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.
Business, be warned: You are next.
: More: This Economist post thinks likewise.
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:
Wikileaks have already said that there next target is a major US bank:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/wikileaks-target-major-bank/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=96ea3e4c56-Nov30Newsletter11_30_2010&utm_medium=email
This may well be much more significant to the lives of ordinary Americans than the diplomatic stuff which doesn’t affect them directly.
Jeff, While I agree with the basic concepts of your op-ed, I think a bit of perspective is needed. Very little of either the first Iraq war wikileaks set, nor this diplomatic set is really important, worthy of being “SECRET” in the government sense. None of it was Top Secret. It was embarrassing, it compromised sources, and it exposed people to retribution, which are all bad things ™. None of it was sufficient to be yelling “treason” as our political leaders have done this week.
The US Government puts a “secret” stamp on way too much stuff. And its much too slow in reclassifying (removing the secret) as years go by.
I believe we would be much better served if the Government has far fewer items classified, and guarded them better. A recent Washington Post story by Dana Priest said that there are over 900,000 contractors with secret clearances, nearly all added since 9/11. Add to that a couple million service personnel, and a few hundred thousand civilian Federal employees, and there is simply no way to keep a secret.
Some things need to be kept quiet. Just not as many as the US Government things.
[...] the original post: Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency « BuzzMachine Share and [...]
Much of what we learned has little importance, but some of what we need to know was not discussed.
For one, I would like to know how North Korea and Iran was able to leap frog into major threats. It would have been nice to hear someone at state identifying China’s role.
Or who supplies Hamas with arms, and with whose money?
Wikileaks seems to cherry pick embarrassing comm. from the US, but is not surprising.
ajbruno14@gmail.com
The cyber-security of the sensitive documents of American diplomats across the world is under fire, but things are fishy. People are wondering as how come it happened that the US which spends billions of dollars yearly on the information security, and on the information superhighway and the supernet, and all that stuff, and also it is US which is the hub of all computer advancements and origin of all new technologies, has failed to secure its own documents. It is preposterous and very much weird to acknowledge that a US marine just downloaded hundreds of thousands wiki documents and threw them in the face of the world through a website. That website carried on working and disseminating information and it is conducted by a raper from Australia. This is simply strange and unbelievable, and there is something very fishy.
The most important thing is that almost all the reports are about Pakistan, it seems that it is not wikileak but Pakileak. Government has already denied the reports of Wikileak but our nation is fond of blind chasing of such foolish reports. We must not blindly believe in such fake reports.
I’m with you untill you cross the border of informational self-determination, becoming an enormous threat for individuals and democracy itself; http://eicker.at/WikiLeaks
Help us get this group seen, Jeff, help us get it out. People need to see that there are those not totally lulled into a stupor about what’s happening in the world. Help us.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_128056727255913&ap=1
I totally agree that openness in government should be the default. It is an argument that most media have supported for the past 40 years. It could be argued that there are a lot of parallells between the actions of Assange and those of Daniel Ellsberg. The differences being the medium, the content and the intent. However, those who held the secrets then are the same as those who hold the secrets now.
In addition, I hope that you were just careless in using the phrase, “I am becoming an advocate..” I respectfully submit that perhaps you meant to say that you have always been a strong advocate of government transparency.
[...] Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency [...]
Jeff, I agree with you that openness should be the default in government, and I don’t think Wikileaks has really caused anyone harm. Technologies like Wikileaks and even Facebook will eventually lead to societies that are more forgiving.
My concern about Wikileaks and my question to you is this: what about credibility? We’ve seen many times just in the last year when stories were reported as scoops but then turned out to be untrue or half-true (ballon boy and the Toyota gas pedal come to mind). Of course the retractions aren’t sexy and don’t drive as much coverage. So in many ways, it’s too little and too late. It doesn’t seem as though Wikileaks is really equipped to vet the authenticity of the documents that are submitted. What’s to stop people dropping fake documents in the Wikileaks drop box? What effect could those fake documents have? What recourse would the subjects of such leaks have?
think about it, don’t you suspect the reason the gov’t is up in arms with wikileaks is the pending revelations regarding bank of america rather than some crappy cables about what one person said about another?
[...] Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency « BuzzMachine A Remarkable Book from Wiley-Finance [...]
[...] opinion that “information wants to be free”, and hope that WikiLeaks results in power shifting from secrecy to transparency. However, as Evgeny Morozov is always reminding us, certain types of regimes react badly to [...]
Totally agree – there are too many people who want to tell the truth to ever stop the leaks.
Best laugh was reading that when Hilary rang the world leaders to personally apologise one of them said, “You should hear what we say about YOU!”
Also very interesting to read the search results that Danny Sullivan is tracking on where most of the searches for wikileaks are coming from.
Looking forward to the next exciting chapter.
That is what needed to be said. I can’t believe that President Obama hasn’t released any kind of apology for the embarrassing stuff. It’s like, everyone has just collectively kind of cringed and then said, “Oh, well, now you know what we really think of you.”
[...] why? because those who hold secrets hold power Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/12/04/wikileaks-power-shifts-from-secrecy-to-transparency/ If there is a difference between wikileaks and a hostile intelligence agency I am unable to see it [...]
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[...] an editorial by Jeff Jarvis, for Welt am Sontag in [...]
Publicness is not an universal value. Action and discourse by institutions, specially supposedly democratic institutions, should be public so that they are accountable to people. So that they serve us.
On the other hand, each one of us should be able to decide about and control our own privacy, to the measure that it does not impact other people’s lives.
Der Sprecher von US- Präsident Barack Obama, Robert Gibbs, nannte es “lächerlich und absurd”, dass Assange den Rücktritt von Außenministerin Hillary Clinton gefordert hatte, falls sie für jüngst bekanntgewordene Spionage-Aufforderungen an Diplomaten verantwortlich ist. “Ich bin nicht ganz sicher, warum wir uns um die Meinung eines Typen mit einer Website kümmern”, so Gibbs. “Unsere Außenpolitik und die Interessen dieses Landes sind weit bedeutsamer als seine eine Website.” (Source: FTD Germany)
[...] such wicked leaks and WikiLeaks And Web Tracking: Will Secrecy And Privacy Ever Be The Same? and Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency and Wikileaks and the Long Haul and How Has WikiLeaks Managed to Keep Its Web Site Up and Running? [...]
[...] Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency 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. [...]
[...] Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency 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. [...]
[...] I’ve read comes from Clay Shirky (“WikiLeaks and the Long Haul”), Jeff Jarvis (“WikiLeaks: Power Shifts From Secrecy to Transparency”) Evan Hansen (“Why WikiLeaks is Good for America”) and Ethan Zuckerman (“Why [...]
Wikileaks is most likely the beginning and not the end of new relations between information, transparency and secrets. Acces to information and the possiblities to publish without limits challenges institutions and interestsgroups that claim the right to act and communicate secretly.They use their powers and try to controll the movement of information on the internet when their policies and interests seem to be in danger .Wikileaks is punished mostly for giving technical support and taking risks continue doing it. The officials that gave Wikileaks the secret information and the failed security are more to blame. But thats not the solution to many related and urgent problems.The main questions are what governments and their institutions will learn from the changes taking place,if the can accept new relations in the”playfield”of the internet and what they are willing to change in the future.The answers will make clear how a democracy will persist in the future of every society.
[...] I’ve read comes from Clay Shirky (“WikiLeaks and the Long Haul”), Jeff Jarvis (“WikiLeaks: Power Shifts From Secrecy to Transparency”) Evan Hansen (“Why WikiLeaks is Good for America”) and Ethan Zuckerman (“Why [...]
[...] sphere will have taken a mortal blow.” Second, CUNY j-prof Jeff Jarvis said that WikiLeaks fosters a critical power shift from secrecy to [...]
[...] Jarvis (a professor of Journalism at CUNY, and someone who “gets” he internet), and his defense of WikiLeaks contains many compelling points. However, Jarvis totally misses the boat with this paragraph from [...]
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[...] 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 [...]
[...] Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency (buzzmachine.com) [...]
[...] Jeff Jarvis has also commented frequently of late on a new “era of transparency”, and supports WikiLeaks efforts in this regard in his blog post from December 4 2010: Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency. [...]
[...] Jarvis, “Wikileaks: Power Shifts From Secrecy to Transparency,” December 4, 2010. “Governments should be transparent by default, secret by [...]
[...] Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency – Jeff Jarvis, December 2010 [...]
[...] me, the more interesting story is how Wikileaks (and clones) have been and will continue to be transformative forces in media in this new [...]
[...] Following the Wikileaks controversy, City University of New York professor Jeff Jarvis observed that over 250,000 leaked confidential diplomatic cables from 274 embassies around the world did not have the effect of increasing transparency; rather, the U.S. government responded by clamping down on information. Jarvis writes: [...]
The reason state and federal governments “classify” information is because they want to hide their lies and illegal activity from the public, which pays their ridiculously exorbitant salaries. It isn’t because of power, because that’s already implied due to their “position”.
[...] why? because those who hold secrets hold power Wikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/12/04/wikileaks-power-shifts-from-secrecy-to-transparency/ If there is a difference between wikileaks and a hostile intelligence agency I am unable to see it [...]
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[...] Power shifts from secrecy to transparency,’ in Buzz Machine. Accessed online 28th March 2011 at: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/12/04/wikileaks-power-shifts-from-secrecy-to-transparency/ . From Sontag, Welt [...]
[...] Power shifts from secrecy to transparency,’ in Buzz Machine. Accessed online 28th March 2011 at: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/12/04/wikileaks-power-shifts-from-secrecy-to-transparency/ . From Sontag, Welt [...]
[...] of the best I’ve read comes from Clay Shirky (“WikiLeaks and the Long Haul”), Jeff Jarvis (“WikiLeaks: Power Shifts From Secrecy to Transparency”) Evan Hansen (“Why WikiLeaks is Good for America”) and Ethan Zuckerman (“Why Amazon Caved, [...]