Information terrorism: fearing Wikileaks

Of all the different Wikileaks reactions that have emerged this week, one in particular is of Infocultish interest.  That Web 2.0 whistleblower project is really about information terror, says one reporter.

WikiLeaks seems to me to to be functioning less in the tradition of good old-fashioned muckrakers, and more like anti-privacy terrorists.

Jamie McIntyre sees no social benefit intended by Assange et al.  Instead, this longtime CNN reporter thinks the information is, at best, "BFOTO", "a blinding flash of the obvious."  At worst, well, things will be hard for public relations people and journalists.

I don’t envy the government spokespeople who have to argue for perspective in the face of skeptical media and politicians more interested in inflaming than informing the public.

(Shouldn't news media be skeptical?)

But McIntyre doesn't stop there, with professional stress.  Instead he ties WikiLeaks to a larger issue of secrecy and politics:

Well it certainly more difficult [sic] to live in a world where there are no secrets, where nothing can stay private.  How do get sources to help the U.S. fight terrorism, when there’s no guarantee that they can be protected?  How can governments quietly cooperate on diplomatically sensitive matters if everything has to be done in public, where posturing and political gain have to be part of the calculus?

Quick, someone send him a copy of Brin's Transparent Society!  

This is a key argument to make in the fearing digital media universe, that the technology corrodes social order, ultimately threatening human life.  

McIntyre goes even further, brooding about privacy in general, drawing attention to what he calls "The Naked bottom line":

It’s not any one particular disclosure that bothers me. It’s the idea that nothing can be private. There are no state secrets, no matter how important, or how vital to our collective security and well-being.

In a way, it’s like those full body scanners at the airport.  They produce grainy, indistinct, black-and-white images, but with basic image-enhancement software they can easily be converted to full-color pictures that leave nothing to the imagination. And you know somebody, somewhere will store them, and somehow, despite the best efforts of those in charge, someone with no respect for privacy will obtain them.  There are only two things you can do: rail against the loss of privacy, or just get used to walking around naked. Increasingly for governments and private citizens alike, the only option is the latter, metaphorically speaking.

There's an easy, delicious irony in McIntyre's concern for governmental privacy, when those are the same governments peeling away our personal privacy.

(via Howard Kurtz @ Washington Post)

Comments

[peter naegele]

I would like to see Jamie's reaction to the google suite for govt. being rolled out!

[Bryan Alexander]

Nothing on the Wikileaks blog or Twitter feed yet.