[Reader-list] Ten Theses on Wikileaks by Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

For those intrigued by Wikileaks -

Begin forwarded message:

> Resent-From: nettime at kein.org
> From: Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>
> Date: 30 August 2010 5:53:10 PM GMT+05:30
> Resent-To: Nettime <nettime-l at kein.org>
> To: nettime-l at kein.org
> Subject: <nettime> Ten Theses on Wikileaks by Geert Lovink and  
> Patrice Riemens
>
> Ten Theses on Wikileaks
> By Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens
>
> These 0.
> "What do I think of Wikileaks? I think it would be a good
> idea!" (after Mahatma Gandhi's famous quip on 'Western Civilisation')
>
> These 1.
> Disclosures and leaks have been of all times, but never before has a
> non state- or non- corporate affiliated group done this at the scale
> Wikileaks managed to with the 'Afghan War Logs'.  But nonetheless we
> believe that this is more something of a quantitative leap than of a
> qualitative one. In a certain sense, these 'colossal' Wikileaks
> disclosures can simply be explained as a consequence of the dramatic
> spread of IT usage, together with a dramatic drop in its costs,
> including those for the storage of millions of documents. Another
> contributing factor is the fact that safekeeping state and corporate
> secrets - never mind private ones - has become rather difficult in an
> age of instant reproducibility and dissemination.  Wikileaks here
> becomes symbolic for a transformation in the 'information society' at
> large, and holds up a mirror of future things to come. So while one
> can look at Wikileaks as a (political) project, and criticize it for
> its modus operandi, or for other reasons, it can also be seen as a
> 'pilot' phase in an evolution towards a far more generalized culture
> of anarchic exposure, beyond the traditional politics of openness and
> transparency.
>
> These 2.
> For better or for worse, Wikileaks has skyrocketed itself into the
> realm of high-level international politics. Out of the blue, Wikileaks
> has briefly become a full-blown player both on the world scene, as
> well as in the national sphere of some countries. By virtue of its
> disclosures, Wikileaks, small as it is, appears to carry the same
> weight as government or big corporations - in the domain of
> information gathering and publicizing at least. But at same time it is
> unclear whether this is a permanent feature or a hype-induced
> temporary phenomenon - Wikileaks appears to believe the former, but
> only time will tell. Nonetheless Wikileaks, by word of its best known
> representative Julian Assange, think that, as a puny non-state and  
> non-
> corporate actor, it is boxing in the same weight-class  as the
> Pentagon - and starts to behave accordingly. One could call this the
> 'Talibanization' stage of postmodern - "Flat World" - theory where
> scales, times, and places have been declared largely irrelevant. What
> counts is the celebrity momentum and the amount of media attention.
> Wikileaks manages to capture that attention by way of spectacular
> information hacks where other parties, especially civil society groups
> and human rights organizations, are desperately struggling to get
> their message across. Wikileaks genially puts to use the 'escape
> velocity' of IT - using IT to leave IT behind and irrupt into the
> realm of real-world politics.
>
> These 3.
> In the ongoing saga termed "The Decline of the US Empire", Wikileaks
> enters the stage as the slayer of a soft target. It would be difficult
> to imagine it doing quite the same to the Russian or Chinese
> government, or even to that of Singapore - not to speak of their ...
> err ... 'corporate' affiliates. Here distinct, and huge, cultural and
> linguistic barriers are at work, not to speak of purely power-related
> ones, that would need to be surmounted. Also vastly different
> constituencies obtain there, even if we speak about the more limited
> (and allegedly more globally shared) cultures and agendas of hackers,
> info-activists and investigative journalists. In that sense Wikileaks
> in its present manifestation remains a typically 'Western' product and
> cannot claim to be a truly universal or global undertaking.
>
> These 4.
> One of the main difficulty with explaining Wikileaks  arises from the
> fact it is unclear - and also unclear to the Wikileaks people
> themselves - whether it sees itself and operates as a content provider
> or as a simple carrier of leaked data (whichever one, as predicated by
> context and circumstances, is the impression). This, by the way, has
> been a common problem ever since media went massively online and
> publishing and communications became a service rather than a product.
> Julian Assenge cringes every time he is portrayed as the editor-in-
> chief of Wikileaks, yet on the other hand, Wikileaks says it edits
> material before publication and claims it checks documents for
> authenticity with the help of hundreds of volunteer analysts. This
> kind of content vs. carrier debates have been going on for a number of
> decades amongst media activists with no clear outcome. Therefore,
> instead of trying to resolve this inconsistency, it might be better to
> look for fresh approaches and develop new, critical, concepts for what
> has become a hybrid publishing practice involving actors far beyond
> the traditional domain of professional news media.
>
> These 5.
> The steady decline of investigative journalism due to diminishing
> support and funding is an undeniable fact. The ever-ongoing
> acceleration and over-crowding in the so-called attention economy
> makes that there is no longer enough room for complicated stories. The
> corporate owners of mass circulation media are also less and less
> inclined to see the working of the neo-liberal globalized economy and
> its politics detailled and discussed at length. The shift of
> information towards infotainment demanded by the public and media-
> owners has unfortunately also been embraced as a working style by
> journalists themselves making it difficult to publish complex stories.
> Wikileaks erupts in this state of affairs as an outsider within the
> steamy ambiance of 'citizen journalism' and DIY news reporting in the
> blogosphere. What Wikileaks anticipates, but so far has not been able
> to organize, is the 'crowd sourcing' of the actual interpretation of
> its leaked documents.
> Traditional investigative journalism consisted of three phase:
> unearthing facts, cross-checking these and backgrounding them into an
> understandable discourse. Wikileaks does the first, claims to do the
> second, but leaves the issue of the third completely blank. This is
> symptomatic of a particular brand of the open access ideology, whereby
> the economy of content production itself is externalized to unknown
> entities 'out there'. The crisis in investigative journalism is
> neither understood nor recognized. How the productive entities are
> supposed to sustain themselves is left in the dark. It is simply
> presumed that the analysis and interpretation will be taken up by the
> traditional news media but this is not happening automatically. The
> saga of the Afghan War Logs demonstrates that Wikileaks has to
> approach and negotiate with well-established traditional media to
> secure sufficient credibility. But at the same time these also prove
> unable to fully process the material.
>
> These 6.
> Wikileaks is a typical SPO (Single Person Organization). This means
> that initiative-taking, decision making, and the execution process is
> largely centralized in the hands of one single person. Much like small
> and medium-size businesses the founder cannot be voted out and unlike
> many collectives leadership is not rotating. This is not an uncommon
> feature within organizations, indifferent whether they operate in the
> realm of politics, culture or the 'civil society' sector. SPOs are
> recognizable, exciting, inspiring, and easy to feature in the media.
> Their sustainability, however is largely dependent on the actions of
> their charismatic leader, and their functioning is difficult to
> reconcile with democratic values. This is also why they are difficult
> to replicate and do not scale up easily. Sovereign hacker Julian
> Assange is the identifying figurehead of Wikileaks, whose notoriety
> and reputation very much merges with his own, blurring the distinction
> between what it does and stands for and Assange's (rather agitated)
> private life and (somewhat unpolished) political opinions.
>
> These 7.
> Wikileaks is also an organization deeply shaped by 1980s hacker
> culture combined with the political values of techno-libertarianism
> which emerged in the 1990s. The fact that Wikileaks  has been founded,
> and is still to a large extent run  by hard core geeks, forms an
> essential frame of reference to understand its values and moves. This,
> unfortunately, comes together with a good dose of the somewhat less
> savory aspects of hacker culture. Not that idealism, the desire to
> contribute to making the world a better place, could be denied to
> Wikileaks, quite on the contrary. But this idealism is paired with a
> preference for conspiracies, an elitist attitude and a cult of secrecy
> (never mind condescending manners) which is not conducive to
> collaboration with like minded people and groups - reduced to the
> position of simple consumers of Wikileaks outcomes.
>
> These 8.
> Lack of commonality with congenial 'another world is possible'
> movements forces Wikileaks to seek public attention by way of
> increasingly spectacular - and risky - disclosures, while gathering a
> constituency of often wildly enthusiastic, but totally passive
> supporters. Following the nature and quantity of Wikileaks exposures
> from its inception up to the present day is eerily reminiscent of
> watching a firework display, and that includes a 'grand finale' in the
> form of the doomsday-machine pitched, waiting-to-be-unleashed,
> 'Insurance' document. This raises serious doubts about the long-term
> sustainability of Wikileaks itself, but possibly also, that of the
> Wikileaks model. Wikileaks operates on a ridiculously small size
> (probably no more than a dozen of people form the core of its
> operation). While the extent and savvyness of Wikileaks' tech support
> is proved by its very existence, Wikileaks' claim to several hundreds,
> or even more, volunteer analysts and experts is unverifiable, and to
> be frank, barely credible. This is clearly Wikileaks Achilles' heel,
> not only from a risks and/or sustainability standpoint, but
> politically as well - which is what matters to us here.
>
> These 9.
> Wikileaks displays a stunning lack of transparancy in its internal
> organization. Its excuse that "Wikileaks needs to be completely opaque
> in order to force others to be totally transparent." amounts to little
> more than Mad Magazine's famous Spy vs Spy cartoons. You win from the
> opposition but in a way that makes you undistinguishable from it. And
> claiming the moral high ground afterwards is not really helpful - Tony
> Blair too excelled in that exercise. As Wikileaks is neither a
> political collective nor an NGO in the legal sense, and not a company
> or part of social movement for that matter, we need first of all
> discuss what type of organization it is that we deal with. Is it a
> virtual project? After all, it does exist as a hosted website with a
> domain name, which is the bottom line. But does it have a goal beyond
> the personal ambition of its founder(s)? Is Wikileaks reproducible and
> will we see the rise of national or local chapters that keep the name
> Wikileaks? And according to which playing rules will they operate? Or
> should we rather see it as a concept that travels from context to
> context and that, like a meme, transforms itself in time and space?
> Maybe Wikileaks will organize itself around an own version of the
> IETF's slogan 'rough consensus and running code'? Project like
> Wikipedia and Indymedia have both resolved this issue in their own
> ways, but not without crises, forks and disruptive conflicts. A
> critique like the one voiced here does not aim to force Wikileaks into
> a traditional format but on the contrary to explore whether Wikileaks
> (and its future clones, associates, avatars and assorted family
> members) could stand model for new forms of organizations and
> collaborations. Elsewhere the term 'organized network' has been coined
> as a possible term for this formats. In the past there was talked of
> 'tactical media'. Others have used the generic term 'internet
> activism'. Perhaps Wikileaks has other ideas in what direction it
> wants to take this organizational debate. But where? It is of course
> up to Wikileaks to decide for itself but up to now we have seen very
> little by way of an answer, leaving others, like the Wall Street
> Journal, to raise questions, e.g., about Wikileaks' financial bona
> fides.
>
> These 10.
> We do not think that taking a stand in favor or against Wikileaks is
> what matters most. Wikileaks is there, and there to stay till it
> either scuttles itself or is destroyed by the forces opposing its
> operation. Our point is rather to (try to) pragmatically assess and
> ascertain what Wikileaks can, could  - and maybe even, who knows,
> should - do, and help formulate how 'we' could relate to and interact
> with Wikileaks. Despite all its drawbacks, and against all odds,
> Wikileaks has rendered a sterling service to the cause of
> transparency, democracy and openness. We might wish it to be
> different, but, as the French would say, if something like it did not
> exist, it would have to be invented. The 'quantitative turn' of
> information overload is a fact of present life. One can only expect
> the glut of disclosable information to grow further - and
> exponentially so. To organize and interpret this Himalaya of data is a
> collective challenge that is out there, whether we give it the name
> 'Wikileaks' or not.
>
> Amsterdam, late August 2010
>
>
> #  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
> #  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at kein.org

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net