Twelve Theses on Wikileaks (with Patrice Riemens) (This is an entirely rewritten and updated version of the Ten Thesis on Wikileaks, posted on nettime, August 30, 2010.
The article was then translated in German and published in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, December 7, 2010 and is due to come out shortly in a Suhrkamp collection on the backgrounds of Wikileaks. The Dutch translation (slightly edited) appeared in the weekend edition of the liberal NRC-Handelsblad of December 11 and a week later in the Flamish daily De Morgen. An Italian translation was made by InfoFreeFlow, an Italian collective of researchers and techies based at the Laboratorio Occupato Crash in Bologna. ¿Quién teme a Wikileaks? Wikileaks and the Long Haul. Like a lot of people, I am conflicted about Wikileaks.
Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls “counter-democracy”*, the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities. On the other hand, human systems can’t stand pure transparency.