Nobody questions the fact that we live in a surveillance society -the development of surveillance-oriented security technology, improved intelligence-gathering and data-mining, identification and tracking techniques embedded in our everyday lives and cities… The list of devices that monitor our moves, interactions with public bodies, online activities, consumption patterns, etc. is never-ending. And, for all the talk about privacy, we have not managed to hold most of the surveillants accountable to the surveilled. Even though the affordability of devices with surveillance capabilities, such as mobile phones, have made it possible for the odd example of surveillance being used against those in power (such as the police’s role in the death of Ian Tomlison at the G20 protests in London in 2009), it is obvious that most surveillance is about those at the top (sur) being able to control and use data of those at the bottom (sous).
Until now.
Wikileaks is doing *exactly* what most corporations and governments do with our personal data on a regular basis: use it as they wish, even sell it, without our consent, while providing us with very few and very weak tools to protect what we care about or be able to monitor how our information is used and circulated.
Which, apparently, is fine when they do it. When the surveilled take control, however, all hell breaks loose.
Personally, I would prefer stronger regulation and better protection of personal information -even that of those in power. I would rather information only be recorded and stored when necessary and with permission. But in the world of CCTV, biometrics, full-body scanners and the like, it does not look like that is going to happen anytime soon. Therefore, if I am asked to put up with the use and abuse of my personal data in the surveillance society, I might as well be given the possibility to turn the gaze on the surveillants.
So since I was never given the choice to opt out of the surveillance society, I choose to join the sousveillance society, and the ranks of those who refuse to be held accountable by the unaccountable.
I choose to support WikiLeaks.
.
#1 by Joe on December 2, 2010 - 7:06 pm
You choose to SUPPORT an operation that VIOLATES the confidentiality of diplomats speaking with candor to one another?
Tell me, which EvilMegaCorp, run by top-hat wearing mustachioed bad men roasting babies on a spit are pulishing you private correspondance?
The difference between sending you ads based on what your history of grocery purchases, and your confidential communications, even ON BEHALF OF THE PUBLIC are two different things.
In fact you’re inverting fault fairly directly, in supporting an operation which will QUELL free speech among some by assuring us that what they feel quite sincerely will be transmitted to those it was not meant to be.
It sounds to me that you’re just another “bien pensent” advocate of simple, bumper-sticker thoughts that contribute to a tyranny – albeit one fit for the smugly self-satisfied.
When you say “Which, apparently, is fine when they do it”, do you mean to say that any person associated in any way with the US government is arbitrarily assumed by you to be whatever slanderous image on them that you have? It certainly sounds like it. It has the depth of assuming that every German is a skinhead, or that every Spaniard is on anti-psychotic medication.
To the contrary, that the published Embassy Cables show is the discretion of the US government’s public behaviour despite the observations that they make, and the fecklessness and irrelevance of the parties held up as some example of Europe’s lesson-dispensing oracles of wisdom.
Were Assange genuinely seeking transparency, he would publish ANY nation’s confidential documents, but he isn’t. He’s a tacit supporter of any undemocratic and inhumane entity that wants to fill in the humanistic part of the west’s shoes.
#2 by Hoover on December 2, 2010 - 11:07 pm
“You choose to SUPPORT an operation that VIOLATES the confidentiality of diplomats speaking with candor to one another?”
Me too.
What’s the problem? Even if you can show Assange is motivated by anti-Americanism (which isn’t clear to me), the next Assange will sooner or later be opening up the secrets of whatever regime you disapprove of.
Who cares about protecting their candor? They are our employees. They have no right to secrecy.
#3 by Quinn Stretton on December 3, 2010 - 10:03 am
I’m with you Gemma,
I support Wikileaks!
#4 by Harald Korneliussen on December 3, 2010 - 12:49 pm
Gemma Galdon Clavell, thank you for doing this. Especially because of your position, it’s immensely valuable that you break ranks, and refuse to circle the wagons with the political elite. I hope there will be more like you, who dare to take a stand in these times of tribulation.
#5 by Joe on December 3, 2010 - 6:45 pm
“1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak,” says Assange. It’s a chilling statistic, but then he states: “On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya.”
- Saint Julian
http://bombasticelements.blogspot.com/2010/07/kenya-assange-on-wikileaks-2007-kenyan.html
Hoover:
The “problem” actually is the same one that Gemma has a fixation on: integrity of trust in the information one shares to any specific purpose being misused or retransmitted without conscent.
As to this “working for us” business, I’ve also heard on many occasions heard Europeans speak that way about the US government, displaying a megalomaniacal arrogance that exceeds any irrational fixation anyone has with “AmeriKKKa”.
It also is quite apparent that Assange is targetting the US, in an attempt to undermine its’ standing and the ability those who work in it to communicate with one another.
Why then, are there no “dramatic releases” of information from say, the Russian government, or Iran, or the like?
To say that is isn’t is the same sort of typical passive-aggressive figleaf that I’ve heard over and over for 30 years. ” We don’t hate X, we hate (insert popular myth).”
The principal feature of this pedantry is that it is incredibly boring and lacking in any wit. The “examples” are repeated for the ususal range of about 5 years at a time. I’m tempted to look at these strangers who attack verbally for their recreation with the hope that I can find the ring on their back, pull the cord, and hopefully hear something different for once.
#6 by Ramón Peiró-Pastor on December 5, 2010 - 1:22 pm
Thank you Gemma for doing this. I support WikiLeaks too. “The truth shall make you free”.
#7 by Hoover on December 6, 2010 - 9:47 am
Joe,
The cables show a superpower taking its responsibilities seriously. They also expose numerous world leaders as borderline sociopaths and frauds.
The US is benefiting from Wikileaks.
I’m delighted that Berlusconi has been embarrassed, that the leaders of various ex-Soviet states have been exposed as connected with organised crime, and that middle eastern states have been called out on their hypocrisy.
As a Brit, I’m pleased that the cables show our Ministry of Defence has been letting down our troops. By getting this truth into the open, we’re more likely to make the necessary improvements in future.
It’s all good!
My only concern at the moment is the mistakenly emotional reaction in the US, but I don’t think it’s too much to worry about in the long run. (As the bloke said: America will do the right thing in the end).
#8 by Koldo Casla on December 10, 2010 - 11:55 am
http://rightsincontext.eu/2010/12/06/leaks/#comments
#9 by Tamzin on January 9, 2011 - 9:38 pm
Thank you, Gemma! Holding the unaccountable, accountable is perfectly normal in a democracy.
What is surprising is the number of people who will stone the messenger and not the message. Some highly immoral and unjustifiable actions have had a light shone on them and the US is busy planning a punishment for the messenger!
#10 by Joe on January 13, 2011 - 5:51 pm
What exactly ARE the “reasons of concience” discussed in the AI quote, which, given the fact that Wikileaks had blackmailed AI, are not necessarily ABOUT PFC Manning’s stolen data trove?
Nothing.
Otherwise, whether or not the US is not made to look like a fool in this affair, it’s still wrong. Assange’s limited reasoning doesn’t make anything transparent, it tacitly censors what entities within a government department would say to one another.
It is a VIOLATION of the privacy which would put a pall of chill over anyone trying to protect themselves when informing a embassy of a human rights abuse. In effect, a supporter of Wikileaks is doing more to support authoritarian abuse than they are to subvert it.
That was plain from day one. The question those who reflexively supported it should ask oneself: “why be that facile?”
#11 by Tamzin on January 14, 2011 - 3:17 pm
Thank you Koldo and here is another well said article:
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-war-on-wikileaks-by-john-pilger