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WikiLeaks Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets
- known 16y agoPrivacy != Secrecy
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago"..the coming age of involuntary transparency..." My, what a nice turn of a phrase. Assange dumps all your trade secrets on the net? It's not a crime, nope, you're just being "involuntarily transparent". Orwell would have been proud.
- duncanj 16y agoRhetoric on both sides. Informational IEDs?
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoYou know, I hated to add the last part to my comment, but it just didn't look right being a one-liner. It wasn't meant to be a snarky point, but a serious one: it's a very nice turn of a phrase. It's neat how we invent new phrases to couch certain concepts either pro or con. I love language and the study of how we communicate. Watching little phrases like this appear and then either grow or die (to me) is extremely fascinating. EDIT: A terrific example of this is the oldie "mistakes were made" Note how the sentence actually has no subject -- "mistakes" seem to have made themselves. Cool stuff.
- msg 16y agoMy sister and parents recommended this to me: http://www.mistakesweremadebutnotbyme.com/ http://www.mistakesweremadebutnotbyme.com/ Time to go get it I guess.
- jbooth 16y agoSome guy leaks some stuff that threatens established interests and we've got Forbes telling us that it's our problem within 24 hours. Orwell would have been proud, indeed.
- VladRussian 16y agoAssange publishes. Insiders dump. Care to guess why?
- nostromo 16y agoI'm guessing that Orwell would side with Assange over the US State Department or companies like say, Exxon, Halliburton, Altria.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoMaybe, I'm not so sure. The citizens of Oceania in 1984 were very much the victim of "involuntary transparency", and it didn't seem to be a good thing. The problem with "involuntary transparency" as practiced by wikileaks is that there are inherent limitations of scope and thus inherent discrimination in application.
- michaelchisari 16y agoGeorge Orwell was a left-communist who fought with the POUM, a Libertarian Marxist group, in the 1936 Spanish Civil War. When Stalinism came to power, he was extraordinarily critical of it's centralization of power and of what he saw as a tyrannical subversion of democratic socialist principles. If ever there was a man in history who left a clear blueprint on where he would side in a struggle between multinational corporations and governments, and an idealistic whistleblower organization, it's Eric Blair. It's important to point out that the citizens of 1984 had their actions monitored at all times, yet the government operated in total secrecy. What we're discussing here is a situation in reverse. And on that note, if you have not read it, no matter your politics, I cannot recommend "Homage To Catalonia" enough. Orwell was truly one of the most gifted writers of the 20th century.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoMy point is that in the time between now and when all governments and powerful organizations on Earth are open and honest (likely to be a fair stretch of time) organizations like wikileaks cannot help but discriminate in the organizations they shine a light onto. There are innumerable reasons why this is so, starting with the mere matter of random chance and limited capabilities, moving to the matter of the nature of the organization and the opportunity for such leaks to occur, to the interest of the "viewership", the consequences of getting caught, etc, etc, etc. This discriminatory coverage has the potential to create a false portrait of reality. And that has consequences. Imagine two magazine covers, one photoshopped and immaculate the other completely "honest". To most uncritical observers the "honest" cover will appear vulgar and ugly in comparison. Only a few people will take the time to appreciate that the perfect cover is an utter lie. How do such dynamics play out in society, business, and geopolitical relations? In a wikileaks future a brutal dictatorship that can maintain utter control over its media image might be able to appear better than an honest and open, though flawed, country of liberty and consensual governance. Indeed, this is already a problem to some degree today. Idiots who don't know better imagine that life in dictatorial regimes might be exactly how the regime and its sycophants portray it (all the more believable without any dissenting voices), whereas every gritty aspect of life in western democracies and every flaw down to the least consequential is revealed in gory high-definition detail. To me wikileaks specifically seems very much biased by the "point spread" problem, of judging America and the west by a much higher standard than the rest of the world. There's nothing wrong with holding America to a higher standard, but there's everything wrong with losing sight of the fact that the standards are different and then falling into the notion, as so many have, that, say, America is as bad as the Iranian regime, or that American troops are no better than the Taliban. The consequences of such discriminatory judgments and of such imbalanced worldviews are dire indeed.
- some1else 16y agoMaybe their next leak is more revenge from former UBS' Brad Birkenfield?
- dtf 16y agoWhatever you feel about Assange as a personality, it's pretty clear that this is the way things will be from now on - even if Wikileaks were somehow to be taken out of the picture. And it's much to our benefit, I think. The old school has for too long used secrecy as a cloak for mediocrity.
- Groxx 16y agoI generally think so too. It's also more likely to impose responsibility in such cloaked goings-on, as the actions may be revealed later. If what they were doing was justified at the time, it's not much of a problem; if it wasn't, they have it coming. Secrecy has uses, but perpetual secrecy seems useful only to hide what you should be punished for.
- samd 16y agoSo what you're saying is: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear? I've heard that before...
- mpk 16y ago> It's also more likely to impose responsibility in such cloaked goings-on, as the actions may be revealed later. Call me a cynic, but I think that what will happen in the short term is that people (US diplomats in this case) will continue to behave in the exact same way, only now they won't trust the diplomatic 'cable' system to communicate and will temporarily revert to more old school practices (person to person or encrypted voice communications).
- ryan-allen 16y agoI think the title is misleading, he's not looking to spill 'my' companies corporate secrets, he's looking to spill big business' secrets (and by secrets I do believe the intention is to reveal unethical behaviour). I don't work for an oil company or an investment bank, two of which are targets of his next round. Change the title!
- hugh3 16y ago"First they came for the oil companies and investment banks, and I did not speak up, for I was not an oil company or an investment bank..."
- michaelchisari 16y agoI do hope your comparison of oil companies and investment banks to Jews and Gays under the third reich was facetious.
- hugh3 16y agoWell, they have certain features in common, like getting scapegoated a whole lot.
- charlesattlan 16y agoIf you read the whole transcript then you will find that he does indeed want "your" company secrets. He believes in markets but insists they cannot function without good information to highlight bad competitors. This allows the good endeavours to continue, rather than going bankrupt due to the undercutting from companies that get an advantage from unethical or illegal behaviour.
- jrockway 16y agoI don't work for an oil company or an investment bank, two of which are targets of his next round. Change the title! I do, but honestly, we aren't doing anything particularly evil. The subprime meltdown was not caused by one person's evil dealings, it was caused by many parties each doing something not-particularly-evil individually. It's like littering -- if you do it, it doesn't matter, but if everyone does it, then there's a major problem. Liar loans and CDOs were like littering, not really a problem when one person or bank "does" them. But when the whole industry does little things like this and people bet a lot of money under the assumption that this isn't happening (because the credit rating agencies mislead them), then things unravel. But it's just a colossal fuckup, not some super secret backroom deal designed to fuck over retirement funds. (The big issue was that the credit rating agencies were lazy, and told institutional investors that CDOs were a good credit risk. They obviously were not, and people lost a lot of money either buying the CDOs, or selling insurance on the CDOs.) The bailout was similarly non-evil. The banks said, "we're fucked unless you give us a lot of money, and if we are fucked, so is everyone else", and the government said, "you're right, take the taxpayers' money". The banks did, they continued to operate, and eventually paid it back. Hardly the crime of the century.
- michaelchisari 16y agoThere's probably some really good information from BP or various banking institutions that could really shed some much needed light on recent disasters. Wikileaks is simply doing the job that journalists have lately forgotten or refused to do.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoWe already have more than enough information to know that BP is guilty of gross negligence (in regards to the Deepwater Horizons disaster) up to and including negligent homicide.
- hugh3 16y agoWhether or not that's the case, this is something that's being investigated by government agencies who have the power to order the handing over of whatever documents they need, so leaks aren't really a big issue here. (no pun intended)
- aneth 16y agoBut no one pays attention to information that isn't released with careful fanfare. Assange handles the media quite well, and most organizations would be better off releasing this stuff voluntarily so no one pays attention.
- alecco 16y ago"Wikileaks Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets" "Like informational IEDs, these damaging revelations can be detonated at will." "What do large companies think of the threat? If they’re terrified, they’re not saying. None would talk to us. Nor would the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." Pure junk journalism. Strange, I'm used to see very good pieces on Forbes. Perhaps its blogs are a bit more permissive.
- alecco 16y agoIf Wikileak posts are deleted by moderators on HN because of bias, this piece should be deleted too.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- dctoedt 16y agoInvoluntary transparency can have its good aspects, but those might be offset by "unilateral disarmament" - if WikiLeaks doesn't do the same to the confidential information of, say, Chinese and/or Indian companies, then U.S. and European companies could well be at a competitive disadvantage.
- eru 16y agoUnless there's an advantage in being seen as open. ("If your European company would have done something bad, we would have heard of it. We haven't (or have heard only a mild relevation.) So you must be pretty good guys!")
- mmaunder 16y agoSince ICE is seizing domains who infringe copyright, wouldn't it make sense for all companies to copyright all internal documents and communication immediately, and then claim copyright infringement if wikileaks publishes them? Even if wikileaks.org can't be seized [I'm not advocating that] wouldn't it give corporations more legal power via the DMCA to be able to claim copyright infringement?
- dangrossman 16y ago1) All those documents are protected by copyright the moment they're produced. 2) The DMCA is a US law, and wikileaks.org's IP is in France. As with Assange, they'll move the operation wherever in the world they need to find favorable laws. If the force of US law was enough to stop wikileaks it would have been gone long ago. Publishing national secrets is a much more intimidating crime than civil copyright infringement, no?
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's not all there is to it, Assange has a 1.4G timebomb out there, the passkey to which will likely be revealed when he decides or disappears long enough.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jamaicahest 16y agoJust for clarity, the EU has a law similar to the DMCA, called the EUCD and it is called the DADVSI in France.
- callmeed 16y agoCurious how this will play out in the stock market When the leak is out, will the bank's stock tank? If the leak is leaked, will some short it?
- cantbecool 16y agoI applaud WikiLeaks and Assange for disseminating the classified information to the public. That disseminated information keeps politicians honest to their constituents, which in turn, makes for better, transparent governments.
- wildmXranat 16y agoRaise your hand if you have damning documents on your corporation. |o. It's pretty obvious that we as the masses, get shat on by people above us. It's a fact and unless you bend the financial tax rules in your favor, you're getting smacked around too.
- nickpinkston 16y agoSo this is a kind of digital pitchfork then - but with up-side-down economics: no need for an angry mob, just one person is good enough at a corp.
- Supermighty 16y agoI've always been concerned that if I played it honest with my business if I would end up being fodder for the sharks that twist, bend and break the rules.
- lsc 16y agoeh, I've been 'in business' most of my life now, and, I guess that isn't all that long (I think I was 12 when I started my first venture, selling pumpkins, and I'm 30 now.) I haven't seen great success, or really great failure. The thing is, every time I tried to be less than honest to gain an advantage? I got slapped down. Sometimes hard. (though most of my forays were probing and weak, and so were the consequences.) My suspicion is that lying and dishonesty is a skill like any other, and one that is not trivial to learn. You can't just lie and expect to be rewarded, you need to know when and how to lie. People spend their lives studying that sort of thing, as well as how to detect liars. Personally, I think the average businessperson is better off being as honest and transparent as he or she is able while focusing on some other competitive advantage. Competing with the professional liars in this arena is difficult.
- marcamillion 16y agoHrmm...I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, having light shone on various dark parts of processes can be good for innovation and checks and balances - but on the other hand, it kinda feels like Assange is getting too big for his britches. I feel like it might be getting to his head and he feels he is more important than he should be. I also feel like he might be giving an outlet to squeaky wheels - i.e. disgruntled employees that have a bridge to burn because they are upset about management decision. I am no big fan of corporate secrecy and perhaps shedding a light on certain practices can get 'big business' to stop lobbying lawmakers for some ridiculous things, but I am nervous that it might have many unintended consequences. i.e. we turn Assange into a mercenary that releases stuff for his own self-aggrandizement than for the greater good.
- sliverstorm 16y agoIt's like he's on a personal mission to piss off as many people on Earth as he can manage.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]