Solidarity with the whistleblowers

MUCH VIRTUAL ink has been splashed around in response to the recent massive "Cablegate" WikiLeaks distribution of over 250,000 top-secret documents from more than 250 U.S. embassies around the world. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, in particular, is in the global spotlight for these unprecedented revelations. As a result, he faces open death threats by U.S . politicians and media personalities, sexual assault allegations in Sweden, and a veritable manhunt led by Interpol and various governments who want him imprisoned and silenced.

In a December 4 El Pais interview, Assange explained that death threats from some "right-wing sites" have targeted not only him, but his children. Nevertheless, Assange assured the continuation of WikiLeaks' work despite a multitude of efforts to shut out the organization from the Web. In a statement that suggests how mightily these kinds of leaks may be challenging extant government and business power, he asserted, "If there is a battle between the U.S. Army and the preservation of history, we have ensured that history will win."

The situation appears much more tenuous, though. The World Wide Web is, after all, made of innumerable sinews, nodal points and infrastructures, but these can be swiftly swiped asunder. Since "Cablegate," major U.S. companies like Amazon and PayPal have decided to deny web hosting and donation services agreements with WikiLeaks. A virtual cat-and-mouse game had WikiLeaks changing its Web site access location up to several times a day across countries.

More perniciously, in a modern day example of "Digital McCarthyism," U.S. soldiers, federal employees, the Library of Congress staff, and even Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs students were denied or cautioned about online access to the leaked documents, or intimidated with lasting penalties if they seek out the information. (Apparently, it's no matter that these cables have been published in five major news outlets worldwide!)

When asked in a December 3 community Q&A with Britain's Guardian about what would happen if he--technically or physically--were "taken out," Assange pointedly replied, "Will we survive? That depends on you."

This 21st century question--how to protect an online whistleblower, and cyber-activism in general--has been hurled into central view with this hourly developing story. A global WikiLeaks volunteer support network has cropped up online, many notable left-wing journalists closely analyze the story, and everyday public discussion now seems to lean on the side of scrutinizing the government surveillance, trickery and criminal acts that these leaks uncovered.

This widening computer-oriented resistance, and how it is fiercely muzzled, demonstrates that the WikiLeaks phenomenon unambiguously deserves both our study and solidarity.

HOWEVER, THE online clamor has so far focused much less on the critical situation of 23-year-old U.S. intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning. Manning is suspected to be the sole source of the massive embassy cables leak, as well as the other two most significant WikiLeaks exposés to date, the "Collateral Murder" video and "Afghan War Diary" documents. Manning is currently detained under solitary confinement in a military prison at Quantico, Va., and will be tried on charges that may yield up to 52 years in prison, or even a death sentence for engaging in "treasonous" activity.

While Manning was stationed in a tiny U.S. intelligence outpost in Iraq from 2007 to 2010, he claims he had "unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for eight plus months." The primary means through which Manning downloaded this trove of confidential data was SIPRNet, what the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) describes as "a system of interconnected computer networks used by the [DoD] and the U.S. Department of State to transmit classified information...in a 'completely secure' environment."

This Tower of Babel story in reverse--whereby U.S. security forces decided to coalesce vast amounts of confidential data together so everyone could "speak the same language," resulted in its vulnerability from within.

SIPRNet, a top-secret version of the U.S. military's Internet system, turned out to be openly rollicking with skeletons. Manning allegedly wrote in personal chats (that have since been publicly printed) that over time, in performing daily intel work, he discovered "incredible things, awful things...that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, D.C."

Glenn Greenwald wrote on Salon.com of the "incident which first made him seriously question the U.S. war in Iraq: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi 'insurgents' who had been detained for distributing 'insurgent' literature which, when he had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than 'a scholarly critique against PM Maliki.'" As Manning allegedly wrote:

i had an interpreter read it for me...and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PM's cabinet...i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on...he didn't want to hear any of it...he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees...[sic]

In inimitable cloak-and-dagger form, Manning began to download caches of incriminating data onto CDs marked "Lady Gaga" at his work desk while he would lip sync her songs. Being a critical-minded and isolated gay man in an obdurate "don't ask, don't tell" military, it's possible that Manning knew of Lady Gaga's outspoken public arguments against DADT and homophobia in general. For him to sing "Telephone" while zipping vast state secrets should be memorialized as an especially plucky coup de grâce in recent history.

Interestingly, Manning described that, at the base, "everyone just sat at their workstations...watching music videos/car chases/buildings exploding...and writing more stuff to CD/DVD...the culture fed opportunities...it was a massive data spillage... facilitated by numerous factors. [sic]"

IN THIS light, the U.S. government's flailing histrionics that Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks, and really any U.S.-critical whistleblower, are destroying the delicate efforts of international diplomacy and the "war on terror" are spuriously contrived.

"National Security" constructed its own edificial problems (both online and off), engaged in what we now know are countless illegal acts of war and international espionage, and will go to great lengths to curtail any voices who bear witness to these truths. Ronald Deibert writes in "Black Code Redux: Censorship, Surveillance, and the Militarization of Cyberspace" that in order to avoid an "electronic Pearl Harbor," the U.S. government created in 2006 its first "National Military Strategy for Operations in Cyberspace." China and Russia have followed suit, with China since 2006 conducting simultaneous military and cyberspace operations exercises.

Back in 2008, President Barack Obama used these words on the campaign trail to castigate George W. Bush's administration for illegally spying on civilians through cooperating phone companies: "We only know these crimes took place because insiders blew the whistle at great personal risk...Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal."

Yet a June 2010 New York Times article revealed the 180-degree pivot towards a major clampdown on dissenting insiders like Manning: "In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions."

In an interview with Anthony Arnove in the International Socialist Review, Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner had this to say about the current administration's failed goals amidst widening suppression:

Obama, within two days of being in office, signed an executive order, which is essentially a presidential order, which said that Guantánamo would be closed in a year...Obama's commitment has been abandoned. And he made a number of other promises that have not been met about secret detention sites, military commissions, and the like...We now have the spectacle of a Democratic president selling out the Constitution and with it the lives of innocents at Guantánamo and the freedom of future generations as these special laws become the laws for all of us.

In spite of these empty promises, the public flashes of insight through these major leaks about how brittle U.S. state secrets can be is a reminder that such a developing "National Security State" is not invincible. If one person, Bradley Manning, single-handedly provided a whistle-blowing organization like WikiLeaks three of the largest confidential revelations since Daniel Ellsberg (who has publicly supported Manning's defense) released The Pentagon Papers in 1971, then more potential cyber-resistance is possible from inside U.S. soldiers' barracks, and in miraculously covert ways.

Guardian editor Steve Leigh informed Amy Goodman on a recent Democracy Now! interview that, when the UK newspaper was delivered the embassy cable leaks, "it was on a thumb drive, a tiny little thumb drive, you know, and it had 1.6 gigabytes of material, which contains 250 million words."

This profoundly juxtaposed scale of declassification that can fit into the fifth pocket demands a fresh inquiry into "hacktivism" and whistle-blowing in this wholly new political "age of mechanical reproduction."

VIRTUAL PROTEST indeed comes with its own contradictions. Online petitions, boycotts, and "e-sit-ins" are faceless, hyper-individualized actions constrained by the very materials being used to speak out.

More broadly, WikiLeaks alone can't topple authoritarian structures, and it's unclear how long Julian Assange and Co. can endure this international ensnaring operation. Moreover, in order to reach a wide audience, the leaks currently must go through newspaper conduits, which can sometimes temper the evidence being disclosed.

For example, the New York Times' current special feature on the embassy cable leaks is called "State's Secrets: A cache of diplomatic cables provides a chronicle of the United States' relations with the world." Now that doesn't sound too inflammatory and eye-catching, does it? Such papers as the New York Times and Washington Post within the past few years have deliberately not printed controversial information that would have affected politics-as-usual (on Bush's illegal wire-tapping and the CIA's secret prisons, respectively).

A movement outside the virtual, that also tactically embraces the virtual, is necessary. Learning how to adeptly combine both technology and physical action, as seen in the efforts of Buddhist monks in Myanmar and British students fighting against budget cuts, can create a synergy that allows both forms to flourish in exciting, unexpected ways on this rapidly changing political landscape.

Cell phones can cover protests and be uploaded onto YouTube in seconds. Twitter and Facebook blasts can mobilize tens of thousands of people in a few days' notice to join a rally, as happened on the day California voted to pass the anti-gay Proposition 8.

Uncovering evidence about the powers-that-be is a skill that can be learned, improved and shared. In the U.S. military, other intelligence analysts including Adrienne Kinne have publicly come out against the information they handled that proved U.S.-orchestrated torture and civilian deaths, and the chorus of antiwar soldiers' voices in general is getting louder.

As for Bradley Manning, whom Assange has called "an unparalleled hero," he has a vigorous defense campaign underway (visit his defense Web site here), led by Courage to Resist and Iraq Veterans Against the War. Soldiers and community members are holding protests outside the Virginia military base, and encourage people from various social movements to take up his defense as a locus for future whistleblower protections.

A movement to unconditionally release Manning, and prosecute the real criminal actions detailed in his leaks, is not only possibly but necessary in this high-stakes moment. Contemporary technology has created the ability for the whole world to watch what happens to those who demand that truth and justice be vindicated.

Many things are possible right now, but not if we wait for political transformation to (slowly) upload itself. Manning himself mused earlier this year:

god knows what happens now--hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms--if not, than we're doomed--as a species--i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens--the reaction to the video ["Collateral Murder"] gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong...i want people to see the truth...regardless of who they are...because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public. [sic]

In the process of making more informed decisions and actions, we must also rethink the rules of the terrain in general. How far do we have the right to criticize our government? How extensively can we exercise activities to assure and protect that right? What opportunities do current technologies afford new layers of activists?

More fundamentally, which side are we on in this history that Assange hopes will carry the true record of events? If we engage in criminal acts to overturn tyrannical rule, is this defensible? What are the limits of our moralities when tested in real-life events? Are various forms of civil disobedience justified, and if so, then, how can we go about utilizing them?

The late Howard Zinn asked such questions in his 1968 pamphlet Disobedience and Democracy, in which he argued that social movements should reconsider the core radical assertions and possibilities expressed during this country's founding: "The government is not synonymous with the people; it is an artificial device, set up by the citizens for certain purposes. It is endowed with no sacred aura; rather, it needs to be watched, scrutinized, criticized, opposed, changed and even overthrown and replaced when necessary."

Apparently we have much more idea--and action-browsing--to do, and the courageous performances of such young folks as Bradley Manning can help chart that future course.