Daniel Ellsberg On WikiLeaks, Google and Facebook

angry tapir writes "The Silicon Valley companies that store our personal data have a growing responsibility to protect it from government snooping, according to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Discussing the growing role of Internet companies in the public sphere, Ellsberg said companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter need to take a stand and push back on excessive requests for personal data." Ellsberg spoke as part of a panel at an event from the Churchill Club, which included Clay Shirky, Jonathan Zittrain and others discussing the WikiLeaks situation.

Comments

An admirable man

[CRCulver]

While I can't entirely join in with those who claim that Assange is a media whore, Ellsberg's low-key style in releasing the Pentagon Papers certainly makes him look all the more respectful. I'd recommend reading his memoirs for a portrait of a truly committed and sincere American citizen.

Sadly, as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that American history isn't a straight path of progress, but a cycle of ups and downs. The gains we got in the late 1960s and early 1970s in weakening undemocratic power structures are pretty much all gone now.

Re:An admirable man

[bhartman34]

I can agree that Ellsberg is an admirable man, but I can't bring myself to think that of Assange.

Ellsberg, in a crisis of conscience, leaked a broad document detailing the history of the Vietnam War, most of which was secret. Assange leaked documents for the sole purpose not of informing people (because most of the information had come out), but to embarrass the U.S. In addition, Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers didn't have the same contemporaneous nature that Assange's leaks did.

What Ellsberg did can be seen as patriotic, but Assange is not and was not a U.S. citizen, so even if you think there was a value in having the information leaked, he did not do it for love of country. He did it to embarrass the U.S.

Most importantly, Assange's ethic is completely different than Ellsberg's was. Ellsberg, having an IQ above room temperature (Celsius) does not refute the idea that governments and institutions can and should have secrets, Assange, on the other hand, is apparently the oldest living patient to have been born entirely without a brain.

Re:Personal data == money

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It's how things seem work these days

Exploiting personal data for profit is nothing new. Spies, snitches and blackmailers have been doing that for millenia. And conning people out of giving out their personal data isn't new either. The internet just makes suckers get suckered faster and in the comfort of their own living room.

Re:Slipper Slope Illustrated

[Zocalo]

You are assuming that Wikileaks isn't going to censor the list to prevent that type of data going public, or that these accounts belong to individuals for that matter. While I'm sure that some of them will do, it's also possible that the list will include shell accounts for corporations and other organizations, possibly including organized crime and may even shed some light on the whereabouts of the billions that have been salted away by tin-pot dicators and other corrupt government officials. From what I've read about the leaker of the data the point of the leak seems to be more about what the Swiss banks are turning a blind eye to than the private finance details of individuals and chances are the leaked details will be focussed on this rather than some random Joe Public who has avoided paying some taxes.

I guess we'll find out in a few weeks though, unless the Bank of America data is going to follow the Cables.

Re:Eheh

[morgan_greywolf]

History books are written by people and people have motives.

History is NOT what you read.

You're right. HIstory books can't possibly represent the entire depth of human experience for each historical event. Just different people at the time an event is occurring will see that event differently and remember different details due to seeing the world through different individual filters and having different motives, the same thing occurs among historians. The good thing is that while history books are written by people, all with their own motives and their own filters, there are a lot of history books and a lot of historians, and the best research is always peer reviewed. So while we can't get a 100% accurate accounting of the past that represents the entire depth of human experience for that event, if we do enough research we can get a pretty good idea.

And Ellsberg was quite villified; the good news is that this generally means that as villified as Assange is now, history will probably remember him quite differently. :)

It's one thing when it's your government

[TomDLux]

As a Canadian, I'm concerned about so many US companies having information about me, which they (may) make available to a foreign ( i.e., US ) government.

Even worse are companies doing work for the Canadian government, such as Loughheed and the Canadian census. Will our census information be stored somewhere in Tennessee or Idaho? Will US government employees be searching through Canadian data, searching for marijuana users or criminal Darwinists?

Time to encrypt information stored in the cloud

[jonniesmokes]

The technology is there. I think it is time we finally start to encrypt information stored on web servers. Keeping the contents of email on servers encrypted is fairly do-able. But keeping facebook information private is a bit of an oxymoron. Someone could also produce a USB key which decrypts data (assuming a public/private key system) so that the private keys of individuals could be somewhat limited in how many copies need to be made. Still the headers of email, would be public, but if the account is anonymous and at least one reliable anonymizing mail relay is used, the system could work. I myself don't see my privacy as a big deal. Its the fact that the total privacy of all individuals is being compromised. That means any goverment or corporation able to access and search the data of Google or Facebook could quite easily suppress dissent or stop negative publicity. The email accounts of journalists are especially a concern.

For social networks, I think the solution, is to decentralize the system, encrypt it, and open source it, so it cannot so easily be searched and stored. Diaspora, while still in alpha, seems like a good direction to go. If the user's data is stored encrypted, then the user could issue and revoke public keys associated with the data. In this way "friends" could be managed instead of a simple binary flag in a centralized type system. The issuance and revocation of public keys would also allow for white lists to finally be made to combat spam. If one large internet mover (hear me Google?) started this initiative, then it would start to gain some real traction.

No system is perfect, but the the current system can be very much improved upon.