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AMERICA federal government is diligent - some might tell the point of obsession - in defending its edges against invaders, be they terrorists, natural disasters, or illegitimate immigrants. Now we are told a little, international band of renegades equipped with only laptops presents the greatest threat to the US regime since the close of the Cool War.WikiLeaks' release of a massive trove of secret formal documents has riled politicians from across the spectrum. The WikiLeaks organizers themselves "will have blood on the hands" (US Senator Joe Lieberman); it's the "9/11 of world diplomacy" (Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini); and they present "a and present danger to the countrywide security of america" (US Congressman Peter King). Even noted free-speech advocate Floyd Abrams says that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange "may yet have much to answer for" and blames him for the certain beat of federal shield-law legislation protecting journalists. Hyperbole, hysteria? Certainly. We read much the same in 1971, when Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times (ironically, Abrams was the Times' attorney if so).Welcome to the age of transparency. But politics analyst and writer Micah Sifry argues that WikiLeaks is not the whole report; it is a symptom, an indicator of a continuing generational and philosophical have difficulty between older, shut systems, and the new available culture of the web. "What is new," he creates, "is our ability to connect, singularly and together, with greater easiness than anytime in history. As a result, information is streaming more freely in to the public arena, driven by apparently unstoppable networks of folks worldwide cooperating to share vital data and stop its suppression."Despite Assange's arrest, the publication of secret documents continues, and websites replicating WikiLeaks' activities have sprung up in Indonesia, Russia, europe, and anywhere else. As Sifry shows, this is part of a more substantial movement for greater governmental and corporate and business transparency: "While you combine connectivity with transparency - the ability for more folks to see, show, and shape the proceedings around them - the result is a huge increase in cultural energy, which is being channeled in all varieties of directions."
