Bursting Wikileaks’ Bubble

The internet as liberation theology (Marc Rotenberg, “Internet Liberation Theology”, 7 November, 2001) is arguably its first meme. It has certainly remained its most pervasive. From email to Wikileaks, the Net has helped liberate its users from (say) the tyranny of distance and autocratic regimes (John Nichols, “Revolution 2.0: The People of Egypt Win a ‘Media War”, 11 February, 2011).

The good news continues to be spread through word of mouse: computers will set our minds free and lead us to the promised land. The ‘promise’ is of a shared domain — the internet remains a place where anybody could go and be themselves.

There have always been naysayers, of course. Becoming masters of our own domain was also seen as a mixed blessing (Cass Sunstein, “Is The Internet Really a Blessing for Democracy?”, Summer, 2001). The freedom to “filter” (customise, personalise) content in the information age threatens to limit people’s “exposure to topics and points of view of their own choosing”. The concern was that the promised land might turn into a mere “echo chamber” (William Saletan, “Bubble Think”, 3 May, 2010). Creating the world in our own image therefore has a potential downside — enclosing the ‘liberated’ within their own filter bubbles (Eli Pariser, “Beware Online Filter Bubbles”, 11 March, 2011).

The possibility of creating the world in our own image invariably raises the question: to what extent do we really live in a self reflective culture? On the one side of the looking glass, computers enable us to limit our view of the world to an ‘image’ we create online (by making it reflect personal tastes and sensibilities). On the other side of the looking glass, computer programs will reflect that world back to us by trying to “predict what we want” to see online. (Natasha Singer, “The Trouble With The Echo Chamber Online” 28 May, 2011). Consequently, “you start to become more and more like the image of you because that is what you are seeing.”

Its for this reason that we need to beware of the internet as liberation theology (Trevor Butterworth, “Beware The Internet As Liberation Theology”, 8 September, 2010). The promise of personal freedom remains an interpersonal issue, and so raises concerns about the status of our choices. As Butterworth observes, the internet should therefore be seen “within the context of what it does for us and how we use it”.

Witness the ascent of Wikileaks in the information era. The rise (potential fall and possible rise again) of Wikileak’s founder Julian Assange is particularly informative. Perhaps the best way to look at the internet’s liberation theology is to explore the rape allegations within the context of Wikileak’s own assumptions. Wikileak’s own allegation of mass murder will provide our entry point into the looking glass.

As we shall see, freedom is just another word for contemplating our own reflections. Indeed, the way internet users process information predates the advent of computers, and merely reflects the way we want to see (filter) the world in the first place.

Wikileak’s has therefore held up a mirror to the world in a different way – by inadvertently revealing that reasoning is often motivated and directed towards “goal supporting perceptions or beliefs” (Dan Kahan, “What is Motivated Reasoning and How Does it Work?”, 4 May, 2011). We obviously don’t have to look too far to observe how Wikileaks sees itself. According to its own site, Wikileaks believes that the sharing of information “improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people”. Wikileaks clearly views itself as a freedom fighter and purports to fight the good fight by acting as ‘the people’s’ mediator.

Wikileaks can liberate us all from the tyranny of false imagery through the sharing of information. A (more) transparent society will supposedly let us pass through the veil of appearances. And it fights the media war by deploying other media (leaked documents, classified videos, etc). Consequently, Wikileak’s goal is to freely share information “so readers and historians alike can see the evidence of truth”. Wikileaks actively works towards the “improvement of our common historical record and the support of the rights of all people to create new history”.

It’s no accident, then, that Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides the template for setting our minds free. Specifically, this new media outlet – aka the people’s press – defends the “right to freedom of opinion and expression, this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”

Few can deny that Wikileaks provides an invaluable corrective (or supplement) to official versions of events. The site is obviously designed to level the playing field by ensuring greater truth and responsibility online. It gives power back to people like you and I by calling on our elected representatives to be more truthful and accountable in the real world.

Wikileak’s liberation theology couldn’t be more transparent, and gives rise to the possibility of a Utopian ideal through the use of the internet. “Principled leaking…can alter the course of history in the present, and it can lead us to a better future”. It isn’t difficult to see that there are two interdependent assumptions being made in this proposed information utopia: that facts speak for themselves – they act as their own truth bearers – and they need to be spoken for (attested to in the public domain).

A third assumption can be clearly seen, too: that a free exchange of information can improve our collective understanding and/or heighten our sense of civic responsibility. Leaking information will therefore motivate us to think and act more rationally. Unfortunately, these assumptions are simply taken on faith, and obscure something apparent to anyone who frequents the internet: ‘facts’ are filtered through the prism of sensibility and are subjected to interpretation and re-contextualisation. Consequently, the ‘evidence of truth’ (and the corresponding issue of accountability) remains contested terrain.

Witness the war of words over the leaked video provocatively called Collateral Murder. While the video footage is remarkable for providing an unvarnished view of the theatre of war, there appear to be conflicting interpretations of what the images might actually mean (or be saying).

Do they really depict the cold blooded murder of civilians or are we witnessing killing done in the heat of a perceived battle? Is it even possible to see a moral (or legal) distinction in these images anyway? Is our view of them clouded by the fog of war or made even murkier in the cold light of day?

The classified footage clearly documents three air to ground attacks from inside the cockpits of two Apache helicopters. Collateral Murder depicts the deaths of predominantly unarmed people (reports vary between 12 and 18), and includes two Reuters reporters mistaken for armed combatants.

Perhaps what is most telling is that these images ‘speak’ to people in different ways. That is to say, conflicting interpretations reveal the way ‘facts’ can convey different information to observers. Compare the viewpoints of Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and Hudson Institute’s Gabriel Schoenfeld. Their informed views may be divided along partisan lines, and so, displace the conflict onto the battlefield of public discourse.

Greenwald – a liberal critic of American foreign policy – says we are witnessing a a slaughter that has become “standard operating procedure” within an “occupation” that has turned an entire nation into a theatre of war. Indeed, Operation Iraqi Freedom has culminated in “hundreds of thousands of dead innocent civilians” and a “deceitful cover up”.

The leaked footage therefore merely provides a snapshot of American forces waging war against a “vast majority…of clearly unarmed people”. Further, what we are seeing includes the “plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety” (Glenn Greenwald, “Iraqi Slaughter Not an Aberration”, 6 April, 2010).

Gabriel Schoenfeld – a member of a conservative think tank – counters in the Wall Street Journal that the images fail to depict the bigger picture or what had been happening off camera. He says American forces typically “refrain from attacking targets precisely because civilians are in harm’s way” Further, the “video makes plain that in this incident, as in almost all military encounters in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers are up against forces that do not wear uniforms—a violation of international law precisely because it places innocent civilians in jeopardy. Responsibility for civilian deaths in such encounters rests with those who violate the rules of war” (Gabriel Schoenfeld, “Warfare Through a Soda Straw”, 23 June, 2010).

A Hall of Mirrors

Perhaps one of the more persuasive interpretations is provided by war blogger AJ Martinez – the former Iraqi soldier appears to be conflicted as to where his own interpretation should lie.

While Martinez originally supported Wikileak’s “endeavours to bring about transparency in government” – and he “does not see a threat that warranted an engagement on any part” – he nonetheless takes exception to Wikileak’s tendency to “editorialise information and then present it as hard fact” ( AJ Martinez, “Collateral Murder”, 5 April, 2010). His objection goes to the heart of the issue staring everyone in the face: we’ll invariably see our own image mirrored in the video because we’ll bring own our context (situations, beliefs, values, etc) to reflect upon it.

While people might be free to interpret the images however they see fit, we’ve also seen that the conflicting interpretations have occurred by way of emphasis and exclusion (or editing in the form of selective thinking). Instead of providing ‘evidence of truth’, the images therefore highlight the role of confirmation bias in interpretations. Specifically, the Wikileak’s video reflects the “tendency for people to favour information that confirms” previously held views. So however the evidence has been seen, the problem is that such filtering tends to exclude – or minimize – other possible facts (and potentially true interpretations).

By trying to control the flow of information, interpreters adopt a divide and conquer strategy designed to make the world reflect their own image. Consequently, if we can’t really trust our own eyes – or have difficulty seeing the same images through different people’s eyes – the question now becomes: to what extent is the allegedly transparent obscured by our own filters?

The internet’s general response to the rape allegations provides an answer. Unlike the murder allegations made by Wikileaks in Collateral Murder, it’s not so easy to justify viewpoints. None of us were in the bedroom with with Assange and his two female accusers on the nights in question, and there is no video footage to corroborate competing versions of events. We only have conflicting eyewitness testimonies to go on, and these first hand accounts have been leaked to the media in a piecemeal, contradictory, and second hand fashion.

Suppose there was a leaked sex tape documenting the contested versions of events. If the responses to Collateral Murder is any indication, its safe to assume that the conflict would be displaced onto these images too. The issues of consent, intent and/or integrity would not be as transparent as they might literally appear to be (in our hypothetical video footage).

There are only two things that can be clearly seen here: that the rape allegations have all too readily turned into another conflict – a war between the sexes (or a version of he said/she said) and have spoken to a familiar internet narrative (its a conspiracy to bring down the leader of the people’s press). The lack of available – or independently verifiable – evidence hasn’t exactly prevented anyone from exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Indeed, the rape allegations have taken the problem of confirmation bias to a whole new level. Generally speaking, they’ve divided the internet’s liberation movement (or liberals who might otherwise defend women’s rights and Wikileaks) into two. Consequently, our question has turned into: which biases have the rape allegations generally confirmed? Unfortunately, the answer has been all too self evident. Instead of leading us to a brighter future, many avowed liberals have simply confirmed the historical bias against women.

The bias towards women alleging rape against famous people has become particularly transparent. While many liberals and conservatives might disagree over the value of Wikileaks, traditional enemies (such as Michael Moore and Glen Beck) have found common ground and joined forces “in questioning the weight and validity of the rape allegations” (Ryan Witt, “Rape Accusations Split Both Conservatives and Liberals”, 7 December, 2010).

This is not to imply, then, that men and women would be equally (or similarly) divided along partisan lines. Nor does it suggest that liberals and conservatives are evenly split down the middle either. While some conservatives might view the allegations as further evidence of Assange’s moral degeneracy, others appear to be more threatened by the prospect of “freewheeling and sexually liberated” women in the “new sexual order” (Stephen Baskerville, “Julian Assange’s Political Honeytrap and Ours”, 25 February, 2011).

The issue of motivated reasoning here is not so much about partisanship but how attitudes towards women might create the illusion of a united front – people on opposing sides of the political divide can also be seen to confirm their bias against women in different ways (or for different reasons). And as the feminist debate between Naomi Wolf and Jaclyn Friedman reveals, there is a divide over how to view the available evidence amongst women (“Naomi Wolf vs. Jaclyn Friedman: Feminists Debate the Sexual Allegations Against Julian Assange”, 20 December, 2010). While both women agree that the rape allegations are “politically motivated”, they talk at cross purposes over the way “consent” should be interpreted between “moral adults”. The two women are alternately “offended” and “disappointed” by how the other filters the evidence, and are divided as to who is really making a mockery of rape: governments allegedly falsifying (or exploiting) allegations for their own ends or outsiders not taking the rape allegations seriously because Assange’s female accusers chose to have sex with him in the first place.

Naomi Wolf’s op ed pieces in the The Huffington Post are notable for the way they editorialise in the guise of reporting. Wolf’s three pieces for the Huffington Post supposedly report what everyone should already know – that the rape allegations are a completely laughable and transparent attempt to bring down Wikileaks’ reign of freedom. Particularly striking is her ability to derive invalid arguments from valid premises, ensuring that selected facts can be either obscured or conflated.

In the first op ed, Wolf mocks the allegations by claiming that “the alleged victims are using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appears to be personal injured feelings”. Assange allegedly stands “accused of having consensual sex with two women, in one case using a condom that broke” and that the “world’s dating police” have been called to defend the women’s honour (Naomi Wolf, “Julian Assange Captured by World’s Dating Police”, 7 December, 2010).

In the second and third op eds, Wolf makes the same observations and arguments about a “pimping of feminism” and the insult to (real) rape victims” . Complaining that rape allegations are typically not taken so seriously by police around the world, she goes on to argue that the allegations against Assange should therefore be treated similarly.

While Wolf appears to be endorsing the very thing she’s complaining about, its clear why she’s making a self refuting (and self serving) argument: she’s already decided that the complaints against Assange are without basis and don’t merit further investigation (Naomi Wolf, “Sweden’s Serial Negligence in Prosecuting Rape Further Highlights the Politics Behind Julian Assange’s Arrest”, 15 December, 2010).

Unfortunately, the only thing Wolf’s op ed pieces confirm is her willingness to extrapolate from a single (and questionable) source and a tendency to generalise from instance to instance. As her tabloid source readily acknowledges, however, Assange’s female accusers’ statements to the police were ” heavily redacted, with details of the sex allegations blacked out” (Angela Johnson, “Supporters Dismissed Rape Allegations Against Wikileaks Founder”, Women Involved Tell A Different Story”, 29 August, 2010).

Michael Moore also wanted us to take the path of least resistance by deciding everything in advance. Despite conflicting (or unsubstantiated) reports and the lack of independently verifiable evidence, the famed left wing critic wanted to pick a side anyway.As Moore observes in an open letter to Sweden “many see right through” your “tactic of using a rape charge to go after minorities or troublemakers, guilty or innocent – while turning a blind eye to clear crimes of rape the rest of the time” (“Dear Government of Sweden,” 16 December, 2010). Moore subsequently helped post bail and went on air to call the rape allegations “hooey” and mocked the (alleged) fact that Assange was wanted for questioning because his “condom broke during consensual sex” (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, “14 December, 2010).

Moore’s and Wolf’s dismissive responses, however, are premature and misinformed: they appear to have picked their sources and evidence. Their willingness to interpret away the allegations highlights one of the problematic assumptions about Wikileaks: that information can never be truly be free – it always comes at a price and may be de/valued according to general currency. Information will never really be free when it invariably serves some valued end and/or finds itself entangled in the web of context. The spread of information may therefore be subject to the backfire effect, or the tendency to use contradictory evidence to strengthen existing beliefs and desires. The backfire effect “implies not only that most people will resist correcting their factual beliefs, but also that the very people who most need to correct them will be least likely to do so”. (Joe Keohane, “How Facts Backfire”, 11, July, 2010).

Particularly informative was the way the internet generally echoed the freedom fighter’s version of events. By allowing themselves to be judge, jury and executioner (or character assassins), many freedom of speech advocates have used the internet to try and silence (harass, invalidate) Assange female accusers.

An Echo Chamber

The echo chamber allowed itself to turn into a star chamber, as evident by the sharing of their names, photos, contact information and home addresses , an online investigation into alleged CIA ties and profiling of the behaviour of ‘real’ rape victims , and the invitation “to the blogosphere to…be a WikiSleuth” in order to prove that one of Assange’s feminist accusers is really an “undercover… lesbian”.

Now, I don’t want to imply that it’s impossible to judge certain facts presented online. As we have seen, the court of public opinion appears to have already delivered its verdict there: since it’s difficult to reconcile the image of a freedom fighter with that of an accused rapist, many appear to feel that they have no choice but to decide in Assange’s favour. And in the prejudicial court of the internet – where there are no rules of evidence or independent adjudicators – a free for all could be seen to take place.

Witness the widely distributed reports making a mockery of the rape allegations. The initial stories blatantly editorialise information and then presented it as factual. At the very least, the tabloid approach provided the context in which the allegations have been generally reported and discussed (by Moore and Wolf, amongst others).

In the first report we briefly encounter two women who “realised to their horror and anger that they had both been victims of his charm” and wanted an assurance that they didn’t catch anything from the man straight of a “Stieg Larsson blockbuster”. The (poorly) translated “police report” goes on to claim that the “basis for the rape charge” was that Assange “made love” to the women without a condom. (Angela Johnson, “Supporters Dismissed Rape Allegations Against Wikileaks Founder”, Women Involved Tell A Different Story”, 29 August, 2010).

In the second report, we were told that the “international manhunt” apparently “stems from a condom malfunction”. In fact, Julian Assange was “not wanted” for “rape” but for “for something called ‘sex by surprise’…with a woman known for her “radical feminist views…and subversive activities” in Cuba. Indeed, this troublemaker (and implied CIA operative) “once wrote a treatise on how to take revenge against men” Consequently, Assange simply ran “afoul of Sweden’s unusual rape laws, which are considered pro-feminist because of the consideration given issues of consent when it comes to sexual activity – including even the issue of whether a condom was used” (Dana Kennedy, “Sex By Surprise At Heart Of Assange Criminal Probe”, 2 December, 2010).

As one feminist blogger countered, however, the ‘radical feminist’ appears to have been the victim of the internet’s capacity to make questionable links and assumptions about women. “If you look at that ‘treatise’ against men, it’s actually just a blog post that links and translates an English e-how article that has nothing to do with dudes. So yeah, she didn’t write anything – just re-posted a rando article. For that, she’s a conniving feminist bitch” (Jessica Valenti, “AOL News At The Centre of Sex by Surprise Lie In Rape Case”, 10 December, 2010).

While the article ‘Get Legal Revenge’ appears to have been taken off-line by eHow (presumably they didn’t want to be directly linked to a CIA conspiracy), a version of it can can still be seen here. The subsequent belief that Swedish law might be susceptible to the machinations of a conniving feminist also appears to be misinformed – instead of people joking that men “need written permission to have sex”, the recent Amnesty report Case Closed , “shows that women who report rape to the police in the Nordic countries have only a small chance of having their cases tried by a court of law. The result is that many perpetrators are never held to account for their crimes. Amnesty International examines the gaps in laws, procedures and practices and calls on the governments of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden to take steps to ensure justice for all victims and survivors of sexual crimes” (Case Closed: Rape and Human Rights In The Nordic Countries, 8 March, 2010).

The fact that Sweden appears to be acting out of character in the Assange case raises serious questions about its (political) motives. The question of political motivation, however, needs to be distinguished from the question of Sweden’s alleged “pro feminism” and susceptibility to radical feminists with ulterior motives.

A questionable Counter Punch article is the pièce de résistance and appears to be the source of a popular meme: that one of Assange’s “castrating feminists” is linked to the CIA. Comparing Assange to Neo from the Matrix, it goes on to argue that freedom lovers have been forced to swallow the bitterest of pills: watching our saviour get caught in a CIA “honey trap” and falling victim to a “soap opera” plot. Given the article’s facetious tone, few should have wanted to take the alleged ‘argument’ seriously. The cited evidence includes Wikipedia quotes, Google searches and a single source we’re supposed to take at face value.

The ‘guilt by association’ logic – and the links to untranslated journal articles supposedly implicating our female “Judas” in subversive activities – simultaneously lends itself to the opposite conclusion . Specifically, that Assange’s accuser is a social activist and Wikileak’s sympathiser conspiring to bring the “governments behind the Matrix” down too: not only is there is evidence that she organised the seminar where Neo spread the Wikileak’s “gospel”, she even let our latter day “Jesus” stay in her flat when she was away (Israel Shamir and Paul Bennet, “Making a Mockery of the Real Crime of Rape: Assange Besieged, 14 September, 2010).

Unfortunately, one of the authors of the Counterpunch article failed to declare a conflict of interest in the name of transparency. According to Wikipedia (hey, we can play that game too) Israel Shamir is associated with Wikileaks in the capacity of journalist while his son is the spokesperson for WikiLeaks in Sweden. If we wanted to, we could therefore apply Shamir’s questionable ‘logic’ to Wikileaks here – the accused anti Semite and Holocaust denier ‘proves’ (sic) that Assange should also be viewed similarly guilty through his association to Shamir.

Perhaps more troubling is that the source of the popular CIA meme is reportedly a “paid… representative” of Wikleaks. Whatever Shamir’s views on freedom might be, apparently his circulated information doesn’t always come for free. Cited documents allege that money has changed hands between Assange and Shamir on at least one occasion (“Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy”, 1 February, 2011).

We had to wait for the Guardian’s unauthorised leak of the allegations to get a more considered appraisal of the situation. Instead of making a mockery of the real crime of rape, it was subsequently confirmed that Assange forced himself on one of his female accusers (by holding her down) and started having unprotected sex with another while she lay asleep. The allegations, then, were never about a broken condom during consensual sex or failing to call them after a one night stand – they allege rape, sexual molestation and coercion over a ten day period. (Nick Davies, “10 Days In Sweden: The Full Allegations Against Julian Assange, 17 December 2010 ).

By this stage, the damage had already been done – the search for truth had already been compromised when leaked information was originally filtered through a distorted looking glass. The damaging articles remain online without correction or amendment, and people searching for the desired information will tend to find what they are looking for.

It’s worth noting that Assange’s own image has reportedly been in the process of becoming tarnished – the freedom fighter’s “autocratic” and “imperious” running of Wikileaks has become a matter of public record via leaked transcripts of internal conversations and outspoken Wikileak dissenters (John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya, “Wikileak’s Founder On The Run, Trailed By Notoriety, 23 October, 2010).

A telling use of words has threatened to tarnish his public image even further: Assange curiously referred to the potential harm caused to innocent people by Wikileaks as “collateral damage” (Raffi Khatchadourian, “No Secrets”, 7 June 2010), publicly confirming that the increasingly controlling freedom fighter privately“adopted the language of the powermongers he claimed to be combating” (Jeffrey Rosen, “Review of Daniel’s Domscheit-Berg’s Inside Wikileaks”, 16 April, 2010).

None of this suggests that Assange is guilty of anything other than getting lost in the hall of mirrors. We’re simply drawing attention to the fact that we should follow Assange’s own lead by distinguishing between appearance and reality and hold everyone up to the standards of transparency and accountability.

Perhaps what is most surprising about the allegations, then, is the defense’s response to the leaked police report. Instead of advocating transparency to temper the spread of misinformation in the public domain, one of his lawyers wanted the leak investigated because it was “trying to make Julian look bad”. The possibility of Assange being “forced into a trial in the media” threatens to put “Julian and his defence in a bad position” (David Leppard, “Lawyer’s Cry Foul Over Leak of Julian Assange Sex Case Papers”, 20 December, 2010).

Clearly we were supposed to turn a blind eye to the defense’s attempt to force Assange’s female accusers into a trial by media. Another member of his legal team had previously reiterated the default position by casting them in the role of perpetrators of a crime. Attributing the allegations to “dark forces”, Assange’s lawyer claimed that “the honeytrap has been sprung … After what we’ve seen so far you can reasonably conclude this is part of a greater plan.” (Nick Davies, “10 Days in Sweden: The Full Allegations Against Julian Assange, 17 December 2010 ).

Assange set the tone of the debate by politicising the allegations via twitter from the outset. It thereby confirmed what many Wikileak defender’s should already know: that Assange’s political opponents would invariably resort to “dirty tricks” (21 August, 2010). It’s worth noting that Assange has no classified evidence to corroborate the (presumably justified) claim that he is wanted for questioning in order to be taken down by the powers that be – or if he has, it’s yet to made available through Wikileaks. Few should want to question whether the investigation into the allegations might be politically motivated either – the question is whether the investigation (and possible trial and conviction) is the result of political opportunism or something more personal.

Unfortunately, the Wikileak’s tweet forgot to mention one of the pillars of the women’s liberation movement though – that the personal is political to begin with: relations between the sexes is also historically inequable (defined by power differentials and systematic oppression). It goes without saying that women have to fight to be heard or be taken seriously – especially women alleging rape against more powerful individuals.

While history will decide one way or another, we may never know who ultimately became ‘collateral damage’ in an infowar characterized by competing interests and widely spread misinformation. The increasingly transparent questions, then, are : who has really been playing dirty and/or become the victim of a conspiracy here?