Wikileaks Busts The Myth Of Private Communication
By Jim Taylor
31 December, 2010
Countercurrents.org
At the turn of the year, one's thoughts naturally turn to the significant events of the past year – earthquakes, hurricanes, scandals, floods, royal engagements, tax revolts....
I suspect that the long-term significance of the Wikileaks disclosures has not been fully appreciated yet.
Over the last year, Wikileaks made public almost 500,000 documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – including the video of an American helicopter shooting unarmed civilians, for instance. It ended the year by releasing some 260,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables.
In doing so, Wikileaks hammered the last nails into the coffin of the myth of private communication.
Smoke and mirrors
The charges against Wikileaks' director, Julian Assange – and against the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning – are smoke and mirrors, distracting us from the real issue.
Assange may be an idealist, as he claims, trying to create transparency and openness. Or he may be a megalomaniac stud, as his critics claim, intent only on enjoying his 15 minutes of glory.
But set all that aside. I think future historians may declare that Wikileaks marked a milestone, a watershed, a tipping point, in our understanding of ourselves.
Until now, people have assumed that they owned and therefore controlled the words they wrote. If I write a letter, it's intended only for thee and me. If I write a column or a book, a publisher requires my permission to distribute my words.
American diplomats thought they were writing private messages. But in an electronic world, privacy no longer exists.
Surveillance cameras observe you in public squares and corporate offices. Governments eavesdrop on e-mails. Social networks like Facebook expose personal details to millions.
Don't tell me about unbreakable encryption codes. Anything one computer can create, another can decipher – it's just a matter of time.
Exponential rate of change
To explain that, I have to delve briefly into the theories of Ray Kurzweil. For several decades now, he has written about the rate of change we experience. Essentially, he argues, technological change takes place exponentially, not linearly.
We expect change to move linearly. Therefore next year will be much like this year, which was much like last year. Not so, says Kurzweil. Each period doubles the rate of change. Two new developments become four, become eight, become 16...
The 20 th century saw more changes than the 19 centuries before it. My father started life in a horse-and-buggy age; by the time he died, computers, cell phones, and jet travel had become commonplace.
But, claims Kurzweil, we'll exceed that amount of technological change within the first quarter of this century.
In the computer world, exponential growth has been popularized as Moore's Law. Computer capabilities double, every two years. Or prices plunge. Or some combination of the two.
My first white-on-black computer, with 64 kilobytes of memory, cost $8000. I just bought a laptop with 8 gigabytes of memory, color screen, wirelessly connected to the whole world, for $600.
Kurzweil (and other futurists such as Frank Tippler and Arthur Peacocke) speculate that at today's exponential rate of change, by roughly 2025 a single desktop computer could contain the entire contents of a human brain – memories, reasoning, even emotions. Its responses would be, in fact, indistinguishable from the human it emulates.
Even if the human brain has twice as many interactive neurons as they estimate, they add, the computer will catch up -- in just two more years.
Instant learning
More importantly, computers do not need to go through the same painful learning process as humans.
I cannot transfer a lifetime of learning to my grandchildren – they must develop their own knowledge base. But computers have no such learning curve. What one computer learns can be transferred instantly to other computers.
Early voice recognition programs required about three hours to train the computer to recognize 1000 words. Today's programs can handle 100,000 words with perhaps ten minutes of training – at one per cent of the original price. Just download the latest program.
As fast as one Wikileaks website was shut down, dozens more opened up. Currently, I understand, the American diplomatic cables are accessible on thousands of mirror sites.
Once it's out there, there is no way of getting rid of it.
Almost all knowledge is now accessible. Not in a single computer, as Kurzweil visualized. But through electronic networks, all the knowledge in the western world is now accessible.
As soon as you – or I, or anyone – commits a message to electronic transmission, it's available to anyone who really wants to get at it. Fortunately, most of us live such inconsequential lives that no one wants to dig for juicy details. But if they want to, they can.
Nothing is private any more. Nothing is confidential.
Whatever you think of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, remember them the next time you're tempted to say, do, or write something you might later regret
Jim Taylor is a Canadian author and freelance journalist with 50 years experience in the communications media.
