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Edited on Tue Dec-14-10 01:11 PM by snot
The potential to help restore the balance of knowledge and thus the balance of power between us and our governmental and corporate overlords constitutes what I've regarded as the most important effect of Wikileaks' revelations.
Assange states an additional benefit in the Swedish documentary I've mentioned previously: that "{e}very release that {Wikileaks does} has a second message: if you engage in immoral, in unjust behavior, it will be found out."
But perhaps the most fascinating writing I've read on Assange's strategy to date is his own texts, "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" and "Conspiracy as Governance"(2006). In a nutshell, he argues that authoritarian governments are inevitably conspiratorial because their efforts to exploit people and interfere with their liberties tend to inspire resistance; so in order to maintain their authority, such regimes must try to keep the nature of what they're doing secret, restricting certain information to those inside the regime or otherwise in on the exploitation. (If they were maintaining their power legitimately, there'd be no need for secrecy.) But as the flow of information is throttled down, the regime as a whole – as a "computational system" – becomes "dumber," because those within the conspiracy become less able or willing to share all the info and ideas needed in order for the regime to exercise its power as effectively in its own behalf as it could (i.e., as he notes, "garbage in, garbage out"). Accordingly, provoking the regime to tighten security should ultimately hasten its downfall. (Oh, what a tangled web we weave.)
This is of course exactly the State Department's complaint: that governments who aren't telling their own citizens what they're really up to will also stop telling our government – will, in fact, stop conspiring with our government, at least insofar as secret-sharing constitutes conspiracy. {Basically, i.m.h.o., the oligarchs of the planet – those who have accumulated enough wealth and/or weapons and/or p.r. facilities to subdue their local populations – are like kids cheating at Monopoly: I'll help you maintain your power at the expense of your peons if you'll help me maintain mine.}
{Also note, this is also why Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, was such a godsend to the oligarchs – because p.r./propaganda help them manipulate populations through their basic instincts and emotions, rather than through secrecy; i.e., for too many people, the facts truly don't matter any more, because their fear, anger, or cupidity, have been successfully enlisted against them by the oligarchs; see Adam Curtis's most excellent Century of the Self. Assange does not discuss p.r./propaganda, but he might agree that it tends to enable oligarchs to maintain control without compromising their own systems' computational power.}
Thus, per Assange, generally, the strategy of leaking secrets is effective against authoritarian regimes in three related yet distinct ways: (1) it tends to restore the balance of power between authoritarian governments and those they govern by investing the latter with the power that attends knowledge of the injustices disclosed; (2) it tends to deter unjust actions with the threat that such actions may be revealed; and (3) it tends to provoke authoritarian governments to throttle the flow of information down further, thereby impairing their effectiveness and possibly hastening their own demise.
{And I agree with Assange, and suspect he'd acknowledge such complicating factors as p.r./propaganda. Indeed, that may be partly why he may have believed it necessary for the cyberwar to be begun more or less now. Because the oligarchs do not yet control the non-traditional media, but they're working on it (they already control most traditional media). And once they've got that control, it's not just that they'll be better able to keep their secrets; it's also that there will be no escape from their p.r./propaganda. For Assange, a key consideration may have been when to trigger a cyberwar: it would be best for it to occur when the internet has grown to reach the greatest possible number of people before it's been converted into the most powerful instrument of control ever created.) I gather it may have been disagreement re- the manner of publication of leaked info that gave rise to the split between Assange and those defecting to form Open Leaks (see the Swedish documentary) – that Assange wanted to publish the info sooner and in a more provocative manner.}
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