Live With the WikiLeakable World or Shut Down the Net. It's Your Choice

[Catherina]

Live With the WikiLeakable World or Shut Down the Net. It's Your Choice

Western political elites obfuscate, lie and bluster – and when the veil of secrecy is lifted, they try to kill the messenger

by John Naughton


'Never waste a good crisis" used to be the catchphrase of the Obama team in the runup to the presidential election. In that spirit, let us see what we can learn from official reactions to the WikiLeaks revelations.

The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.

And as the backlash unfolds – first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly "discovering" that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the US government attempting to intimidate Columbia students posting updates about WikiLeaks on Facebook – the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured. The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down.

Consider, for instance, how the views of the US administration have changed in just a year. On 21 January, secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a landmark speech about internet freedom, in Washington DC, which many people welcomed and most interpreted as a rebuke to China for its alleged cyberattack on Google. "Information has never been so free," declared Clinton. "Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable."

She went on to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, Barack Obama had "defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity." Given what we now know, that Clinton speech reads like a satirical masterpiece.

One thing that might explain the official hysteria about the revelations is the way they expose how political elites in western democracies have been deceiving their electorates.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks

[bemildred]

1. Correct.

Nice piece.

[movonne]

2. K&R....a must read...

[Robb]

3. "Nothing irritates internet users like censorship, whether real or apparent."

[monmouth]

4. The irony here is that Assange could possibly be Times "Man

of the Year." How delicious.

[Iterate]

5. Oh Clinton, you nailed it.

"Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable."

Makes me all hopey.

Breaking: "MasterCard pulls plug on WikiLeaks payments"

Not so hopey.

[stray cat]

6. Just like living with people hacking and using your social security number, credit and identity

[NNN0LHI]

7. Spent most my life believing the government's version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident

Don't think that one would have been able to be pulled off with the internet in place back then. We used to have to wait for the canisters of actual film to be flown back from the other side of the world to be edited and aired on TV back then to get a glimpse of what was going on there.

Don

[David Zephyr]

8. K&R

Catherina!

[Catherina]

10. Hi David!

:hug:

[DainBramaged]

9. Meh

Obama just sold us out and this is important?

[snot]

11. K&R'd -- terrific article.

[kgnu_fan]

12. kick

[xiamiam]

13. kk and r..nt

[kgnu_fan]

14. knr