Julian Assange is hogging the headlines yet again. In what promises to be a well played out drama in the media, Britain and Ecuador are set for a face-off, after Ecuador granted the Wikileaks founder asylum, and the UK swore to smoke him out of the Ecuador embassy in London and extradite him to Sweden. The fear is that an eventual arrest of Assange for sexual misconduct in Sweden will be used to hand him over to the US for embarrassing the Obama administration. In all of this, governments may be foolish in assuming that punishing Assange will help clamp down on the Wikileaks brand of open information. In the new age of web warriors, they may be setting the ground for a losing battle.
The Assange situation is no doubt testing a range of issues from diplomacy politics to extradition laws and the justice system in democracies. Countries know fully well by now, that the age of rampant hacking, Internet trolls, citizen journalists, seamless information and disgruntled employees is like a Molotov cocktail waiting to explode. Any sign that Assange, who is as much a hero to his supporters as he is a villain to his victims, will be severely persecuted for his leaks, could well translate into a wide spread and systematic attempt to hack deeper into government files to embarrass administrations.
That kind of erosion of classified information by an unannounced army of hackers and supporters is the new kind of ‘information- terrorism’ that countries have to deal with, as the online world creates an unprecedented appetite for opinion makers and free-speech warriors. Trouble is, these fighters may be so taken up by their cause they may often be unable to see the damage to the cause when, occasionally, truly sensitive information leaks.
As a result, governments today need to invest in programmes that will help them wean the hacker community away from releasing security-sensitive information that’s irresponsible. They may have to learn to disguise their umbrage when the leaked information is simply embarrassing and not much else.
The new reality is that the web world has greater power to hold governments to their word, than conventional media, because it’s able to mobilise people more effectively.
So governments need to play ball. To be fair to Sweden, if Australian-born Assange did actually molest Swedish women, he should be tried, just like former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn had to defend himself in the now infamous Strauss-grabs-Manhattan-maid episode. Eventually US prosecutors dropped the case against Strauss-Kahn because of insufficient evidence. At the time of his arrest, he was denied diplomatic immunity by US authorities but eventually, it turned out that the law supported evidence above all else.
Britain in the meantime may have little choice but to ensure that they do arrest Assange, who at the very least stands guilty of jumping bail. If it fails to ensure the court order to extradite him to Sweden, it risks sending out the signal that, as a country, it can’t enforce the law of the land. But it will have to also demonstrate that it will fight any extradition of Assange to the US. Ecuador is already a hero to the information-warrior tribe, even though its record against journalists has been questioned in the past.
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It then boils down to the US. There is the big unanswered question of what the US administration wants to do with Assange. Will it be the hero or the villain?
As always, America may find it ends up playing the game-changer once again. In the moment of the web-world versus the administration, this could be the turning point in history.
Anjana Menon is a Delhi-based business writer. You can send your comments to bsshoptalk@gmail.com