Recent incidents such as the Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Aaron Swartz revelations have brought to front the discourse on lack of privacy caused due to aggregation of information and data. There need to be equitable and transparent regulatory bodies to make sure no one controls the cyber information.
If you follow the news regularly, the following names may be familiar to you: Snowden, Manning, Julian Assange, Aaron Swartz.
The first three are facing prosecution or persecution; the last has committed suicide. How should we see them? Criminals, betrayers of their nation’s secrets, or romantic idealists in search of some elusive ideal. And what do their cases tell us about the patterns of power in the cyber age?
Before drawing the larger picture, let us briefly look at each case.
Aaron Swartz may not be a familiar name in India, but he was a legend among the developers in the information technology committed to ‘open source,’ the idea that the code in computer programmes should be accessible to all, and not controlled by a few as Microsoft or Apple does. A genius in software, he was a difficult personality, not uncommon in that profession. Swartz got into difficulty earlier this year as he was trying to download and freely make available four million academic papers from JSTOR, a data base accessible only to academics with some credentials, and subject to copy rights. Swartz was traced entering the MIT libraries with stealth and in the process of laying downloading tools that were copying all these articles. These did not concern national security; he was not stealing secrets with a commercial motive; but was clearly involved in laying bare a treasure trove for free public consumption. Was this unethical, criminal, or just irregular? The University authorities at the venerable MIT called in the cops to lay a trap and on the verge of capture Swartz committed suicide. A martyr in the cause of ‘Open systems’ or just a high-strung maverick?
Bradley Manning was a 22 year old low level functionary of the Pentagon. A loner to begin with, he had an aptitude for technology and ended up in Iraq with terabytes of data passing through his computer. He was horrified by the images that he saw of the war as filmed by the embedded cameras in the weapons used by the soldiers. Manning had the positional advantage in being able to download films of Americans shooting on friends and foes alike in the heat of the battle. Hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables between Washington and its embassies could also be deciphered on his system. He copied them all on pen drives and driven by his private torments and convictions sent them to WikiLeaks, the ultimate Mecca for the non-believers. He clearly violated all the military rules, betrayed the national secrets, and has now been sentenced for 136 years. Did he spy for another country, did he aid an enemy, did he make money illicitly? No, his actions and motives were again dictated by his convictions, however confused they may have been.
That brings us to Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks, an organisation dedicated to publicising information deemed confidential. Assange too started as a hacker, then became a superb computer programmer before establishing the organisation committed to freedom of expression and as a part of that commitment to disclosure of hidden secrets. WikiLeaks gave the space for Manning’s explosive material but its exposures are dreaded generally by all governments. Assange, now a high priest of ‘leaking’ is sheltered in the Ecuadorian embassy in London trying to escape the multiple long arms of several countries.
Digital communication
The latest case of Snowden is even larger in its dimensions. This young, computer geek was not even an official, only an employee of a consulting company, but was in a position to monitor not just the flow of data, but of entire systems of data. These systems were tracking, copying and storing for possible later use virtually all the digital communication all over the world. His unease was in seeing how much data was being collected by the US indiscriminately about its own citizens and all others — allies and enemies. Snowden in revealing the contours and the contents of this so far unknown operation was not revealing commercial secrets for money, nor was he a spy passing on the secrets to China or Russia, though inadvertently he may have done so. He is the classical whistle blower, telling the world what he saw and did not like.
It is clear from these cases that none of them are spies in the conventional sense or thieves as commonly understood with a profit motive. Yes, they have violated the law, betrayed confidences and shaken systems. What is at work, here? There are different strands.
First, there is a worry among some today, that the aggregation of information and data has led to the complete lack of privacy for the individual. Where we are located, what we read and see, who we communicate with and what we say, and much more can be traced by the impersonal System. This need not be a malevolent activity, but an individual can lose his sense of anonymity. It may not worry all of us, but it does greatly disturb some who value their privacy.
Second, if information is power, some organisations are covertly acquiring enormous power over citizens and even governments. The legitimate needs of counter terrorism has enhanced such power. Ironically, it is the liberally inclined activists in the US who have disclosed the global voyeurism of its agencies over all its citizens, and over all other nations. Rebellion from within and retaliatory action from other nations is likely.
Third, asymmetries are built into this phenomenon in the digital world. A surveillance system may have tons of data but an individual is also able to steal or transfer huge caches of information. He is not dealing with physical files but with millions of bytes. Given the asymmetry a lone ranger can do as much damage as a government.
Finally, we are beginning to hear a call that the internet and the cyber world needs a more transparent and equitable regulatory supervision so that no one nation or corporation controls it. The equations between the demands of security and the concerns for privacy have to be reconsidered. A global engagement among experts is starting on these aspects.