Happy new year to one and all. May it be a fulfilling and financially prosperous year for you, although the way Europe is imploding, the US is continuing to struggle and with China likely to do something about reining in inflation, I have my doubts about the second point. Whatever is in store, however, I'm not in the business of getting everyone down about 2011 just a few days into it, so let's talk about something else - Wikileaks.
I have to say that while I find the current Wikileaks saga fascinating, I was somewhat hesitant to blog about it. The reason for this is that the mainstream press has been all over the story for weeks - 5 pages in the Sunday Age 3 weeks ago were dedicated to it alone and there have been daily updates since - hence there are more than enough points of view out there without me adding my amateur 2 cents worth. Encouragingly, a lot of the commentary has been quite thoughtful and well structured, perhaps demonstrating that journalists are prepared to dig deep and do their best work for matters that are close to their hearts. Whatever the reason, there have been some very valid and well-expressed concerns raised about the right to free speech and attempts by governments to curtail and prevent it for no better reason than they don't want egg on their face. That said, there are some other matters relevant to the whole debate about Wikileaks that I think have been missed by the mainstream press or at least glossed over. These issues I think are worth examining in more detail, hence my decision to jump into the fray.
Perhaps the most exciting and terrifying thing about the Internet is the unprecedented access to information humanity now enjoys. While a lot of what is on the Internet comprises uninformative rubbish such as social networking sites, dig deeper and you pretty much have the entire wealth of human knowledge at your fingertips. This information can then be shared instantaneously between users in a manner that would have been unthinkable even 30 years ago using tools such as e-mail.
The other feature of the Internet which endears it to hackers and hell-raisers of all persuasion is that it is a truly global network and is therefore more or less completely incapable of being regulated or limited by governments or courts within a particular jurisdiction. Witness the recent unfortunate events surrounding Nick Riewoldt, Nick dal Santo and the jilted 17 year old schoolgirl - despite court injunctions in Victoria prohibiting their publication, pictures of the players nonetheless spread like wildfire thereby rendering the court order essentially useless. Similarly, when the Victorian government attempted to block the broadcasting of the first "Underbelly" series some years ago, it took literally a day for pirate copies to reach Victoria from other states via the Internet.
How governments around the world (or even domestically) ultimately decide to deal with the Internet is going to be very interesting, seeing most of the time they can barely agree on what day of the week it is. However, the generally cavalier approach adopted by Internet users to the spreading of information does raise some real concerns about how governments and companies can maintain security of information that is truly sensitive in nature and needs to remain confidential. Which is why I have some sympathy for governments that are trying to limit or control Wikileaks.
I think in this vein a couple of key points have been largely ignored in all the hysteria surrounding Julian Assange's arrest. First, there is a big difference to leaking information that is merely embarrassing to governments and exposes their shortcomings as opposed to information that ought, in the public interest, to remain confidential. I fully support the release of any document which, for instance, shows that Bush and Cheney ignored clear warnings from the CIA about September 11 or exposes Kevin Rudd as a micro-managing, foul-tempered control-freak (not that the last one is a particularly explosive revelation). Hopefully the threat of these sorts of revelations will prompt governments to conduct their affairs in a less nefarious and more open way. On the other hand, I have a big problem with anyone leaking the formula for a nuclear bomb to any country in the Middle East or leaking details of our foreign trade agreements with China to the US or any of our other major trade partners.
Secondly, who decided anyway that Julian Assange and his cohorts should be the sole arbiter of what information gets leaked and what stays under wraps? Certainly not you or I, and definitely not any international body established for the purpose of regulating information flow on the Internet, which is probably the only logical place where such power should lie. Apart from the fact that Assange used to live in Melbourne and be heavily involved in computer hacking, there's not a lot that anyone knows about this rather shadowy customer - which is hardly reassuring given the power he seems to have at his disposal. While it is true that most of the information that has been released to date falls into the embarrassing rather than dangerous category, what's to stop him getting a big head and losing his judgement if he gets through his current troubles and Wikileaks emerges stronger than ever? I don't think any of the bleeding-heart champions of free speech who are currently jumping to his defence will be particularly chuffed if all of a sudden Kim Jong-Il mysteriously winds up with the codes to the US nuclear arsenal.
So, is Assange a hero or a villian? Well, I love the fact that he's shown what American troops on the ground really think of the way the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are being run; I love the fact that he's demonstrated what we all intuitively know about the way the US regards Australia and you have to dip your hat to someone who's got right up the nose of such a diverse group of objectionable people as Mike Huckabees, Rupert Murdoch, Sarah Palin and Julia Gillard.
But perhaps the most disturbing thing is that we simply don't know enough about Julian Assange and what bombshells he still intends to release in order to make that call. And that, not whether his right to free speech is being unfairly curtailed, is perhaps the biggest concern in the whole debate.
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