TECHNOLOGY FOR CHANGE

Will the WikiLeaks Incident Change the Game for Information Flow?

Dennis McCafferty | Date: 08-12-10 | Comments

It's clear that we're in a brave, new world when it comes to the free flow of information. But the recent distribution of tens of thousands of key reports detailing the war in Afghanistan demonstrates how much the rules are changing in the digital age.

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Will the WikiLeaks Incident Change the Game for Information Flow?
The pure wealth of documented material involved is staggering: The Website WikiLeaks recently provided nearly 92,000 individual reports related to the conflict in Afghanistan to The New York Times and two news outlets in Europe. The distribution of information has been compared to the 1971 Pentagon Papers controversy, in which more than 4,000 secret military documents about Vietnam were made public.

The WikiLeaks development may prove to be a harbinger of an age where no piece of classified material from a government or corporate entity can be 100 percent secured. Given how easy it is to get secrets out there, all it seems to take is the desire and motivation to do so.

(source: WikiLeaks)

It makes for a fun round of discussing 'what ifs?' in history�had Watergate happened today, would we have known the identity of Deep Throat just moments after Bob Woodward met him in the parking garage? Could a blogger have spilled the goods on what exactly Mona Lisa was smiling about? (Somehow, though, we still get the feeling that the subject of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" will NEVER be disclosed.) But I digress. Here's more on the impact of the WikiLeaks incident and others like it, according to academic and military experts:

● These leaks could be a game-changer when it comes to how the government approaches disclosure. Traditionally, the government has kept much of its information closely held, to be released only after much internal review and/or the presentation of a Freedom of Information Act request from a journalist or inquiring citizen. The free-flowing dynamic of today's communications, however, may help shift these agency positions. After all, it's better for the source to release it in a controlled way than an outside party, right?

"The government will need to rethink what information should be deemed confidential and protected in the interests of national security," says Jonathan Askin, a professor of clinical law at Brooklyn Law School. "If we shift the presumption and assume information should be made publicly available�except when there is a security reason to withhold the information�government would go a long way in gaining trust with the people and the world. As it stands, the government is too often withholding the truth, including information that is apparently not secret or in the national interest to remain secret."

● Crowd-sourcing will emerge as a great influence on both the distribution and the vetting of information. Before the current information age, media and government worked in both a professionally cordial and sometimes adversarial capacity that resulted in the publication of information. This impacted how members of the public were provided details on local road construction, war conflicts, tax increases, pending legislation and virtually anything else that affected their lives. But the system led to the impression that all decisions were being made by "a few white men behind closed doors," Askin says. While society still needs to know that a less-restricted flow of information can be trusted�hardly a given today, with incidents such as the recent video controversy/mischaracterization of USDA official Shirley Sherrod�crowd-sourcing could emerge as an appropriate curation model.

"The American government is already harnessing this sort of crowd-sourcing and civic participation with regard to less controversial domestic policy issues," states Askin. "But the same tools and ideas might well be extended to the public with regard to issues implicating national security. Once government better understands how to harness these online communications tools, there should be processes to allow better civic participation." It would be better to proceed this way rather than having "a third-party claim the moral high ground and be perceived as a more trusted outlet for the truth," he says.

Next: Transforming Impressions of the Truth? >>