WikiLeaks, Snowden, and Defense Information Systems Ethics

Introduction

The protection of America's secrets — military information, data obtained through surveillance, and other sensitive materials — 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 Manning's hacking of federal documents, has become 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 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 diminishing transparency. On the other hand, they represent a serious threat to the security of the State and its defense information systems. This paper discusses the ethical issues related to the use of information technology and how information technology plays a role in the era of Snowden, Manning, and 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 obtaining state department secrets and publishing 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 through 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 aide to the Clinton campaign leading up to the 2016 election, only heightened the drama surrounding who did what to whom. With so much secrecy surrounding the release and obtaining of the data, the question of what was ethical became deeply blurred. Trump used news reports about Clinton'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 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: it means that 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 inherent risk of maintaining information on servers. The Digital Age has created a Catch-22 of sorts. 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 physical information than it is to break into secure servers, download reams of data, and spread it across the world instantly. For defense information systems, an accounting had to be made — and in the wake of the WikiLeaks awakening, an accounting was indeed made at the Defense Information Systems Agency (Cuillier, 2017).

Cuillier (2017) views WikiLeaks as a social media platform comparable to Facebook and Twitter — albeit one dedicated to publishing government secrets and examples of government corruption rather than 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 government's response has been somewhat muted. Oliver Stone, known for his 1991 film JFK — which won popular support from audiences who then lobbied Congress to open the sealed files on the JFK assassination — also made a feature film about Snowden, portraying him in a heroic light. In Stone's telling, Snowden was combating the evils, overreach, and corruption of the U.S. government in a manner similar to that which surrounded Daniel Ellsberg when he leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers, which revealed the truth about the Vietnam War.

Conclusion

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 protecting networks. The more the public feels unsatisfied and angered by non-transparency in government, the more likely the technological citizenry is to make use of hacker groups like Anonymous, social media platforms like WikiLeaks, or whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning to create platforms for sharing and exposing secrets the government does not want revealed. The problem is exacerbated by the rapid pace of digital advancement: as soon as a new defense is constructed, a way to counter it is 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

Cuillier, D. (2017). Government information and leaks. In Social Media and the Law (pp. 159–173). Routledge.

Gabbard, D. (2017). Consolidated energy: Hillary Clinton and the 2016 US presidential campaign. Continental Thought & Theory, 1(2), 1–27.

Munro, I. (2016). Organizational resistance as a vector of deterritorialization: The case of WikiLeaks and secrecy havens. Organization, 23(4), 567–587.