wikileaks and the twitterverse

August 22, 2010

Last month wikileaks published a large tranche of Afghan war documents, that the Pentagon doesn’t like. Actually, they want it all back, if such a thing is possible in the download age.

Crowd-sourcing

This is the new ’enemy’ - the indiscriminate information age. Even during the case, wikileaks gave its followers - 120 thousand and growing - a sharply-focused feed into this continually-evolving situation. Wikipedia is there to helpfully keep the permanent record, written by the crowds, not by chosen editors. We choose our own news these days - I don’t read what just one editor says.

Kenya Election

I believe in free information - I host on my ftp server “statements of domestic election observers the night before the announcement of the results” in case that information were lost. I get about 100 downloads a month.

Iran

Authoritarian governments everywhere - most recently demonstrated in Iran, fear this uncontrollable melange of information - created by twitter and short urls. It is funny to see government trying to swat the fly.

South Africa

There is a proposed Media Tribunal in South Africa - with the government’s motive questioned. All governments have to acknowledge that it is impossible now to control the information - perhaps they think that if they have the TV, radio and newspapers covered they have dealt with the majority of the ANC electorate. I will miss the straight-talking Desmond Tutu in the South African media.

Europe

Julian Assange isthe founder of wikileaks, reportedly permanently on the move like the Cathar Perfecti.He was bizarrely accused of rape and molestation in Sweden, and equally hastily withdrawn. Even the legal system cannot keep up with this instant feedback loop.

America

America is the land of the free. It is the homesteaders, the hackers, the start of the open source movement and the tools that built Linux and the software I use every day.

Democracy

America is also proud of its democratic heritage and sees nothing wrong with exporting informed choice for the electorate onto countries whose government would prefer the old days.

It has been hard to see the hacker culture that made a lot of what is good today in a struggle with its own government. Omnipresent cameras mean that The Man already has powerful tools. But the strength of the American system is they will resolve it, if necessary by counting heads.