Do you think Wikileaks is wrong?
I know I should have an answer but I don't. Yes I think Wikileaks is a fairly good idea and yes Wikileaks seems to give a fair voice but there are no absolutes here. Obviously Julian Assange is not as confident as he was, but who would be after being labelled a "hacker".
What good can come from hacking? What does one achieve from breaking into personal information and revealing it. Should businesses who have invested in an e-commerce strategy be under constant fear of hackers getting into their system? Where is the line drawn if even the hackers are scared of hackers? Even Assange admits to being paranoid sometimes.
"A low grade fever of paranoia runs through the Wikileaks community" (Khatchadourian, 2010, pg 2)
It seems that the power now lies in the virtual world instead of the real. Comparing this to activist campaigns who, in the past, have walked the streets and created picket lines, it looks like we are now creating a cyberspace battle field. The website Crowd Surfing writes that the new phenomenon is "slacktivism", whereby people join virtual petitions that can assist with activist campaigning. Crowd Surfing believes that social media is
"reawakening popular activism" (2010)
So I guess we can thank Julian Assange for opening up the eyes of some more ignorant folks to hactivism and slacktivism. Let's just hope that the cyberspace activist community protect themselves from open fire.
SOURCES
Khatchadourian R, 2010, 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency', The New Yorker, June 7, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=2
Crowd Surfing, 2010, accessed 21/9/2011, http://www.crowdsurfing.net/2010/12/18/the-year-of-slacktivism-and-hacktivism/
Interesting post! I too made the comparison between cyber activism and old school activism in my post. As a whole I'm not a fan of hacking, mostly because I still hold the viewpoint that hacking mostly consists of people trying to get personal information and to use it. Things such as stealing bank account details, addresses and other information etc. However, I like what WikiLeaks is doing. They are showing that those in power need to be extremely careful about what they do and how they go about things, cos otherwise there are people who can and will find them out. I like that.
ReplyDeleteI think Wikileaks could be the question of the decade!
ReplyDeleteThe role of Wikileaks is liberating, it is giving us the chance to complete a fuller picture with pieces of secret info that we had never been exposed to before. But the way they are doing it through hacking puts it into question if it is right even though the purpose is of freedom of information. We see a man who wants to show the world what has been held back yet, we have governments that don't want certain pieces of information leaked out into the public, are they trying to protect us?. Because of the advancements of technology this has been seen as a new outlet of cyberactivism compared to you old traditional/offline activism. It has come down to POWER and that as you said Dimity, POWER now lies in the virtual and not in the real world! Great Post :)