Defense Information Systems and Wikileaks

Information Technology in the Era of WikiLeaks
Introduction
The protection of America’s secrets, military information, data obtained through surveillance, and so on has been a top priority since Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks came on the scene. Julian Assange, now under arrest in England, and wanted in connection with the Manning hacking of federal documents, is the emblem of the information wars being conducted in the Digital Age. For some, Assange is a hero; for others, particularly those with authority in the State, he is an enemy. On the one hand, Assange, Snowden and Manning represent the need and right of the public to know what its governments are doing in the face of so little transparency today. On the other hand, they represent the threat to the security of the State and its defense information systems. This paper will discuss the ethical issues related to the use of information technology and how information technology plays a role in the era of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks, particularly with respect to its impact on defense information systems.
The Rise of WikiLeaks
Munro (2016) has noted that Wikileaks has spawned an era of deterritorialization, which has helped bring about an entire network of digital crusaders—such as Anonymous and many other hacker groups—all of whom are dedicated to the obtaining of state department secrets and the publication of information about governments that can expose corruption to the public. Assange, for instance, is wanted in the U.S. in connection with his role in the Manning breach. However, Assange also played a role in the 2016 election with his publication of emails from Hillary Clinton while she was using an unsecured server (Gabbard, 2017). These emails were viewed as an invasion of privacy, a violation of law, and a hack of a government account. The murder of Seth Rich, an aid of the Clinton campaign leading up to the 2016 election, only heightened the drama of who did what to whom. With so much secrecy surrounding the release or obtaining of the data, the issue of what was ethical became blurred. Trump used the news reports about Hillary’s emails to rally his base and paint her as a criminal who had violated U.S. law and who should be held responsible for the disaster in Benghazi. Others viewed Assange’s actions as reprehensible, and Clinton recently celebrated the fact that Assange was finally under arrest.
In terms of defense information systems, the threat posed by the era of leaks is real because it means information held on servers can potentially be stolen by anyone. Protecting that information is a top priority but any wall can be surmounted over time—and that is the risk of maintaining information on servers. The Digital Age has created a Catch-22 of sorts, as it is impossible to imagine a world where information is stored entirely on paper and kept in file cabinets—yet it is far more difficult to steal such information than it is to break into secure servers and download reams of data and spread it all over the world instantly. For defense information systems, an accounting must be made—and in the wake of the WikiLeaks awakening an accounting was made at the Defense Information Systems Agency (Cuillier, 2017).
Cuillier (2017) views WikiLeaks as a social media platform like Facebook and Twitter—albeit one that is dedicated to publishing government secrets and examples of government corruption rather than one that is dedicate to promoting personal information on the world stage. Because of the social nature of WikiLeaks and the controversial actions of Snowden, Assange and Manning in recent years, the approach of the government has been somewhat muted. Oliver Stone, known for making the 1991 film JFK, which won popular support from audiences who then lobbied Congress to open the sealed files on the JFK assassination, made a feature film about Snowden as well and portrayed him in a heroic light, combating the evils, overreach and corruption of the U.S. government in a manner similar to that which surrounded Daniel Ellsberg when he stole and sent to the media the so-called Pentagon Papers, which revealed the truth about the Vietnam War.
The Issue of Ethics and Accountability
By comparing these two accounts—the theft and publication of the Pentagon Papers and the theft of the NSA spying data and information on the war in Iraq (stolen and leaked by Snowden and Manning respectively)—one sees the line of ethics that is blurred by the numerous perspectives on the matter. Ellsberg never went to jail for his leak of the Pentagon Papers, though he expected to serve a life sentence. Manning, on the other hand, was charged with and convicted of espionage. Snowden fled to Russia to avoid arrest. Assange hid in the Ecuadorian Embassy for years before finally being forced out and arrested. Ellsberg was viewed a hero by the public because he shed light on a war that few in the U.S. supported. The same went for Manning, who revealed abuses of power in the war in Iraq, Snowden who exposed NSA overreach, and Assange who trumpeted the data. However, by the time the Digital Age had arrived, information had a much shorter shelf-life. Ellsberg’s data leak made headlines for a long time and forced the government to assume accountability. Manning, Snowden and Assange have not quite enjoyed the same “victory” if it could be called such.
The reason for this is that the defense information systems and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has come to be far more important in the world today, which is now on the brink of entering a new Cold War 2.0. DISA is now responsible for securing the vast majority of the government’s networks so that hacks and leaks cannot occur in the future. The exposure of government documents, secrets, communications and actions is not something that the federal government wants to see happen—even though some view the lack of transparency as an indication of government corruption and the violation of mandates. The fact is, however, that governments have an ethical responsibility to be accountable to the public but also have an ethical responsibility to protect the public and the nation—which, it is argued, cannot be done without some level of secrecy from prying eyes (Cuillier, 2017). The argument is that anything made public cannot be harmful to the reputation or to the processes of the government. Anything that is part of an intelligence operation, part of a mission to serve and protect, or part of classified communication must not be made public—either through breach or leak.
The argument on the side of the public, the communities that support WikiLeaks, Snowden, Assange, Manning and other so-called “whistleblowers,” is based on the idea that they serve the public good by exposing government malfeasance, corruption, overreach, violation of mandates, spying, subterfuge, murder, and so on. There is clearly an argument to be made on both sides, of course: in terms of accountability to the public, the government should be open and forthright about what it is doing; however, in the era of Cold War 2.0, openness and transparency do not give a competitive edge in the business and trade of secrets.
Defense information systems, therefore, must walk a fine line between guarding networks and allowing oversight of those same networks. The problem is that Congressional oversight is not viewed by the technological citizenship as effective or as satisfactory in its own right. The technological citizenship thus seeks on its own initiative the goal of holding governments accountable by forcing them to be transparent through the publication of sensitive materials that are not meant to be shared in public. The rise of WikiLeaks has created a public demand for this kind of information and this level of accountability simply because nothing like it existed before.
Conclusion
Thus, while defense information systems should be secured for the good of the State, its missions, and the protection and security of the public, the public also feels that it should have access to everything those in government are doing because they want the government to be by, for and of them. In their view, they have as much right to government documents as anyone in government. This creates the tension in society that threatens defense information systems, no matter how advanced they become in terms of protecting networks. The more the public feels unsatisfied and angered by non-transparency in government, the more likely the technological citizenship is to make use of hacker groups like Anonymous or social media outfits like WikiLeaks or whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning to create a platform for sharing and exposing secrets that the government does not want revealed. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that digital technology is rapidly advancing so quickly that as soon as a new defense is constructed a way to counter it has been devised, which virtually assures that no digital system is ever fully protected—which begs the question: should the Digital Age come to an end?



References
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Gabbard, D. (2017). Consolidated Energy: Hillary Clinton and the 2016 US Presidential
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Munro, I. (2016). Organizational resistance as a vector of deterritorialization: The case of
WikiLeaks and secrecy havens. Organization, 23(4), 567-587.