06.17.13
The leaker mindset
Something I wrote for Federal Computer Week awhile back, on the leaking mindset, those like Edward Snowden, not like those on the government contract who spread chumpbait.
Back in the early 1990s, I edited an electronic newsletter that dealt with the culture of amateur virus writers — hackers who wrote mobile malware. Julian Assange was a subscriber. This is only to illustrate Assange’s bona fides as someone from the original world computer underground, a place where one of the driving philosophies was to reveal the secrets of institutional power.
Once confined to what was considered a computer geek fringe, that ideology is now entrenched. It’s no longer an outsider mindset, and it hasn’t been for a long time. Now it’s inside, with its originators entering middle age. And younger adherents of the philosophy are coming along all the time.
They’re everywhere — employed by government, the military and corporate America. And because we have come to the point that the United States is considered by some to be a bad global actor — whether you share that point of view or not — the government is faced with a problem it cannot solve. Its exposure is thought by many to be deserved.
In this new reality, as in nature, a vacuum is abhorred. The mainstream media no longer fulfills the role of speaking truth to power. It opened the door for Assange and WikiLeaks …
“But the good news [for the federal government and its contractors] is that, although you can’t eliminate the Bradley Mannings, they won’t be common,” I wrote.
And they are not. In fact, I’ve been surprised — even dismayed — at how so many of Edward Snowden’s colleagues remain silent in view of what they must see as things Americans ought to know about.
In 2013 America, money — a good job — does buy a lot of silence. Ours is not a culture of bold iconoclasts ready to make life-changing sacrifices. This makes Edward Snowden legitimately remarkable.