The collaboration has been a long time in coming, but so close is the current working relationship between WikiLeaks and the Daily Mail that it is becoming difficult to believe the two organizations were ever at odds.
Hardly any time has passed since the newspaper was happy to style WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange a “traitor,” or “the slimy WikiLeaks founder,” his most notable achievement, in that newspaper’s estimation, to have cost Britain about £9 million (US$13.7 million) — to date — for policing the Ecuadorian embassy. All he appeared to have in common with Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre was a mutual abomination of the Guardian newspaper.
And yet, as Dacre would no doubt be gracious enough to acknowledge, his paper has lately become so indebted to Assange for prime Hollywood gossip that, if he has not done so already, it would be only fair to reward the “traitor” with a handsome staff contract or even a showbiz column of his own.
Illustration: Mountain people
Dacre’s would certainly have been a lesser product without the news — all courtesy of Assange’s efforts — of Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestry, of Sony’s worries about thin Emily Blunt, of Margot Robbie’s potential as a real-life Barbie and of Leonardo DiCaprio’s private jet shame. Perhaps most piercing for British readers was the revelation of local celebrity Julian Fellowes’ pain on discovering that his former Hollywood agent had described him as “awful.”
No disrespect to the Mail’s showbusiness reporters, but Assange has surely outstripped all rival contributors since his colleagues at WikiLeaks dumped a massive file of Sony Pictures’ e-mails — originally hacked by people, allegedly North Korean people, unknown) in a new, search-friendly format, accompanied by the founder’s high-minded justification.
“This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation,” Assange said. “It is newsworthy and at the center of a geopolitical conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”
No government or corporation will ever be powerful enough to suppress, for instance, the fact that a famous friend of Sony Entertainment’s CEO once newsworthily tried to set up their famous mutual friend with someone also quite well known who fancied him, though it newsworthily did not work out.
Whether it reflects the evidence, in this cache, of people doing the sort of things they might well do inside a global film production company, or the shocking complacency of a meretricious Western media, the geopolitical implications of Sony’s e-mails appear to have attracted less attention than content featuring celebrities, money, or anything remotely embarrassing to do with bottoms.
True, it emerges that Sony head Michael Lynton, as repellent-sounding an individual as you might expect, courted and was courted by politicians, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, eager to associate with his company’s money and influence. Silly them. At one point, Lynton decides he might get British Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Edward Vaizey — who was at the time minister of libraries — with whom Lynton had earlier appeared friendly, fired in favor of his real friend David Macmillan, a smart (in the social sense) publisher.
However, let’s be fair: perhaps Lynton is a library lover. In any case, the WikiLeaks audience — or those parts of it not inhibited by the shadow of Leveson and threats from Sony — turns out to be far more interested in the private lives, right down to the personal hygiene, of senior executives and any of their unfortunate, geopolitically negligible associates.
“Once again,” tweeted Glenn Greenwald, celebrated champion of the individual against the state’s covert mining of personal data, “@wikileaks has performed a great journalistic function & service with this new archive.”
Although not so journalistic that it involved any effort at editing, so as to separate out politically and fiscally telling material from the morally indefensible. In terms of gossip, admittedly, there is no arguing with Greenwald’s assessment: WikiLeaks’ lurch into celebrity scandal was instant inspiration to fellow content providers at Gawker and its sister blog, the purportedly feminist Jezebel.
Hardly had WikiLeaks released 173,132 e-mails and more than 30,000 documents than the latter’s editors had fallen upon the (former) Sony Pictures chair, Amy Pascal’s Amazon shopping history, added scatological commentary and transformed it into clickbait gold.
In Pascal’s case, her status, added to earlier suggestions of casual racism, evidently amounts to a public interest argument that warrants any amount of ridicule, even that which appears less concerned with geopolitical cunning than with the absurdity of a middle-aged woman thinking her ancient person merited the application of beauty products.
However, lesser members of staff who have neither cracked distasteful jokes about US President Barack Obama nor had the impudence to buy La Prairie face cream, nor earned enough money to have forfeited all privacy rights, remain equally vulnerable to this form of dehumanization.
Questioned about this invasion of the privacy of those Sony employees and their correspondents who were naive enough to think their work e-mail accounts safe for exchanges about, say, illnesses, bereavements and relationships, Greenwald tweeted: “It wasn’t @wikileaks that did the hack. And there is very close government dealings w/Sony.”
So by all means, laugh at the expense of staff who rank too low to help progress Sony’s sinister web of geopolitical alliances, but who nonetheless unwittingly volunteered for what is called, when the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) does it, the bulk interception of private correspondence.
In March, champions of civil liberties were unmoved by British government protestations contained in its report, prompted by Edward Snowden’s revelations, to the effect that it examines only suspicious communications.
“Bulk and indiscriminate collection of data poses a serious and severe threat to our civil liberties, including our rights to free expression and to privacy,” Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg said.
Though it should perhaps be taken into account, on GCHQ’s behalf, that at least it stops short of publishing archives of data with a handy search box into which a fearless Gawker or Jezebel investigator can type.
How much Greenwald’s invocation of a greater good will soothe Sony employees whose data has been made so instantly trawlable can perhaps be gauged from the previously exposed and mocked. Assange, for instance, has objected vigorously to media portrayal that, he said, took liberties with his privacy, even when the offending material — like the hacked Sony e-mails — was already accessible online.
In 2012, British communications regulator Ofcom ruled that his privacy had not, after all, been violated in a Channel 4 documentary that showed him dancing in a club.
Assange “was not shown engaged in an activity which would reasonably be considered to be private or in circumstances which could normally give rise to a legitimate expectation of privacy,” Ofcom said.
However, Assange’s shyness, in that instance, is at least consistent with principles he outlined to writer Andrew O’Hagan, for an autobiography subsequently published without his authorization.
His early “cypherpunk” adventures, he stressed, were all about protecting individual privacy from data-hungry corporations and governments and his personal life was no exception; it was a “category error” to suggest otherwise.
“Disclosure is my business,” he said, “but we don’t deal in gossip.”
Well, he does now.
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