a moral void?

From Christian Caryl's NYRB post on 'Wikileaks in the Moral Void' -

The Internet has brought countless benefits to mankind, but, as we see now, it also creates incalculable potential for mischief: it amplifies the threats of schoolyard bullies, empowers terrorists and fringe groups, and opens up huge new spaces to technologically savvy criminals. Now that data can be shared, linked, and exploited with near-instantaneous ease, the risks entailed by the publication of information mushroom out of all recognition; there is simply no way that any editor, however well-meaning, can make an informed judgment about the potential repercussions entailed by the release of vast amounts of confidential data of this sort. But this is where we are, and I wonder whether preaching restraint can have much effect. The technology has outpaced the ethics, and I wonder whether the ethics can ever catch up again.

Advocates of total information freedom might object that I am overlooking the fact that the tug-of-war between journalists and governments remains a deeply lopsided one. They might contend that government bureaucracies, with their enormous resources and closed cultures, still have far more power to control information than any Julian Assange; The Web’s guerrilla leakers are merely trying to even the playing field. I do have some sympathy with this argument. The WikiLeaks revelation that the State Department urged its employees to collect biometric data on foreign diplomats serving at the United Nations, while chilling, confirms what we already knew: that the modern-day national security state has at its disposal information technologies and resources that enable it to map our lives with a precision and power that will be extremely difficult to constrain by the rule of law. (Indeed, I may be particularly sensitive to this fact, since I’m one of the few American citizens to have had my biometric data recorded by the US government; that was a precondition for receiving a press card during my last visit to Iraq. I am allowed to be skeptical, I think, about whether the Department of Defense deleted this information when my accreditation ran out.)

So, yes, journalists should certainly strive to prevent abuses of the culture of secrecy. And, of course, the United States still offers plenty of room for precisely that by allowing for the possibility of political competition and public accountability—including disclosure of secret documents through the Freedom of Information Act. But the journalists (or whatever we decide to call them) who perform this justified oversight can only do so by exercising transparency in their own right—about their own motives, methods, and intentions. (One of the sad ironies of this latest chapter in the WikiLeaks saga is the revelation that Assange chose to punish The New York Times by denying it direct access to the cables because the paper had earlier published a story examining his management style and the personal controversies surrounding him; presumably Assange would denounce this as censorship if one of his targets were to indulge in such behavior. The Guardian ended up sharing its own copies with the Times, thus, in effect, leaking the leak.)

What, precisely, are the criteria by which WikiLeaks is deciding to release the cables it opts to publish? How are WikiLeaks and its print media partners editing them? According to a vetting process described by The Guardian and The New York Times, they have been deleting the names of some of the people mentioned in the cables—but not others. Why, precisely? If their goal is indeed “to open up the inner workings of a closed and complex system,” then shouldn’t they be publishing everything? And now we hear that Assange has been uploading a huge file of other confidential documents to various supporters around the world as “insurance,” to be published in the event that hostile governments succeeded in silencing him. (Meanwhile, in yet another twist, Assange was arrested in London this morning on charges of rape and faces possible extradition to Sweden.) The targets of that megaleak appear to include Bank of America and BP. Will the revelations in these files include commercial data on the firms’ customers? Perhaps their account numbers and credit card info? Of course the release of such personal information could cause enormous harm, but if it’s full disclosure we’re after, why not? (Apologies for the sarcasm—but you can’t help but wonder.) And why wasn’t this information published earlier?

What’s really at stake here is whether the technology, with all its intrinsic power and instantaneity, will allow for the introspection necessary for an enterprise like this. So far, though, I don’t see any convincing answer. And this is a much bigger question than the fate of WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.