WikiLeaks: What are we to think? – Columbia Daily Tribune

I always have had mixed feelings about unauthorized disclosure of U.S. government surveillance activities. National security officials can make a good case for secrecy as they pursue those who would do us harm, but all of us have reason to feel somewhat uncomfortable at the prospect of Big Brother snooping into our private lives as well.

With each new electronic gadget, the stakes get higher. What are we to think? One thing for sure: We should assume everything we submit to cyberspace is public.

Not that our every interaction via smartphone, tablet, brainy new television and the like will be misused, but the primary restraint stems from the mere volume of human communication and the fact most of it is uninteresting to others. This is sort of security by default, not because of any intentional defense against hacking. Which means for the time being, at least information of interest to others can and will be discovered.

WikiLeaks keeps proving the art of hacking is running ahead of the art of encryption. Certainly the ability of government agencies to know what average citizens are doing with electronic devices is greater than anything we can do in electronic defense. Our only real defense is attitudinal. We should assume we are living in electronic fishbowls and act accordingly.

All of which makes a case for the Luddite life.

Against todays societal norm, I have avoided the use of smartphones altogether, not mainly because of fears of unauthorized snooping but because of a combination of inertia and disdain for the way smartphones take over users lives. I do have an old-fashioned cellphone but rarely turn it on. Our family bill consistently shows my monthly use at less than 10 minutes.

People whose phones are constantly in use volunteer astonishing amounts of information to the internet for easy surveillance. Any government that assumes some of the information on the internet might come from terrorists and other enemies of the state is bound to tap in continually. To tell the bad guys from the good guys, the good guys will receive at least summary attention.

Revelations by WikiLeaks remind us of the brave, disturbing new world of the internet. By our eager embrace of the new technology, we invite its abuses as well as its attributes.

So, Im not ready to blame anybody, including WikiLeaks, when new evidence of hacking shows up.

Defense officials blame insiders who leak information, but this is nothing new. Now its done more efficiently electronically, but the acts are no more heinous than similar thefts by yesterdays spies using yesterdays technology. Every combatant will snoop to find the bad snoops. The new technology guarantees ordinary citizens will be examined in the process.

Managers of the CIA and other intelligence agencies bemoan todays massive cyber leaks as threats to the ability of their agencies to perform their protective duties. We want them to continue the race against hacking, but we also want them to successfully hack enemy files, an activity that will always imply they could be looking at information provided by all of us.

The only words that dont offend a single human being are words delivered without a purpose.

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WikiLeaks: What are we to think? - Columbia Daily Tribune