A LEAK IN ONE’S WIKI AND OTHER SOCIAL EMBARRASSMENTS

[defrog]

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for journalism uncovering America’s deepest darkest secrets: first the Washington Post’s massive multi-part story about the US Govt’s outsourced, for-profit, massive and consequently incomprehensible intelligence community, then this week’s Afghan War Diary from Wikileaks.

The parallels are striking on multiple levels, not least the general lack of outrage from the public, apart maybe from the people who buy the govt’s “Investigative reports endanger national security” meme.

Of course, it’s not hard to figure out why the general response about the actual content of the stories has been underwhelming: both stories involve massive amounts of information that most of us don’t have the time to parse through, and both mirror policies and organizational relationships so outrageously complex that it’s possible the US govt probably can’t do anything about them, even if they wanted to (which they’ve made plain that they don’t, if only because it would mean admitting that something needs fixing) and even if the American People™ demanded it. Hell, it’s taken me over a week just to go through enough of it to come up with this post.

So the fallout (if any) will take time to materialize.

Meanwhile, there’s a much larger story here, and I think Jay Rosen and Xeni Jardin sum it up pretty well. Here it is:

What we’re seeing here is the new face of investigative journalism.

Rosen explains:

If you go to the Wikileaks Twitter profile, next to “location” it says: Everywhere. Which is one of the most striking things about it: the world’s first stateless news organization. [snip] Wikileaks is organized so that if the crackdown comes in one country, the servers can be switched on in another. This is meant to put it beyond the reach of any government or legal system. [snip]

Appealing to national traditions of fair play in the conduct of news reporting misunderstands what Wikileaks is about: the release of information without regard for national interest. In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it. But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new.

Furthermore, as Jardin points out, it’s the govt's very emphasis on secrecy illiustrated in the Top Secret America report that makes things like Wikileaks possible in the first place:

This moment is the natural counterpoint to the massive, unprecedented buildup of secrecy and surveillance documented in that investigative report.

Do Wikileaks and other "distributed anti-secrecy networks" that will surely follow have the power to topple governments, or set into motion massive political change?

Whether Julian Assuange or Wikileaks’ sources will (or should) go to jail is another story, though it’s worth noting that Wikileaks didn’t just post a bunch of documents without regard for their contents – they vetted and verified them, withheld stuff they deemed too sensitive for release, and recruited three major news organizations to frame the story for them.

Anyway, I’m fascinated by this idea that, with the US govt (and others) so obsessed with secrecy that even copyright laws are deemed a matter of national security, we may have reached a stage where the only way to break through that veil and hold govts accountable for their actions is to create stateless news outlets like Wikileaks who don’t play by the rules.

Whether that results in reforms or crackdowns remains to be seen. I think that will depend on the willingness of major media outlets to take up the story, apply pressure themselves and not get distracted by the old “blame the messenger” game. I have my doubts about that.

Either way, we haven’t heard the last from Wikileaks, and govts will find it increasingly difficult to manage their own narrative as a result.

Then again, in a world where all information can be tailored to yr own sociopolitical biases, maybe that doesn’t matter so much anymore.

It’s no secret.

This is dF

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