Opinion Living in the land of leaks

Let’s all just accept that this is the leakiest age ever,and that all one can do is go with the flow. In an earlier time,files and communications could be sealed tight,away from prying eyes,but digital records have no such guarantees — they’re hackable and spreadable. This might cause great pain and embarrassment to the leakees,but it’s inevitable.And it’s a positive,cleansing force according to many,who believe that more information means a more accurate picture of what’s going on. Whether it’s a well-intentioned NGO prising out information about muster rolls,or WikiLeaks and its explosive exposure of key diplomatic cables,we want more of it. It’s a daring raid on the powerful,and only those with something to hide should wish it away,right?So companies and governments and individuals should just gamely deal with unintentional exposure instead of attacking the why and how. Remember how awful Apple looked when it went after tech-blog Gizmodo for leaking pictures of its then-unreleased iPhone 4? Same way,there isn’t much point in blaming weak privacy laws after a series of phone conversations revealed the entanglements between journalists,lobbyists,powerful companies and politicians — it just looks defensive,even though the question of privacy is arguably as important as the content of the tapes.There’s nowhere to hide anyway,in the digital glasshouse. Internet triumphalists would claim that now,we can cut through the dissembling of PR flacks and corporate brochures,the sweet lies of governments. And they must learn to live with the fact that they have only partial control. It is no longer tenable to say one thing in public and another in private in this increasingly transparent world. Whether it’s WikiLeaks and its systematic exposure of state secrets,or gossip blogs and their army of anonymous informants outing the best-kept celebrity secrets,or sites that amplify the whispers in government corridors for all to hear,the Internet has made it near-impossible to “keep up appearances”.But we should not believe that leaks are inherently subversive. They have existed almost as long as the press has — most big scoops rely on tip-offs from those who had access to privileged information,who spill the story for public interest or self-interest. And leaks serve a variety of ends. They can blow the lid off official secrets,or they can further official interests,when expertly manipulated. In some cases,leaks are meant to create an anticipatory buzz around products or ideas. Sometimes,they serve as trial balloons,a way of putting a thought out there and observing how it is received. Sometimes,they can soften a blow,like when a rumour about impending layoffs lays the ground for the actual sacking. Both WikiLeaks and the Niira Radia tapes reveal the uses and limits of leaks. There’s a lot of salacious detail,which confirms our world-weary judgments. There are lots of dancing pixels,but what’s the picture? Julian Assange says that the WikiLeaks mission is to lay bare the “full ecosystem of corruption”,the internal executive ethos,and all the supporting little decisions that enabled the flagrant ethical violations. And he’s right in that the leaks certainly point to the generalised truth. And they’re riveting for the way they let you listen into the real conversation — the jokey descriptions,the frankness — instead of bland nothings.But just hearing the chatter,shorn of context,does not really help. With the Niira Radia phone conversations too,the lack of context is troubling. In some cases,the complicity between journalists and corporate lobbyists is only too obvious,but in others,it is harder to suss out motive and tone and outcome. There is no explanatory gloss or framing around the transcripts,the audio files are similarly in-medias-res,and yet the credibility of certain journalists has been put into deep question. These leaks purportedly reveal a “conspiracy” to put A. Raja in the cabinet,but in fact,many of these conversations are just that — conversations,gossipy and purposeless — just as some others sound more damaging. But what does it matter,in a general climate of schadenfreude about pompous journalists? For most people who give it a cursory hear,the matter is already settled. The theatricality of the tapes — the ringing phone,the heavy thud of names dropped,the seeming friendliness and internal bitchiness could convince many listeners that “they’re all in it together” — even though that is a premature and unfair verdict on a high-stakes issue. Instead of an investigation that goes determinedly after the architects of the spectrum scam,and indeed,everyone who colluded,we get mysteriously leaked “exposes” that wantonly breach privacy and dent reputations but evade real explication.

Maybe more information does not necessarily mean more clarity. Technology lawyer and professor Lawrence Lessig has spoken about the dangers of this “naked transparency” approach,of the uncritical assumption that shining a light on official workings will lead to greater honesty. But the process of finding out how influence works is far more complex — in Lessig’s example,knowing the correlations between donors,politicians,and votes is not going to clinch the matter of whether the politician

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is corrupt. Will raw data provide meaningful comparisons,that direct you to the truth? Yes,you can analyse the many influences behind a particular decision,whether that made by a legislator or,in the Radia case,a journalist,but how can you confidently say whether a particular input twisted the outcome? “To understand something — an essay,an argument,a proof of innocence — requires a certain amount of attention”,says Lessig. And it’s hard to deny that “the average,or even rational,amount of attention given to understand many of these correlations,and their defamatory implications,is almost always less than the amount of time required.” So,even as we accept that there is no real way to plug leaks,what might change is the way we assess them. In an unguarded world,we can only hope for internal filters,and the awareness that to see and hear it all may not necessarily be to know it all.

amulya.gopalakrishnan@expressindia.com