Why you should care about WikiLeaks

Whatever your overall perception of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange is, if you are a freedom loving American who doesn't want to get your hands dirty by sending Team America in to save the %$$*H# day, you cannot deny the bang-up job that WikiLeaks, and Assange, have done for the freedom in the Middle East.

The general consensus in the press is that if WikiLeaks didn't start the revolution in Tunisia, it significantly fueled it. While popular momentum centered on the self-immolation (the lighting of oneself on fire) of college graduate Muhammad Al Bouazizi after police confiscated his vegetable cart, documented evidence of political corruption could be found through WikiLeaks. They released a cable dating from 2008 in which the U.S. embassy in Tunis wrote, among other things, "Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht, President [Zine el Abidine] Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants." As screeching whispers of a corrupt government were confirmed by factual U.S. cables, the "quasi-mafia" that Tunisians often referred to was, in fact, a mafia. At that point the self-immolation and eventual death of protester Al Bouazizi became the greasy catalyst in which the cog of social revolution could begin to roll.

Now, nearly one and half months after protests began in Tunisia, the regime was overthrown, and before we can fully process those events, Egypt has its own revolution, and protests are taking place in Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and even Iran. Rather than trying to analyze the geo-political significance of these uprisings, I think it is worth fleshing out the more fundamental technological revolution that is at work here.

This sequence of events is just one striking effect of a phenomenon that has already become the norm: the inevitable release of information. The freedom of information in the Middle East happens to correlate beautifully with the actual freedom of the Middle Eastern people. But the effects of informational autonomy extend far beyond the demise of these outdated Middle Eastern monarchies. All organizations are finding themselves increasingly influenced by the concrete effects of information leaks. The U.S., for instance, has caused irreparable damage to its already tarnished international reputation by covering up massively complex, and ideologically confusing, diplomatic ties. For instance, less than 10 years ago, we were hell-bent on spreading freedom in Iraq and ousting the tyrannical Saddam Hussein on the one hand, while we simultaneously maintained our alliance with Egypt, a nation whose president, by our own accounts, was the head of a tyrannical regime of his own. I admit, the U.S. is an easy target, because we have had our hands in everyone's business for the last 70 years. And it made sense during that time; if it ain't broke don't fix it. But everyone from WikiLeaks to Chinese government hackers to 30-year-old scallywags living in their parents' basements have all infiltrated "top secret" government files throughout the last decade. These hackers make it clear that diplomatic relations dependent upon clever, behind the scenes maneuvering, are a thing of the past. The unquestioned supremacy of the U.S. has not been fractured by the debt crisis, the Chinese economy, or terrorism, but by the autonomy of information. Twentieth century solutions are broken, so we had better fix them.

But information by its nature is indifferent to hackers, victims and those who may reap the benefits of an individual leak; what is true for the United States and Middle Eastern regimes is true for everybody. The information age is a universal revolution. Gonzaga University, Google, your Facebook page, the music files on iTunes and even your genome are all stores of information waiting to be leaked.

The question that arises from the reality of the information age is how do we manage the leaks that will inevitably occur? Do we risk universalizing as much information as possible, since it is going to get out eventually?

Whatever the answer, the realities are becoming clear. WikiLeaks, love it or hate it, is just a brand name for the informational revolution we participate in on a daily basis. The Facebook newsfeed, your tweets and the defunct JuicyCampus are simply more palatable varieties of WikiLeaks. And these are just the beginning.

As is the case with Ben Ali's regime in Tunisia and Mubarak's in Egypt, you can run but you can't hide from the information revolution. Ye' be warned.