point, particularly with totalitarian govts. But in the US, the concept has achieved a sort of hyper-reality in the last 60-70 years or so that arguably ramped up during the Cold War Paranoia and Vietnam, then went critical mass under Nixon and then achieved a sort of weird national-security singularity event under the Bush/Cheney Posse.
I’m working off the top of my head with that timeline. But you get the general idea.
The point is that we now live in an age where govts feel entitled to do all sorts of things in secret in the name of national security – whether those things actually have anything to do with national security or not. And an argument could be made that a representative govt should be more open about what its doing on behalf of yr safety.
Sure, you probably don’t need to know everything – and certainly not the stuff that might tip the govt’s hand on a sensitive operation. But the govt – if it had its way – would just as soon not tell you ANYTHING. That’s why a free press is such a key element to democracy that the Founding Fathers stuck in the First Amendment. It’s there to watch the govt and tell you what yr govt is up to, good, bad or ugly, so that You The People can hold them accountable.
Only, as Jon Stewart likes to point out on weeknights, it doesn’t always work that way.
Which is why I see Wikileaks as kind of a high-tech reaction to this era of endless govt hyper-secrecy and media complicity – an experiment with the hypothesis that the trick to ending hyper-secrecy and bringing some balance to power is mass data dumps that, if nothing else, may prove that the world won’t end and the terrorists won’t take over if this stuff goes public.
Or maybe it won’t change a damn thing. The Hypersecrecy infrastructure is pretty much in place, and the US govt’s overall reaction has been to try and change the debate from “Is this content true?” to “Wikileaks is a criminal organization”.
In fact, Peter King wants Wikileaks classified as a terrorist organization. Which is stupid, but telling.
So I’m not losing a whole lot of sleep over Wikileaks, no.
But then they’re not leaking MY secrets, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Keep on leaking,
This is dF
EDITED TO ADD [11.30.10]: Dan Gillmor asks some good and relevant questions that journalists (or anyone, really) ought to be asking the US govt, Julian Assange and Sarah Palin about the Wikileaks thing.
A particularly good one for Assange:
Some government is going to play you -- and by extension the rest of us -- for suckers, if this hasn't already happened, by arranging a strategic leak of disinformation. How are you preparing for that?