“Mainstream media may spend a lot of time trying to ferret information out of official hands, but they largely operate in the belief that the state is legitimate and entitled to at least some of its secrets.”
In Western democracies, we may well work under the belief that the state is legitimate, but we surely don’t operate under the view that everything it does is legitimate. That is our job — isn’t it? — to find and expose its illegitimate acts.
I do not think I can accept as journalistic canon the idea that reporters and editors in every nation should view their states as legitimate. To the contrary, we root for them to challenge the legitimacy of illegitimate states; don’t we expect them to be the first, best hammer on the walls of secrecy built by the tyrannical and the corrupt?
Isn’t legitimacy a moving target? We can point to those who believe the actions — and thus the governing — of George Bush was illegitimate as it pertained to war. RIchard Nixon’s governance was taken to be so illegitimate — under pressure of journalism — that it collapsed. Legitimacy is usually accepted. But it should not be assumed.
Implicit in what Carr writes and in what those he quotes say is this notion that what separates professional, institutional journalism from Wikileaks — and, by extension, anarchy — is that it accepts the legitimacy of the incumbents:
“‘WikiLeaks is not a news organization, it is a cell of activists that is releasing information designed to embarrass people in power,’ said George Packer, a writer on international affairs at The New Yorker. ‘They simply believe that the State Department is an illegitimate organization that needs to be exposed, which is not really journalism.’”
That’s a troubling line to draw and too close to the truth today that news organizations too often side with the powerful, with the legacy.
I do believe that governments do need secrets, but as I’ve written, the problem Wikileaks exposes is that government is too often secret by default and transparent by force when it should be transparent by default and secret by necessity.
Separately in Carr’s piece, I was sorely disappointed in Columbia J-school Dean Nick Lemann’s continued insistence — since2006 — in trying to fan the flames of a blogger v. journalist war that never broke out: “People from the digital world are always saying we don’t need journalists at all because information is everywhere and there in no barrier to entry.” Name, two, Dean.
I’m still refining my thoughts on a Bill of Rights in Cyberspace — the latest version in preparation for tomorrow’s PDF symposium on WIkileaks and transparency. The idea is to have principles we can point to when dealing with such events as Wikileaks, Google/Verizon, Google/China, and so on. Try this on for size:
I. We have the right to connect.
II. We have the right to speak freely.
III. We have the right to assemble and act.
IV. Information should be public by default, secret by necessity.
V. What is public is a public good.
VI. All bits are created equal.
VII. The internet shall be operated openly.
Earlier versions are here and here. I’ve taken out the simplistic notions of controlling our data and identity, after realizing that we can’t control either. We should, instead, have access to information whenever possible, by default; I think that better covers both our needs to get to our information and our needs to get to information in our government and in business.
At the PDF event, I want to talk about the need to discuss principles we can point to when we see violations of these rights. If we do not set these standards, then we cannot hold governments and companies to them.
I will also talk about the idea that we are passing from a world organized around power-to-power transactions to one based on peer-to-peer engagement. I’ll argue that we in the press, especially, must defend Wikileaks’ right to free speech as it speaks truth to power. I’ll say that we must make transparency government’s default; we are far from that and risk moving away from that target rather than toward it.
Thoughts?
: LATER: Some have pointed out that I don’t have a privacy clause. I’m struggling with how to craft it, for as I’ve found in researching my book, there is no single definition of privacy. To say that we have a right to it makes us ask what the ‘it’ is. I like danah boyd’s construct, that what should be regulated isn’t the gathering of information but the use of it. The idea that information should be transparent by default goes part-way there: we should have knowledge of what is being collected about us. I’m insure of the next step: action about that. Of course, I want to be careful about overregulation of information, for that quickly impinges on the right to speak. Thoughts?
Newsweek issues what is either a genius act of subtle satire or a classic case of curmudgeonliness and resistance to technology and change in this slideshow alleging to list the things the internet has killed. It’s hardly worth a response except, in its slide-show simplicity, it neatly encapsulates the hymnbook of the old church. Among its obits:
* Facts: Insert the tired, old argument that “anyone can disseminate false information…. These days, politicians, pundits, lobbyists, and bloggers make so many false statements that more than two dozen fact-checking operations have been launched by news organizations or universities this year in an effort to stem the torrent of untruth.” Well, that sounds nice in alliteration. But it’s bullshit. I argue that we as a connected society have, instead, come to expect facts in an instant. Back in the day, when we didn’t know something, we might vow to look it up, but since that entailed driving to a library, the odds what we would fulfill that pledge were nil. Today, when you want to know something, don’t you reflexively reach for the Internets and the Google? When someone spouts bullshit, don’t you often ask them to show you the link, and if they don’t, you discredit them? This worldview comes from the old journalists’ belief that they were the priests anointed as caretakers of facts. I’d say we’re doing much better with facts on our own.
* Reference books: Only a few slides later, Newsweek acknowledges that we don’t really need those tomes. “Encyclopedias fall behind less-reliable [ah, they couldn't resist] but more timely competitors, like Wikipedia. And why carry around a dictionary, thesaurus, or atlas when you have Internet access and Google?” Why, indeed?
* Privacy: Oh, crap. I’d argue about this one but it would take time away from writing a book on the topic. I talked to new-Newsweek head Tina Brown about the topic here.
* Letter writing: OK, so what? We now have more means to stay in touch with more people in less time than at any time in history. I’m involved in projects on the future of the Post Office and I say there that the first-class letter will be extinct. And now we have blogs, which are often letters to the world. How wonderful.
* Concentration: I forgot what I was going to say about that.
* The yearbook: That’s just flat-out wrong. My kids have yearbooks. School papers are dying but that’s not because of the internet; it’s because of budget cuts.
* The peep show: That would be more accurate if they said the porno store. Drive around Florida or Vegas or even Manhattan and you’ll find plenty of strip clubs. Just this morning, driving in, I saw a new billboard for Hustler’s. (A true case of mis-targeted advertising, I’ll add.)
They also declared toast video stores, vacations, the 9-to-5 job, Polaroids and other film, the telephone, book, the CD, and….
* Civility: Oh, fuck me.
Now, Newsweek, let me suggest what the internet really kills:
Here are some appearances I’ve been making regarding Wikileaks, transparency, and press freedom.
On CNN with John King Thursday night talking about the hacking of MasterCard et al, quoting this Guardian editorial arguing that the attacks are a form of civil (cyber) disobedience in defense of a free internet:
Here’s a link to BBC audio, on the same subject, discussing the shift from power-to-power to peer-to-peer architecture.
The Berliner Zeitung BZ asked for a brief op-ed. Here’s the English text:
Should Wikileaks be stopped? The question is somewhat irrelevant. The movement it exemplifies – transparency – cannot be stopped.
I’m not saying that secrecy is dead. We still need secrets – about security, crime, privacy, diplomacy. But we have far too many secrets in government. One thing that Wikileaks reveals is the abuse of government secrecy.
But now governments will have to learn how to operate under the assumption that anything they do can be seen on the front page of this newspaper. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so. I say that government must become transparent by default, secret by necessity.
Transparency breeds trust. Whether for government or journalism or business, operating in the open enables the opportunity to collaborate with constituents.
We in journalism must recognize that Wikileaks is an element of a new ecosystem of news. It is a new form of the press. So we must defend its rights as media. If we do not, we could find our own rights curtailed. Asking whether Wikileaks should be stopped is exactly like asking whether this newspaper should be stopped when it reveals what
government does not want the public to know. We have been there before; let us never return.
I can use Visa and Mastercard to pay for porn and support anti-abortion fanatics, Prop 8 homophobic bigots, and the Ku Klux Klan. But I can’t use them or PayPal to support Wikileaks, transparency, the First Amendment, and true government reform.
Welt am Sontag in Germany asked me for an op-ed on Wikileaks. Here it is, auf Englisch. Hier, auf Deutsch.
Government should be transparent by default, secret by necessity. Of course, it is not. Too much of government is secret. Why? Because those who hold secrets hold power.
Now Wikileaks has punctured that power. Whether or not it ever reveals another document—and we can be certain that it will—Wikileaks has made us all aware that no secret is safe. If something is known by one person, it can be known by the world.
But that has always been the case. The internet did not kill secrecy. It only makes copying and spreading information easier and faster. It weakens secrecy. Or as a friend of mine says, the internet democratizes leaking. It used to be, only the powerful could hold and uncover knowledge. Now many can.
Of course, we need secrets in society. In issues of security and criminal investigation as well as the privacy of citizens and some matters of operating the state—such as diplomacy—sunlight can damage. If government limited secrecy to that standard—necessity—there would be nothing for Wikileaks to leak.
But as we can see from what has been leaked, there is much we should know—actions taken in our name—that government holds from us. We also know that the revelation of these secrets has not been devastating. America’s and Germany’s relationship has not collapsed because one undiplomatic diplomat called Angela Merkel uncreative. Wikileaks head Julian Assange told the Guardian that in four years, “there has been no credible allegation, even by organizations like the Pentagon, that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our activities.”
So perhaps the lesson of Wikileaks should be that the open air is less fearsome than we’d thought. That should lead to less secrecy. After all, the only sure defense against leaks is transparency.
But that is not what’s happening. In the U.S., the White House announced a new security initiative to clamp down on information. The White House even warned government workers not to look at Wikileaks documents online because they were still officially secret, which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of secret as something people do not know. I fear that one legacy of Wikileaks’ work will be that officials will communicate less in writing and more by phone, diminishing the written record for journalism and history.
I have become an advocate of openness in government, business, and even our personal lives and relationships. The internet has taught me the benefits of sharing and connecting information.
This is why I have urged caution in not going overboard with the privacy mania sweeping much of modern society and especially Germany. Beware the precedents we set, defaulting to closed and secret, whether in pixelating public views in Google Street View, or in disabling the advertising targeting that makes online marketing more valuable and will pay for much of the web’s free content.
I fear that a pixel fog may overcome us, blurring what should be becoming clearer. I had hoped instead that we would pull back the curtain on society, letting the sunlight in. That is our choice.
In researching my book on the benefits of publicnness (to be published as Public Parts in the U.S. and Das Deutsche Paraoxon in Germany), I have found that new technology often leads to fears about exposure of privacy. The invention of the Gutenberg press, the camera, the mass press, the miniature microphone, and now the internet have all sparked such worry.
Now, in Wikileaks, we see a new concern: that secrecy dies. It does not; secrecy lives. But it is wounded. And it should be. Let us use this episode to examine as citizens just how secret and how transparent our governments should be. For today, in the internet age, power shifts from those who hold secrets to those to create openness. That is our emerging reality.
With or without WikiLeaks, the technology exists to allow whistleblowers to leak data and documents while maintaining anonymity. With or without WikiLeaks, the personel, technical know-how, and ideological will exists to enable anonymous leaking and to make this information available to the public. Jailing Thomas Edison in 1890 would not have darkened the night.
: Jay Rosen is concerned that Julian Assange ducked the question of how diplomacy can operate without assurances of secure communication.
: My friend who suggested that Wikileaks democratizes the leak is Dave Morgan. I spared him German notoriety. And here’s Dave’s related column.
: Me on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz Sunday morning:
