David Carr
It appears all the more likely that Julian Assange,the founder of WikiLeaks,will be extradited to Sweden to be questioned on allegations of sexual misconduct from two women. A British courts ruling last Wednesday that he could be extradited,which Assange may appeal,puts his personal freedom in doubt.
Two weeks ago,Assange announced that WikiLeaks was going to take a break from hell-raising and devote itself full time to fund-raising because the financial blockade had eliminated 95 per cent of the sites revenues. He said at a press conference that the organisation was fighting for survival.
Advocates of information transparency point out that even if WikiLeaks founders,the idea it represents a transnational mechanism to disseminate information beyond the reach of any government,corporation or organisation will live on. But the primary threat to the future of
WikiLeaks and other like-minded organisations has less to do with hacker zeal or organisational specifics than it does with information dynamics. It is as basic as supply and demand: There has never been a shortage of willing recipients of classified or private information that has significant news value,but leakers with both the motivation and access are far more rare. A great deal of leaking takes place on a retail basis,as any city hall reporter will tell you. But giant data dumps dont happen often because many factors have to align: an aggrieved party; access to a large,consequential stash of documents that are of public importance; and a gap in security big enough to allow the lifting of such documents.
But while WikiLeaks reduced the friction in leaking secret documents,it did not reduce the peril to those who might choose to do so. Part of the promise of WikiLeaks was that it would eliminate digital fingerprints. While those efforts seemed to work,military prosecutors were nonetheless able to tag Bradley E. Manning as a suspect using traditional investigative measures. Private Manning,who is accused of leaking many of the more important WikiLeaks documents,is being held in Fort Leavenworth,Kansas,accused of aiding the enemy.
All of this is a reminder that when it comes to leaking,it is not whistles that are in short supply,but whistleblowers. WikiLeaks represented a major technological advance in the art and mechanism of the leak,and it eliminated the need to spend many secret hours at the copy machine,as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers. But easing the modality of transmission does not obviate the legal and social strictures against making the private public.
After WikiLeaks began revealing confidential documents,news organisations set up their own versions of digital dead drops,but no significant stories have emerged from those efforts. The technological muscle required to maintain a robust site,as evidenced by WikiLeakss on-and-off again operational status,is significant and hard to come by.
The idea of WikiLeaks and perhaps the organisation itself will live on. But the notion that state secrets across the globe had been cracked open like a piñata once and for all,and that secrets will be regularly plopping into public view,seems remote.
