Whistleblowing 2.0: From the Pentagon Papers to Bradley Manning to PRISM
With computer technician Edward Snowden’s bombshell revelations about the extent of state snooping — coupled with the ongoing court martial of Private Bradley Manning — 2013 is the year of the whistleblower. These ongoing cases also highlight the perennial plight of the whistleblower along with the state’s enduring efforts to prosecute them as a means to reinforce rank and file obedience. Information has always been a battleground. But, in an age of networked communication, the whistleblowing game is changing what information is leaked and who has the opportunity to leak it. What has changed little are the consequences for those who dare to become whistleblowers.
Few aspects of our lives remain unaffected by the ascent of the information society. Equally, the NSA leaks suggest there are few aspects of our digital lives which are not subject to mass surveillance of some kind. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange recently and accurately quipped that Facebook was “the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”
The information hungry security-state cannot (yet) be run by computers alone. Its vast networks require architects, admins, analysts, auditors, developers, engineers and others. These high tech trades do not work exclusively for the government. Instead, many are brought into the fold in a neoliberal partnership where work is contracted out to multimillion dollar consulting companies and private security firms. Nowhere is the scale of the security state more apparent than the vast numbers of people authorised to access classified information. For example, while the U.S. government will not confirm numbers, the BBC has conservatively estimated that “2.5 million U.S. military and civilian personnel” can access SIPRNET, the source of the Cablegate diplomatic cables. Thus Manning’s SIPRNET access — along with at least 2.5 million fellow security-cleared individuals — is not exceptional but typical of military work in the network society.
Whistleblowing is no longer the sole domain of key-holding, Harvard-educated elites at the top of the information food chain. Both Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden held low-level positions relative to their chain of command and security clearance. In a vast system where millions of government and contracted personnel have access to troves of data, leaking is an opportunity available to anyone with clearance, opportunity and motive.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17155-whistleblowing-20-from-the-pentagon-papers-to-bradley-manning-to-prism
