WikiLeaks & Transparency

As suggested in Jeff Jarvis' blog, we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is the beginning of any kind of change; we are not on a road to transparent government just because Wikileaks got hold of lots of secret political communications. I'd argue we could only be on a road to transparent government if those in power decided it suited them best and moved in that direction. This has not and will not happen because there is no universal acceptance of what 'transparency' means and therefore no clear indication of what benefit those in power would gain from increasing it.

The only reason this data has been made available is that the US government hasn't controlled it properly; a decision post 9/11 to improve data sharing across agencies has seen political communications which were originally limited in scope opened to an audience of about 2.5m US government users. As soon as that happens, a leak is inevitable. If these communications had been limited access as they used to be, a leak of this magnitude wouldn't have happened.

There's a lot of data which is still very much controlled and we'll not see for another 50 years or so. Only that which suits the current government's agenda will be released; sure, some other stuff will find its way out as it always does, but it's just as likely to force governments to tighten up controls as it is to increase transparency.

The interesting thing for me is that the technology involved to get this data was basically antiquated: CD-ROM and USB key. This is a failure of basic security rather than a master black hat hack (or white, depending on your point of view I suppose). At a time when corporates (my line of work) and governments are really worried about the security of new technology, it's the old stuff that trips them up every time.

The easiest way to get data out of an organisation quickly? I reckon it's email. Until recently, attachments over 2MB or so wouldn't reliably go through mail gateways, whereas now much bigger attachments get transmitted just fine. Perhaps the next big leak will get out that way.