Information security is paramount to governments in the digital age. With an increased centralization of data to computer networks, ongoing defence against unauthorized access to an organization is fundamental for the prevention of unsolicited disclosure of private information. In Alasdair Roberts’ (2012) article “Wikileaks: the illusion of transparency”, the author suggests four difficulties in Wikileaks’ organizational vision for increased transparency in the twenty-first century. The first problem Roberts identifies is how the public and Wikileaks both mistakenly perceive the Internet as a digital commons that permits free-flowing communication. The author argues that in reality multiple intermediaries, namely commercial and political, have been known to reduce free and open communication. To illustrate his point, Roberts (2012) highlights how services allowing for public donations to Wikileaks were in eliminated in 2010 when MasterCard, Paypal and Amazon claimed that the organization had “produced little revenue for any of these businesses, but threatened to entangle all of them in public controversy” (p. 120). While this may be true to an extent, the author failed to discuss how the aforementioned corporations continue to provide services to unsavory organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the English Defence League. This suggests that the corporate blockade against Wikileaks was more so an attack against online free speech and the digital commons rather than a decision to reduce prospective corporate harm. Furthermore, the author failed to acknowledge how commercial and political institutions have had a symbiotic relationship with the digital commons from the beginning via coders and programmers who freely distribute their creations to the public. MacKinnon (2012) argues “there is almost no digital product or service today that does not rely upon or in some way benefit from the open-source operating system” (p. 21). Notwithstanding that corporate harm occurs, the decision to remove donation services to Wikileaks appear to be politically motivated (Greenberg, 2012).
The second visionary weakness of Wikileaks that Roberts suggests is that effectually interpreting and drawing conclusions from large data sets is largely neglected without the aid of an intermediary. As a result, he argues that the organization fails to evoke political action solely from the release of surreptitious governmental and corporate data. Although there may be some truth to Roberts claim, Wikileaks’ activism has certainly produced a degree of credibility given that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argues that their actions “threaten national security” (Porter, 2010). More importantly, the former head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service argues that the Egyptian revolution of 2011 was prompted by documents released by Wikileaks (Goodin, 2011). Roberts also highlights how the growth of the Internet has caused a significant decrease in revenue for major news conglomerates. These findings suggest that the rapid flow of communication within the digital commons may be sufficient to promote political action. The implications further suggest that the public are capable of consuming information in a digital world without the aid of an intermediary and yet draw upon similar conclusions.
Roberts’ third claim regarding how Wikileaks has failed in its vision of producing radical transparency is by overestimating how the American public responds to disclosures that raise the level of public indignation. Although that is true, it is not a sufficient reason. His argument for the lack of public upset is unconvincing, as the American public has passively accepted the status quo throughout history. What is more, the author presents news polls conducted by CBS and CNN in an attempt to establish credibility to his findings. It is arguable that both of these respective media conglomerates do not adhere to essential methods for conducting sound research as their business depends upon satisfying the advertisers. Moreover, various forms of media have been known to establish certain levels of flak to guard their advertisers interests in times of uncertainty around public opinion (Herman & Chomsky, 2002). The fourth and final argument presented by Roberts is that Wikileaks assumes that governments will remain passive to forms of radical transparency. The assumption is that the people mistakenly believe that governments do not respond to threats against forms of social control. Roberts argues, “Governments are capable of responding to such threats with speed and brutality” (p. 128). The historical nature of law demonstrates how citizens have been “schooled in the lesson of justice, terror and mercy” since medieval feudalism in Europe (Hay, 1975, p. 63). The lack of evidence he provides to his arguments is unconvincing. In summary, Roberts contends that while there is a need for increasing transparency between governments and citizens, Wikileaks has failed in its goal of producing global change through leaks and disclosure alone.
The article by Alasdair Roberts raises a number of questions around issues of transparency and access to information. Roberts argues that Wikileaks has failed in causing political action through unauthorized disclosure. Notwithstanding, he fails to make a connection between the inverse relationships of decreasing corporate media revenue and increasing free flow of communication in the digital age. The problem is well understood: citizens advocate for move access to information meanwhile governments attempt to restrain data flow. The questions then become: Should transparency be applied to governmental practices in order to prevent hacking and leaking in the future? Should certain forms of hacking be regarded upon as being criminal or rather as being new forms of civil disobedience? How can governments balance private information and the public desire to access surreptitious data? What forms of communication and records should the government withhold from public viewership? And finally, with various government attempts to redact and withhold information, can the public reasonably believe that we are living in the “age of information”?
Works Cited
Greenberg, A. (2012). This Machine Kills Secrets: How Wikileakers, Cyberpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information. London: Dutton Adult Publisher.
Goodin, D. (2011). Ex-UK spy boss says Wikileaks sparked Egyptian revolution. The Register, News, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/04/mi6_dearlove_wikileaks/ (accessed on January 28, 2013).
Herman, Edward; Chomsky, Noam (2002). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.
Hay, D. (1975). “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law,” in Douglas Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England. New York: Pantheon Books.
MacKinnon, R. (2012). Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. New York: Basic Books Publishing.
Porter, A. (2010). Wikileaks is threatening national security, says Downing Street. The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8167816/WikiLeaks-is-threatening-national-security-says-Downing-Street.html (accessed on January 28, 2013).
Roberts, A. (2012). “Wikileaks: the illusion of transparency,” International Review of Administrative Sciences, 78(1): 116-131.
