John, you assume the system needs secrets, and to some extent the system assumes so too. For individuals who have positions in the system, the desire to feel powerful and important is obviously enhanced by both stamping things secret and knowing about secrets so stamped by others.. But this does not prove that state secrets are really important for the survival of the state as such. The Soviet Union tried to keep nearly everything secret, but partly because of that, it collapsed. Maybe a state can function just as well with no secrecy, or at least much less than is now typical. Secrets are probably no more than a silly habit, based on superstition as much as anything else. So far wikileaks appears to be running mainly on one big leak, but if it proves capable of exploiting many more leaks, from more governments and more sources, it might just help governments increase control by lessening their reliance on this superstition.
Best, Michael On Nov 29, 2010, at 3:15 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > the fluidity of leaking # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
