DailyPost 169
CIA Leaks
The Wikileaks has done it again, a core competency it has mastered over the years. It’s first leak was flaunted as a revelation which was more than the total quantum of journalism both electronic and print in that particular year. It’s was the beginning of a new brand of journalism without even a word being written by them. The story was taken further by the iconic Edward Snowden leak of NSA documents and later the Panama Papers by two German journalists; a total of 2.6 terabytes of information. The 7th March 2017 CIA leaks adds a new dimension to litany of leaks and of the duplicity of the US & it’s agencies concerned.
The current biggest leak of the CIA is monumental , of which only the first instalment is out. The latest security breach was ‘immensely damaging’ as per Mr. Hayden, a retired CIA Chief. Wikileaks’s published thousands of documents appearing to reveal methods to access mobile phones, computers and even smart televisions from the world’s biggest technology brands.
The FBI Vs Apple story is still fresh in public mind. The encryption challenge on a single device stalling investigation in one of biggest terrorist cases last year to mass surveillance of the kind just made public is the reality of our digital existence, the story as of now seems can’t get any bigger. The unimaginable scalability of the digital technology for good and for bad; the bad throwing up challenges of a different kind. If mass surveillance is immensely facilitated, then mass hacking and leaks is equally facilitated . The doublespeak is too glaring.
The ubiquitous powers of such agencies is showing its true colors. Privacy & confidentiality has already been consigned to the flames, quite literally so. The self proclaimed defenders are the biggest culprits. This is digital madness, a way forward has to discovered. It is hitting hard at the fundamentals of democracy.
WITH NO END TO HACKS & LEAKS IN SIGHT, INDIVIDUALS TO BUSINESS ENTERPRISES TO GOVERNMENTS ARE AT IMMENSE RISK.
Sanjay Sahay