International non-profit whistle-blower WikiLeaks, has changed the way businesses and government will manage information in the future.
This is according to Paul Fisher, editor of SC magazine, who spoke at the Cyberoam Partner Summit in Athens recently.
WikiLeaks received both praise as well as criticism last year after releasing thousands of documents around the Iraq war logs, US diplomatic cables and classified media leaks.
The release of the Iraq war logs was earlier referred by the BBC as “the largest leak of classified documents in history”.
Information crack-down
Fisher said: “The world is moving to a network of premeditative strikes against organisations and governments. The amount of data released by WikiLeaks is something that has never been seen before at such a sheer scale.”
He pointed out that the role of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter as well as new media such as WikiLeaks suggests that government and business leaders do not have the same control over information as they did in the past.
“Cyber criminals exploit people for a financial reward, yet the motivation we're seeing with the new WikiLeaks revolution, is a political one,” he added.
Fisher pointed out the private sector is not immune from the effect WikiLeaks has had on government.
An organised hacking group called 'Anonymous' claims to support the efforts of WikiLeaks and has unleashed several attacks on organisations such as PayPal, Amazon, Visa and MasterCard for not supporting WikiLeaks.
Ethical crusade
Fisher said WikiLeaks was the catalyst for an “ethical crusade of free information.” He said even if WikiLeaks was shut down, other Web sites would soon take its place.
“WikiLeaks is not the only whistle-blowing Web site; there's another called Cryptome.org and in the future there will be a lot more Web sites of this nature, but the danger lies where these organisations could be run less formally than WikiLeaks.”
Fisher added: “My personal view is that WikiLeaks has a slightly na"ive approach, which presumes all government and financial institutions are corrupt and WikiLeaks should be the sole judge of what needs to be published.”
Fisher believes that the actions of WikiLeaks and Anonymous means that communications will become more closely guarded in the future.
“Diplomats in the future won't be able to talk so freely, and this will have an impact on dispute resolutions and diplomatic peace talks.”
He noted that WikiLeaks indicated it's starting to use peer-to-peer networks, such as Limewire, in order to trawl networks for information. He said this has changed from its previous model, where someone would come forward with information in the public interest.
Nothing is safe
According to Fisher, business must adapt to economies where no secret is safe. “WikiLeaks late last year threatened to reveal the secrets of the inner workings of a large bank and businesses were struck by an alarming thought that commercial secrets are no longer safe.”
He said all businesses are going to be at risk at having their information leaked. “Any disgruntled employee may decide to leak certain information to WikiLeaks and this could have unpredictable effects such as a drop in share price.”
“The final irony of WikiLeaks is that it has created a less open society that is more secret as the most powerful will intensify efforts to keep information more secret. Further down the line, we will be seeing more WikiLeaks imitators.”
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