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poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2010-11-30 11:19 am

No More Secrets

In the past the keeping of secrets was a relatively straightforward affair. Now neither the citizen nor the state can be sure of keeping anything under wraps. That's the real significance of the spate of documents coming out of Wikileaks. The Individual revelations are mostly footling, what is entirely new is the sheer volume of them. Before the digital age it would have been impossible to smuggle this amount of 
material past its keepers- and, besides, it wouldn't all have been stored in one place.

The old rules, the the old ways of doing things no longer apply. As individuals we're alive to this, but  the state, that hidebound behemoth, is very slow to catch on.

[identity profile] ron-broxted.livejournal.com 2010-11-30 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Worse in Britain than elsewhere. Sweden is very open, about most things.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2010-11-30 04:06 pm (UTC)(link)
It goes with the culture of deference- and the class system.

[identity profile] shanghai7.livejournal.com 2010-11-30 07:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Sweden has a class system but far more understated than here.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2010-11-30 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't suppose any society is entirely without class.