Wikileaks Conversation Continues

Interesting piece in NYT blog "The Lede" about online activists' response to credit card companies and PayPal "blacklisting" Wikileaks. 

The entry includes the YouTube "manifesto" of the group (or, rather, decentralized network) "Anonymous" that claims to be at the center of this backlash.

The Times Blog gives a list of related posts:

• Updates on Leak of U.S. Cables, Day 10
  
• Updates on Leak of U.S. Cables, Day 9
  
• Don’t Mention the Cables, Future Diplomats
  
• PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account
  
• Updates on Leak of U.S. Cables, Day 6
  

Sociology of Information in the New York Times

BUSINESS DAY

The Beauty Contest That’s Shaking Wall St.

By ROBERT J. SHILLER

Published: September 3, 2011

Why all the sharp swings in the stock market? To Robert J. Shiller, it’s a case of investors trying to guess what other investors are thinking....

Seeking not what is the case, but what others probably think is, or even what others think that others think is...

U.S.

Perry’s Blunt Views in Books Get New Scrutiny as He Joins Race

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

Published: September 2, 2011

When Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and a presidential hopeful, debates his rivals, his assertions on climate change, Social Security and health care could put him to the test....

Once it's out there, it's out there...

U.S.

WikiLeaks Leaves Names of Diplomatic Sources in Cables

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: August 29, 2011

The antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks published nearly 134,000 diplomatic cables, including many that name confidential sources....

Developing story -- a leak, a revelation, or just a mistake?  (See also previous posts on Wikileaks.)

Wikileaks and Protecting Your Sources

In the NYT, Alan Cowell wrote today about reactions among diplomats to the WikiLeaks leaks.  In the middle of the story we read:

A Chinese intellectual, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, said the disclosures had left those like him who had contact with United States diplomats “nervous” about the possibility of exposure and persecution by authorities who have already blocked access in China to the WikiLeaks Web site.

I don't want to equate journalistic secrecy with government secrecy, but I'm surprised, as I suggested in a previous post, that there's been no commentary (or at least none I've seen -- anyone have a reference?) on the irony of the secrecy and confidentiality given sources (as above) by the media vs. the ones revealed in the leaks.

NOTE: it appears that in a lot of the material that's been put online by media organizations some redaction of source information has been carried out.

Wikileaks Mirror Servers Geographic Visualization

A fascinating Google Earth visualization of the wikileaks mirror sites worldwide.

Leaking Irony

While I work on more extended analysis of the WikiLeaks situation (among other things the obvious connection to my work on how geometries of information sharing are co-constitutive of social relationships and statuses), a small irony must be noted.

Apparently, several news organizations have had the material recently made public since August.  Editors and reporters have been meeting in secret to develop protocols about what would be reported, when, and how.  Fortunately for their work, it appears that these journalists managed to do all of this while maintaining the kind of secrecy necessary for them to be able to process the information and to consider its meaning and its implications out of public view.  The public, media, and official reaction of the last few days make clear why this secrecy was necessary.

One thing that would be interesting to hear a story on would be what measures were taken to ensure the security of the process.  What sorts of technological tools were employed?  What sorts of social tools?  Did participants have to sign confidentiality agreements?   What prevented a rogue reporter from reporting on the reporters reporting?

An Old Idea Wikileaks has Gotten Me Thinking About Again

I have been sitting on a thought experiment for some years now.  Well, not exactly sitting on it -- have written a bit about it and teach it in my "sociology of everyday life" class.

It starts from Simmel's observation (in "How is Society Possible?" -- a brilliant essay, BTW) that a starting point for understanding social interaction has to be the recognition that the human condition involves awareness that one can never completely know the mind of the other.  No matter how intimate the relationship, there is material held back. 

So, imagine this.  One day, god gets a funny idea.  S/he suddenly makes people's mental content available to those around them.  All the fleeting thoughts, the quick little zigs and zags our minds make (making a cake with my mom, talking with her while I washed the dishes about her mother's death, stealing wet cement from that construction site where I smoked my first cigar, Denise my "girlfriend" in seventh grade though I liked Kim better, that pad Thai tonight was tasty if a bit heavy, I can't believe I mistakenly bought 2% milk the other day -- all that between these two sentences and this report highly censored) fully audible to anyone around us. Everyone her own Ulysses.  How exactly it would work, I'm not sure -- but imagine that there's some way that the cacophony of it all would be sorted out and we'd be privy to the internal conversations of those around us (and they ours -- and both of us privy to our reactions to what we were hearing).

So, god does this for maybe 15 minutes and then shuts it down.  This would I think, have a profound effect on us.  God would be amused.  But the s/he gets another idea: before heading off to other realms, s/he announces "that was so much fun, I think I'll do it again sometime."

That, I propose, could be the end of social life as we know it.