fatvegan

I've been on the Wikileaks mailing list for a few months now, and it looks like things are starting to speed up. It's trying to create an anonymous database of of leaked documents, that can be reviewed and evaluated by the public. I reckon it's a fantastic idea and wish there was more I could do to help them.

The criticisms of it have been that people will just release random lies and propaganda. Except that kind of misses the point. Anyway can publish a lie on their website. A lie only has as much credibility as the website publishing it. If Wikileaks is never able to be able to distinguish between lies and leaks, then it will never gain any credibility. The idea is that it should be the public and not bureaucrats who decide if something is worth releasing to the public. You should have to convince a lot of people that they don't need to know something before you can prevent them from knowing it. That's the rather ridiculous paradox of government secrecy, but I think that the burden of that paradox should be placed on those who want to keep secrets.

The only real difference Wikileaks makes is that it attempts to break the link between leaks and resulting punishment. Organisations shouldn't be able to feel confident that their secrets are safe because they can threaten their employees with prison or violence in the event of a leak. They need to convince their employees that those secrets really deserve to remain secrets. If the people who clearly need to know this information can't be trusted to agree that it should be kept secret then who decides?

The Wikileaks folk seem to have a lot more nous than I'd originally thought. At the beginning it was all a bit confused, and unclear if anything was happening at al. I recently sent them an email with a few suggestions about random things in response to an email they'd sent out. They replied with "Thanks. But we've already thought of all that." Which is always very encouraging.

The idea conjures up dreams of a Cryptonomicon type haven and I wonder how many of the Wikileaks guys have read that. I'm not convinced that real anonymity is ever truly possible on the internet. Especially since for the people who need it the whole network surrounding them is controlled by the people wanting to know who they are. I don't think the internet has added a lot to the amount of information shuffling around China for instance.