by Scott

Wiki Wiki Wiki… Oi! Oi! Oi!

I had to begin with the Oz chant here because I only recently learned that Wikileaks is in large part run by an Australian, Julian Assange. Wikileaks is a “multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public[1]” and is aimed at creating ‘good governance.’ Assange is by all accounts a difficult man to speak with, currently stating that he feels his life may be in danger due to Wikileaks’ involvement in some leaking of classified US military material.

Assange may be correct to worry on at least one account. One of his idols, Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of The Pentagon Papers, recently stated that the current US administration is by far the most effective at finding and silencing leakers of recent US governments. He also agreed that Assange might be under personal threat if he is located.

There are a number of important questions you could ask regarding Wikileaks. One might be: good governance according to who? Another might be: do the Wikileaks folk have their own dark agenda? Or: do Wikileaks really just want to sell themselves to Google for a couple of billion dollars ?

Most basically, will knowing the truth actually help?

Wikileaks takes the position that if all the dirty little secrets of the corporate and government world are known, then it will be more difficult for them to have things all their own way.  Thus we find entries on the site such as ‘Scientology UK Annual Returns, 2008,’ ‘Secret recording of the LDS temple endowment ceremony, 2009,’ and ‘Boeing 737-200 maintenance manuals, August 2007.’ Some of the things on Wikileaks are items you might previously have found by searching the internet for websites or chat rooms dedicated to specific topics, others – like the Iraq footage – are not. The overall theory is, as I understand it, if the truth is known then lies lose their power to manipulate. So – good governance is equated with knowing the truth.

The idea of free information has been attractive to many over the years. I recall reading a novel by the Strugatski brothers, giants of Russian science fiction that they are, where information on the whereabouts of anyone on earth was freely available at all times. It seemed to me as a reader that freedom from secrecy might mean freedom from paranoia. Of course in that book, Beetle in the Anthill, there turned out to be ever-receding secret plots and paranoias, and no neat resolution at the end.

Closer to home, politics reveals that in many cases that facts do not help with governance. Currently we are seeing a revival of the debate about asylum seekers – and coincidentally or not, yesterday there arrived in my email a circular about ‘illegals,’ referring to refugees as ‘illegal’ border crossers. Interesting in a number of ways, but among them in the sense that it is well established – and no secret – that refugees are in no sense ‘illegal.’ This has been tested in Australia’s High Court, as well as being for a long time part of the internationally endorsed UN treaties.

So we know that refugees are not illegal. But this does not stop some from continually, and deliberately, mislabelling them as such. Also, it does not stop many countries around the world imprisoning refugees, at great expense to themselves and their constituents. It seems that access to the facts, after all, is no guarantee of good governance.

Another example of this might be cigarettes. Despite the best efforts of tobacco companies to hide the truth, it has emerged that cigarette smoking is – guess what – bad for you. For some time now we have known very clearly that there is a product which, when used in the manner designed, kills you. Despite this very clear and disturbing knowledge, cigarettes are legal in every country in the world that they were before we so clearly had this news. Less available and less used, but still there.

So maybe this idea that perfect information sharing will lead to good governance is slightly misguided. Perhaps we should prefer to think that fewer dark secrets will slowly lead us to better approximations of good governance, self-interest and profit-making notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, it sounds pretty good to me.

Where Wikileaks goes next will be interesting. If they sell to Google that would be an anticlimax, and disappointing. Where Assange and his associates get their money is a good question though – for all I know he’s independently wealthy, and just likes to annoy governments for something to do; a thought that makes me a little envious.

Currently the trajectory we’re watching seems to be leading to the eventual plugging of leaks on the side of the US government, with some kind of legal or other action against Assange at the same time to prevent him from trying to publish anything he does receive. One wonders if the US government has stopped to consider that there have been leakers and publishers for a long, long time before Wikileaks arrived.

Having said that, it seems that there are plenty of other places and governments that are worthy of leaking – too many to list here – and so even if the US leaks stop, there are a great many other windmills at which to tilt,  and possibly wobble about. In the meantime, would you like to help?

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[1] Taken from wikileaks.org on 25.6.10