We Open Governments

"We open governments", this is the slogan of, what by a long shot, is probably one of the most controversial and talked-about whistle-blowing organization of the decade, Wikileaks. Little did its founder,renowned internet activist and founder, Julian Assange know as to what epic proportions his brainchild would blow up to.

Origins

Started by a group of "Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and  start-up company technologists" from countries around the globe, the main aim behind setting up such and organization, through its website, was to convey to the public the atrocities committed by governments of various countries and to let the public know the truth, hard-hitting behind the scene facts which come from credible and reliable sources within the system.

Wikileaks the digital artifact

As an organization  it takes the freedom of the press and more importantly the freedom of expression to a whole new level. And in this way its a medium of free human expression qualifying it into the broad definition of a digital artifact. Now if seen from an angle to analyze the objectivity of the organization, this is a very interesting artifact because the sole purpose, the objective of this project in itself is the political viewpoints of a group of individuals.This means that the artifact in itself has no neutral angle for it to be seen from. Its to let the whole world realize the anguish of the oppressed people in such regimes.

Unforeseen consequences

The founders drew their inspiration from the need to substantiate democracy as a process, to let people know whats actually going on within some governments of the world, governments that these very people voted for, this is what drove them. In their defense they had every right to do so. But what they did not for-see was that some of  the cables leaked by them on the pretext of letting out the crimes committed by the military, they actually gave away some very crucial details pertaining to some covert-operations carried out by the military, thereby making public the names of some of the informers and trusted sources of information that the army had. This poses a very serious threat to the lives of these informers and  places their lives under serious threat and pushes important operations to the brink of failure.The flip-side here being that the monstrosities committed by some corrupt army officials on innocent civilians comes to light.hence there lie two sets of lives in the balance the civilians on one side and those of the informers on the other, this puts a big question mark on weather the intent of Wikileaks is actually justified. This is literally trading lives and no-one in their right mind should be allowed to play god.

Trust Issues

The other important topic that comes up, due to the release (by wikileaks) of the recent diplomatic cables which were exchanged between the embassies of the United States of America and its government create a myriad of trust issues both external and internal to the government. Firstly the 'source' that wikileaks got in touch with was an army intelligence officer named Bradley Manning here was an intelligence officer who couldn't stand the mode of operation of the army in Iraq and believed that society would be able to make better and more informed decision as to what government they choose to elect. The political consequences would be a whole lot different if say he decided to leak this information to countries like China or Russia who would value it dearly and this would strain the relationship between countries. Now governments face a new kind of espionage, people in their own camps who are fed up the way the government functions, now instead of going to the opposition which is rather unpatriotic will now prefer to let the public know what actually goes on within governments so that they know who they actually elected. This will create a lot of suspicion within governments to the extent that it will considerably affect their performance as a unit.
The whole concept of trusted and sound international relations between countries lies under threat, especially since the leaking of the diplomatic cables a lot of criticism was directed towards the U.S government because in some of the conversations between the embassies and the U.S government there have been many derogatory references towards many important international figures, as an example the Italian P.M Silvio Brelusconi was called many names during the exchange of these cables.





As a digital artifact Wilkileaks as an organization has its objective and purpose to open governments and let people know the truth but as with every artifact there have been numerous political consequences which were not foreseen which asks the important question as to whats the cost of knowing the truth, and if its really worth it. 

By

Vivek Subramaniam

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