Adam Moore, Privacy and Government Surveillance: WikiLeaks and the new Accountability

Comment by: Colin Koopman

PLSC 2011

Published version available here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1980812

Workshop draft abstract:

This working paper considers the ‘new accountability’ forced upon corporations and governments by information sharing sites like WikiLeaks.  I will argue that accessing and sharing sensitive information about individuals, corporations, and governments is – in the typical case – morally suspect.  Nevertheless, the wrongness of cases like WikiLeaks is mitigated by two factors.  First, in democratic societies we have a right to know much of the information published by these sharing sites – information that in many instances is unjustifiably withheld by governments.  Second, this sort of sharing is forcing a realignment of power.  For decades corporations and governments have been able to collect, store, and share information about ordinary citizens while walling off access to their own information.  Sharing sites like WikiLeaks are changing this balance of power. And while I agree that “two wrongs don’t make a right” – accessing, storing, and sharing information about citizens and accessing, storing, and sharing information about government activities – for this slogan to be true one has acknowledge the first wrong.