Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Friday, December 03, 2010

Dan Gardner's Excellent Question

Why should Assange Be Punished When Bush Goes Free?

For myself, I believe Assange should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or some comparably prestigious accolade from a world grateful for his exposure of the relentless stupidity and villainy taking place in our names "through diplomatic channels" by so-called elites, while Bush should rot in a prison cell, his only visitors such victims and survivors of his many war crimes who care to harangue him (or personally forgive him, for that matter) all the live-long day until that happy day he manages for the first and only time in his life to make the world a better place by leaving it.

2 comments:

admin said...

The calls for Assange's execution or assassination are not just sad, they're downright scary. Here we have the Secretary of State ordering the collection of DNA from UN diplomats, which is unjustified at best and illegal at worst, and rather than addressing this glaring corruption, people are calling for the death of the whistle blowers. Power brokers in Washington are going apeshit because their corruption is being exposed, and these useful idiots want to shoot the messengers.

I love America, but I don't believe our elected officals are gods, and when they do corrupt things, THEY must be held accountable, rather than the people who expose that corruption. It will ultimately make America a better place.

What the critics don't realize is that Wikileaks and Assange don't matter. Assange didn't invent AES encryption or anonymous proxies. The only thing he brings to the table is marketing acumen. He knows how to get "maximum political impact" out of leaked documents, by working with mainstream media. The technology will still exist if they "get rid" of Assange and Wikileaks. And it's trivial to upload sensitive documents to any of a thousand file sharing sites behind seven proxies. It will still happen after they get rid of Wikileaks, but then there will truly be no gatekeepers.

The real problem is not Wikileaks, which doesn't steal or solicit documents; it merely publishes them. The problem is the size of our defense and intelligence apparatuses. All you need is one defector out of hundreds of thosuands of people and the game is over.

And the game IS over. There's no way to stop the dissemination of information when the cost of transmission is essentially zero and there are millions of connected peers willing to transmit it (the same reason why the 20th century copyright protectionist regime is impotent in the face of modern file sharing).

The only way to solve this problem is to stop being corrupt. As the government keeps telling us, you have nothing to fear if you do nothing wrong.

jollyspaniard said...

It is scary but it does serve to change the subject away from the content of the leaks. In that respect however it isn't working.

The fascist streak in our societies are getting more forthright. If I lived in the US I'd be very worried but it's hardly confined to that country. I suspect this is going to get a lot worse over the next ten years as grinding unemployment and economic hardship builds resentment.

Also worrying are the numerous people who claim they would love the chance to do violent things to political opponents as a patriotic service to their country. When these types wind up working "security" for far right candidates you're in trouble. And it's already starting to happen.

They should be held to account for saying these things.