It is in this
state of high alert that the Prime Minister of Malaysia introduces new security
measures to beef up efforts against the threat of terrorism. Last year, the
controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act was passed,
and only recently, the
National Security Council (NSC) Act was launched. The
National Security Council has the power to declare security areas – zones that
are perceived to contain security threats, and that will be subject to martial
law – and the council is chaired by the Prime Minister himself. The act allows
the military full authority to seize properties and make arrests without
warrants.
Many human right
activists sounded the alarm that such wide-ranging and unchecked powers could
lead to potential abuse, and that the crackdown on terrorist threats is done at
the expense of civil liberties. Josef Benedict, the Deputy Director for South East Asia and the Pacific of Amnesty
International, even asserts that “There is good reason to fear that the Act
will be yet another tool in the hands of the government to
crack down on peaceful protests under the guise of national security”. The Prime Minister’s
response to such allegations is that the
safety and security of the Malaysian public must be prioritised.
The contentious
debate surrounding the trade-off between security and civil liberties
germinated as skepticism towards governmental surveillance emerges. The
American Civil Liberties Union asserts that "[h]istory has shown that powerful, secret surveillance tools will almost certainly be abused for political ends and turned disproportionately on disfavoured minorities." The stakes got higher as the advent of the
Internet made it easier and easier for state secrets to be leaked and
disseminated. When whistleblowing website WikiLeaks burst into fame in 2010 for releasing data on the Iraq War, it was
hailed as a shining example of
fulfilling the watchdog mandate with which the
media is entrusted. In a 2010 Al Jazeera article, it was claimed that
had WikiLeaks existed pre-9/11, the fatal attack that had left such an indelible
scar on American consciousness might never even have taken place.
The
whistleblowing website epitomizes the power of transparency, and it has
emboldened and enabled journalists to be more radical in their disclosure of
information. The calls for greater transparency has never been louder. The
Foundation of Free Press, set up by a group of journalists, advocates for more
freedoms to report news. More than that, it was not solely the journalists and
media reporters who opined that transparency must be upheld at all costs.
A Pew Research survey in 2015 discovers that 54% of Americans stated that they disapprove of the
government's collection of data in the name of national security. As
John Cusack, a journalist at the Guardian, once wrote, “People
know they have a
right to know what the government is doing in their names.”
Yet a
survey in 2016 by the Pew Research Centre also observes a trend back towards a “security first”
mentality, as terrorist attacks occur the world over. Public opinions are now
shifting back towards maintaining greater security, even if that comes at the
expense of privacy, civil liberties, and the ideal of transparency. In the very
same society that hailed Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, a hero, there is
also a tremendous amount of unease and fear at the thought of having national
secrets made publicly and internationally known.
“You can’t
handle the truth,” goes the famous line from A Few Good Men. Parodied countless times, the quote has become
stale and even hammy. yet when one hears the monologue of Colonel Jessep (acted
by Jack Nicholson), who tries to justify the murder of a soldier in the name of
national interest, one cannot but hear the disconcerting truth in his diatribe:
“You weep for
Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury
of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved
lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves
lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk
about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.”
Now as society
has been thrown into a debilitating sense of instability, the value and
benefits of indiscriminate leaking of state secrets are questioned. WikiLeaks,
once seen as the exemplar of fetterless and fearless journalism, became the
subject of much heat and public outrage when it published the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) emails
without redaction, disclosing
private information such as Social Security Numbers and addresses. Other than revealing the DNC’s attempts to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign,
the
emails did not disclose any outrageously reprehensible dealings of the DNC.
On the other hand, WikiLeaks has been accused of
allowing Russian authorities engineer the US elections by leaking documents in order to wage a
smear campaign against Hillary Clinton. The organisation is later embroiled in
another scandal when it promised to leak emails from the server of Turkish
President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This it did in bulk, but the
sheer volume of the documents made news outlets unsure as to exactly how incriminating or relevant the content of the leak is. Meanwhile, the indiscriminate leaking
has actually allowed for the publication of the
personal info of over a millionTurkish female voters, jeopardising their security.
Transparency for
transparency’s sake has become dangerous for wider society, especially as the
global community is gearing up to combat terrorism. Edward Snowden, famous for
exposing the National Security Agency’s unethical surveillance programs, is more
carefulin publishing leaked documents, preferring to go quietly to reputed news establishment
to give the inside scoop.
He has come to criticise Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for their “hostility to
even a modest curation” of leaked documents.
A TIME article
claims that
WikiLeaks is getting scarier than the NSA. A WIRED article lambasted WikiLeaks for having served its own personal agenda
and interests, and very astutely, the writer reminds us that the
humans behind WikiLeaks are just that – humans. Humans with biases, prejudices, and
motivations. Journalists may have different opinions on what type of expose
constitutes national interest, but they must have a justifiable reason for
thinking so. Acknowledgment of one’s biases is more honest, more frank, more
beneficent to the free press movement than harbouring what
The New York Times claim Julian Assange as having, a
“noble causecorruption”, which is a conception that celebrates vigilante justice even by morally dubious means.
The WIRED
article concludes by calling WikiLeaks a “damaged filter”. Chris Blackhurst
uses the similar term
“unqualified filter” in an article lamenting how news
establishments has become a dumping site for all sorts of leaked documents and
dirty laundry.
Glenn Greenwald has criticized Blackhurst's journalistic ethics on the grounds for not wanting to publish stories because he was told to by authorities. But one cannot ignore Blackhurst's question about publishing hacked state secrets, “Where is the story?” In trawling through the
myriads of top secret official documents, we have gotten so caught up in the
details that we lose the plot. The implications of the documents need to be at
the forefront driving discussions, not the sensationalism surrounding the
notion of leaked documents – a phenomenon not unlike the gossip mill. We need journalists who
play their role as the government’s watchdog, not a channel for publishing
anything remotely top-secret for a surge in sales or pageviews. We need
journalists who pick out stories to highlight wrongdoing, not ones who produce
mere chatter.
We should laud
the journalists who, as
Roy Greenslade defends, “have trawled through the
documents in order to ascertain which of them were in the public interest”. However, we must
also be wary of his unqualified assertion that society should “revel in the
opportunity to increase transparency”, even if that should come to “journalistic
law-breaking”. If the government is to be faulted for its unscrupulous dealings in the name of
“national interest”, what makes it more acceptable when media outlets and
journalists do the same? The role of the journalist, the lengths to which reporters
would go in the name for public interests must be re-examined.
In delivering a
lecture at Durham University’s St Cuthbert’s Society, journalist-turned-writer Ted
Gup notes that the public does not want transparency. What they want is a
government that would be discriminatory and scrupulous about how they handle
sensitive information. In short, they want a government they can trust. The
media is not excluded from this remarkable responsibility of being vanguards of
public interest. They are placed in that unique position of selecting and
filtering what information is absolutely imperative for the public to know.
Even there exists
a tug-and-pull between security and transparency, there is one common overlap:
trust. In the
aforementioned 2016 Pew Research piece, it was found that members of the public
are less opposed to government surveillance activities when explained that it
was done for “national security”. Ultimately, the public wavers between the
two, for essentially, trustworthiness involves both keeping and disclosing
information – but in a discriminate manner. Is it right for governments to
infringe upon our freedoms in the name of national security? The crux of the
matter is not one of transparency, but of trustworthiness. For this, context
matters. Governments who have track records of serving their own interests
instead of the public, who have motives other than the greater good of society,
are less likely to be trusted even if they claim that they are prioritising the
safety and security of the public.
The anti-establishment
faction would not like this, for it means placing their trust in bodies that
wield great power, and that may abuse that power. However, all the more, it
calls for greater judgment, as it requires the public to observe the character of security officials and
media journalists. It requires the public to stress great importance on being
fastidious with whom they select as the vanguards of both the public’s security
and their freedom. The question we should ask ourselves is no longer to what
extent is someone transparent, but rather – how much can I trust them, given what I know about them?
