Wikileaks and Digital Disclosure: Beclouded Muckraking, Profit-Taking and Self-Promoting

Abstract

However the reader approaches the study of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, there are numerous applied ethical issues implicated by their lives. The paper asks, among other questions, whether a new norm exists defining personal information and data as a “public good.” Under this view, anyone using the Internet seemingly has relinquished any direct (or exclusive) ownership claim to her data (personal information) or images of resemblance. In truth, part of data ownership is about control over our personhood, over the stories conveyed about us, and over what can be known about us. The meaning of the data is something that the person who generates the data can never really be detached from. To that extent, personal data represents intimate aspects of ourselves that we can't be separated from, no matter the motive of those seeking to partition the individual from the narrative. Loss of control over personal information is especially troubling in the current environment in which enterprises like Google cannot form, or maintain for extended periods, ethics boards charged with directing policy on extracting, bundling and sharing of personal information of users of SaaS and Web platforms. The fact that California in 2018 passed the CCPA or the EU its Data Privacy Regulation is cold comfort given the personal-data gold rush underway evidenced in the business of mining, bundling and sale of information. Remaining competitive, it seems, is more consequential than being respectful, or even cognizant, of the individual's ownership of her or his essential personhood. The essay is a vehicle for reflection for business ethicists about an essential moral issue for our time: the destructive social, as well as personal, impacts of compromised individual privacy in the digital-platform and social media realms.