Wikileaks

"And thus making even the banal gossip-like ruminations of functionaries and statesmen public is far more damaging than it might seem as it undermines the very ability to form informal yet secure relationships. By forcing the state to lock down their internal modes of communication, making them less accessible to everyone, not just Julian Assange, Wikileaks deals a more profound blow to states than a half century of earnest pro-liberty pamphleteers and people in good faith trying to work the system to roll back western panoptic regulatory statism."

PdH puts the significance of Julian Assange's organization into context. Two questions:

1. Will Wikileaks keep leaking, or will the States find new ways to securely disseminate information across their networks?
2. What bets are being made - perhaps even right now - on how to run non-secretive businesses and other organizations?

Admission of error: the real significance of the first major Wikileaks story went right over my head.

Later...

That second question of mine above is premature. So many of the shocks are going to depend upon who leaks what, when and whether Wikileaks decides to publish or not. Following the discussions elsewhere, a common feature is outrage at the apparent selectivity of leaked information, with the leaking of operational military information being a particularly good example of that. However, here is the money-quote from the essay by Assange which no doubt prompted PdH's argument:

"The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

Non-linearity (my emphasis). In aggregation, Wikileaks may become both a random sledgehammer and a seemingly selectively applied feather-duster. Or a seemingly selectively applied sledgehammer and a random feather-duster. 'Endivio R' makes a broadly compatible point in comment 66 on that Samizdata thread:

"I think that each leak, depending on its source, content and consequences, should be treated as a separate issue..."

Meanwhile, just look at how many mirror sites for Wikileaks there are now in the event that Wikileaks should have to switch servers.

Later, still...

'Seerak' in comment 69 of that Samizdata thread answers the second aspect of my first question in the negative:

"Look for potential gutting of FOI laws. Watch as the State becomes more and more of a black box, becoming more opaque to the oversight of the people, ever the less accountable -- and more difficult to constrain -- all under color of "security". Establishing networks for "confluence of interests" outside the reach of such as Julian Assange is trivial, and that will happen."

I am not at all sure that Assange's thesis will be proved correct, but I don't know nearly enough myself to refute it, let alone dismiss it out of hand like this guy does - yet is he justified in doing so?

An even later 'later'...

David Friedman flags up David Brin's "The Transparent Society" in tying up the Wikileaks case with the use of cell-phone video cameras against U.S. cops:

"...incidents where police officers made the mistake of misbehaving when someone had a video camera—more recently a cell phone—pointed at them. Thinking about the WikiLeaks case, it occurred to me that it was a further development in the same direction... In that sense, what we are seeing is an early stage of the transparent society."

Well at least I think I may have got my writing mojo back...