Transparency: A Double-Edged Sword

When the WikiLeaks scandal first broke in any major capacity, it was all that anyone talked about for several weeks, pretty much right up to the point when Julian Assange (see image) turned himself in to the British government. Granted, WikiLeaks is far from silenced – isn’t that right, Bank of America? Are you still worried? It is just momentarily quiet. I think that, before the next trove of secrets is released, we should take this opportunity to revisit the issue at the heart of the WikiLeaks scandal: transparency, in case that wasn’t perfectly clear. (Yes, that was a pun. I hoped you enjoyed it.)

Everybody likes to have their secrets revealed to the rest of the world. Oh, wait. That’s not right. Nobody likes to have their secrets known by anybody. That’s why they’re secrets. (I hope you’re reading this, Mr. Assange.) The word secret means, specifically, “not open or public; kept private or not revealed.” In other words, secrets are just private, sensitive information. And it seems to me that people need to be a bit more sensitive about sharing their private information. That’s right. I’m looking at you, Twitter. You too, Facebook.

Who really wants to know what you are doing, moment to moment? Very few people; just take another look at the number of followers you have on your blog or Twitter account. When you actually step back and think about it, do you really want all your ‘friends’ to know your current ‘status’? Probably not. The current state of individuals’ ultra-transparency sounds like heaven for stalkers, though. It’s also - as William Falk writes in The Week magazine - a heaven for “sophisticated marketing and research companies (who) are giving you the full WikiLeaks treatment through cookies, beacons, and other tracking devices that record your every move, like unseen spies…they can record your every keystroke on the Web.”

Chilling, no? Just keep that in mind as you are punching in your allotted 140 characters for your next Twitter post or typing in a status update. Or instead, you could use your ability to stay silent while on the net and simultaneously spare the rest of us from having to read your latest revelation or activity on your social media of the moment. Maybe a little less transparency from the individual would be a good thing. After all, if it’s big enough news, we’re going to hear about it from WikiLeaks or some other organization anyway.

Photo credit: http://www.mediaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/julian_assange-2.jpg