Secrets and Freedom
I have, with growing dismay, watched the evolution of the WikiLeaks story. It is disturbing to realize how well the chorus of calls for the demise of WikiLeaks and even the assassination of Assange is in complete harmony with the descent of our country into fascism. And though obscured by illusions many confuse with reality, this is precisely where we are headed.
From 1998 to 2008 I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The overall effect of my exposure to and immersion in that culture of secrecy at Los Alamos was a permanent understanding of the corrosive nature of secrecy. The effect of the culture of the lab and town were definite and negative, though somewhat subtle and hard to pin down.
Contrary to fantasies of those who have never been to Los Alamos or at least have never entered into that culture, the town was not filled with nasty things driven by conspiracies and black projects. (And contrary to rumors after the Wen Ho Lee case, he was indeed a singularity. Lab scientists of all political viewpoints and personalities were able to agree on one thing, that nuclear secrets should remain secret.) To be certain, there were some hawks, some who dreamed of returning to nuclear testing, even a very few who probably would have welcomed a chance to see a weapon used on some "enemy", in some "limited" fashion. What was in plentiful supply were people like myself, who didn't do enough to question the ultimate aims and use of what we were doing.
It is true that the (admittedly complex) work was often of a remote nature, removed from the realities of war and mayhem. This was especially true in the divisions inhabited by PhD scientists (as opposed to those inhabited by PhD engineers). And of course Los Alamos supported (and still supports) work on AIDS and calcium dynamics in cells and power grid dynamics and cold neutrons and a host of other things that have little to do with weapons or threat reduction. Yet the core missions remained weapons and threat reduction, an emerging mission that increasingly became the support of a superpower drunk on its own power. But this was rarely thought about or questioned by the scientists, many of whom would have classified themselves as progressives or liberals.
This came home to me as a result of particular event at Los Alamos. To be precise, it was the complete nonchalance of Lab scientists to the implications of a visit to the Lab by an important scientist in the intelligence community. He was there to fill the huge gap between current capability to invade privacy, snoop, and control, and what was now opened to them by the "Patriot Act" which removed all sorts of protections of freedom and privacy. While I was disturbed by these intentions, I was more disturbed by the response of other (liberal/progressive) scientists that I knew -- they were completely unmoved by these dreams of undue power, and our part in helping make it a reality.
That was a pivotal experience for me, a significant factor in my migration to academia. (There were other factors, including the slow descent into environments less and less capable of supporting and promoting cutting edge science. But that is another, longer story.)
The point of this story is that for me, experience with secrecy brought the realization that, in almost all cases, secrecy is a promoter of disease and dysfunction.
Of course, there is a need for confidentiality and, every once in awhile, a defensible need for secrecy. By confidentiality, I mean privacy. By secrecy, I mean a proactive decision to carefully guard some information whose disclosure would do more than embarrass. But secrecy is the perfect breeding ground for evils of all varieties, from very mundane to the truly terrifying. This is actually well known. For example, anyone acquainted with the dynamics of dysfunctional groups of people (like families) knows that secrecy is an important ingredient in the preservation and growth of that dysfunction.
Coming back to Assange and WikiLeaks, I believe that WikiLeaks is an irrepressible, emergent phenomena playing an important role in urging us back towards openness. And openness is the only way back to a balance of power promoting freedom and sustainable happiness.
A critical point to notice: Assange is not the leaker. While he is not a journalist, he is an important part of the journalistic apparatus that has traditionally held those in power accountable. The use of the espionage act against him reveals the real aim of the act -- to suppress freedom of speech. And that is precisely the way it was in 1917. (If you are not acquainted with the history of the act and its use to squelch free speech, get familiar. It is a chilling tale to anyone concerned with freedom.)
Will WikiLeaks have a lasting impact? In a society addicted to electronic hallucinations, it is possible that only complete collapse and the resulting descent into total misery is enough to wake people up. Certainly, the information pointing to our demise has been readily available to anyone with an aptitude for exploration. Intellectuals, authors, and journalists like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, John Perkins and many others have been there telling it like it is for a long time now. Even within the Christian tradition, there is a long history warning of the effects of the violation of "Love thy neighbor as thyself". (Admittedly, this message has been twisted beyond recognition and betrayed by the institutional church so that supporting war and torture now seems reasonable to a large fraction of professed Christians!)
WikiLeaks has reminded anyone that thinks, that openness is in the interest of everybody except (possibly) the elite. In fact, I would argue that it is even in the interest of the elite to radically change course. This conclusion holds, even if, in their release of the cables, WikiLeaks makes mistakes -- corrections are never flawless.
My education on the other side of things began quite a few years ago when a patient friend (and daughter of one of the founders of the CIA) kindly opened my eyes to the fact that there was another, Palestinian side to the story in the middle east. Since then, I have come to realize that governments habitually lie, that power of any kind corrupts, and that we are not, in any way, evolving towards a higher state.
In fact, human beings cannot handle very much of anything. Once humans have too much, they do everything they can to hang on to it. In that quest, secrecy is a frequent tool, held in check only by our freedoms such as the freedom of the press.
That is why I am against secrecy and for the concept of WikiLeaks. That is why Assange and WikiLeaks are a vital part of an attempt to slow or halt a slide towards fascism. And that is why everyone everywhere, supporting freedom, human rights and sustainable happiness should support WikiLeaks and the right to know, and oppose, with every ounce of their being, the use of the Espionage Act to suppress our freedom of speech.