The emergence of WikiLeaks has had a profound (if polarising) effect on our relationship to information. Whether it’s politicians or the media, the question of secrecy and disclosure has been revived. What do we have the right to know, and why? When should secrets remain so?
Chaired by Lyndal Curtis, our panel – Julian Burnside, Paul Ramadge and Suelette Dreyfus – discuss the lasting implications of WikiLeaks and examine its motives and model.
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Interesting moment when Ramadge criticises Wikileaks for having a "manifesto" where a "code of ethics" would do. The difference, as I see it, is not great: both a manifesto and a code of conduct are a declaration of one's ethical position, one's ideological presumptions. The main difference is that a code of ethics, by announcing itself in such "rational" and "balanced" terms, attempts to pass itself off as its opposite: non-ideology.
Isn't the unconscious statement in Ramadge's criticism the same old fear of radical politics? Isn't the delusion in such a statement that we aren't already living in a radically unjust social structure?
Brad N
24 February at 09:00PM