A lot of fun could be had with the recent call by the Kedah branch of the Malaysian Historical Society to have Penang returned to Kedah – the ramifications to regional geopolitics alone could be earth-shattering, quite apart from how we look at the principles of contracts, treaties, property rights and sovereignty.
At this moment, however, the fallout from WikiLeaks is far more intriguing. I am sure that many anti-Americans are gleefully swathed in the Schadenfreude of seeing senior US diplomats scurrying around trying to contain the damage, which is manifold. True, few of the actual facts revealed are themselves titillating – so Arab leaders are terrified of a nuclear Iran, and organised crime is seen to be linked with the Russian government – hardly gobsmacking. However, the faith that Americans will have in their government in handling confidential information will be shaken – it is astonishing why so many people had access to the database in the first place and the idea that the documents were copied onto a Lady Gaga-disguised CD, while ironic (her dress sense is hardly discreet), will not be greatly amusing to those affected. Indeed, the international diplomatic community may not be so frank when speaking to American diplomats in future. This whole thing has provoked some furious self-proclaimed patriots who have called for the person responsible for the leak to be executed for treason or for WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange to be assassinated.
Still, the latest WikiLeaks project is still in early days. If it turns out that some of the information leaked will endanger people’s lives, then the leakers would have that on their conscience. Furthermore, people in public positions do have a right to a private life (and in particular, to have had a private life before becoming a public figure), but such leaks could became a method to discredit people based on private activities irrelevant to their professional roles, risking a replication of gutter press sensationalism. Indeed, the test is whether the disclosure of a certain piece of information is in the public interest, and getting that right may be the barometer of WikiLeaks’ long-term success, at least amongst the global intelligentsia.
In the meantime, the hearts of some of our politicians and diplomats will be beating slightly quicker than usual at the prospect of some of their conversations being laid bare as the leaks continue over the next few days and weeks.
While those revelations will spice up our already heated political space, we should in the meantime ask how effective our government is in controlling information that it thinks should be kept secret. This year I have heard of or seen documents that – according to the stamp placed upon them – were handled by people not authorised to do so. Indeed, some individuals have deliberately managed to obtain supposedly protected documents and posted them online in order to discredit others. Clearly they have political motivations, but the point is that if some documents can be obtained, then how safe are all the others?
That brings us to our next question, which is what information should be restricted? I imagine we would all agree that people’s medical information, for example, and data relating to national security such as details of military equipment should be kept secret. I have previously spoken about my experience with the Freedom of Information Act in the UK10, which helped to reform government policy, and Citizen Nades recently outlined some of the benefits of replicating such laws in Malaysia, so no need to make that case again here.
However, I sincerely hope that whatever is disclosed about our politicians and diplomats in the upcoming slew of leaks does not damage our country and fellow-citizens, but that it provides genuine insights in the public interest about how decisions affecting us are made. If WikiLeaks succeeds in doing that, then the site is an asset to democracy.
At the end of the day, a government that is not paranoid, a government that is confident that the information it is keeping secret really needs to be kept secret – and indeed, it is being kept secret in a secure, impenetrable way – is a government that will gain the trust of its citizens. Another key ingredient is the existence of a free press full of investigative journalists to continually ensure that this trust is not betrayed.