Wikileaks vs U.S military

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net in December 2006 and is still a chip on the shoulder of the most influential government in the world. Yes a simple wiki page is responsible for what the US government believes to be the unlawful supply of information to foreign intelligence which may be used to harm its Army and government interests. This is a subject that is very dear to my heart , when I think about politics and the new media I can’t help but believe that here is a tool for democracy if I have seen no other, and Wikileaks is a march in the right direction. The internet was developed by the US military , but wouldn’t it be the sweetest irony if that same baby could be the tool to shatter their colossal megalomania, call them out on their bullshit and bring down their fortress of lies?

The whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is one again at the centre of media and political attention as it makes public more than 90 000 secret records of incidents and intelligence reports from the US military about the war in Afghanistan. Wikileaks is an international organisation, based in Sweden that publishes sensitive documents. By far one of the most controversial servings form the site has been the recent video post of US military killings. The video shows U.S soldiers laughing as they gun down Afghan civilians and two journalists in a firefight in Baghdad in 2007. The man thought to be responsible for leaking the footage is Army intelligence expert , Bradley Manning. He is said to be locked up in a military prison after being shipped to Kuwait. He faces trial by court martial, and if found guilty, a heavy jail sentence.

Other documents disclose how the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets. Documents detail coalition troops shooting unarmed drivers and civilian motorcyclists supposedly because they are terrifies that they could be Taliban suicide bombers.

The site now claims to host more than a million documents . Anyone can submit to Wikileaks anonymously , but a team of reviewers, volunteers from the mainstream press, journalists and Wikileaks staff decide what is published. According to Editor in Chief and founder, Julian Assange, “the site accepts classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance” it does not take “rumour, opinion and other kinds of first hand reporting or material that is already publically available. The recent documents went through rigorous inspect ion before publication on the site and have been approved as legit by the BBC.

However the site has suffered a blow due to the issue of source confidentiality something that it prides itself on. “We specialise in allowing whistle-blowers and journalists who have been censored to get material out to the public”. Mr Assange in the light of the Manning case, insists that Wikileaks never divulges its resources . “We have deliberately structured our operation to protect sources under threat of criminal law”, he said. The site is working to help protect journalist and sources from prosecution, its currently working with the Iceland government on efforts to increase legal protection for whistle-blowers in the country.

Independence 2.0

It’s been 50 years since up to 17 African countries have gained independence, but the chasmistic digital divide between the West and the rest has left many African states reliant on foreign aid and technologies to help them become even feeble competitors . Finland for example, has recently passed a law giving every citizen the legal right to 1 Mbps broadband internet access.

It’s not however all doom and gloom , now, a wave of homegrown programmers, developers and software makers claim to be heralding a new era of African independence. Something that should really be of no surprise to anyone, in fact, in a continent were the world’s highest mobile growth rate is taking place, most people would say that it is about damn time that somebody, (an African please) did something.

The Idlelo conference, organised by the Free Software and Open source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), brought together the continent’s cleverest coding minds at Accra, in Ghana, to discuss new software opportunities for Africa. Unlike the bigger foreign developers who mainly target the urban markets, the organisers of the event looked at how to reach the rural, relatively poorer communities of Africa. What makes projects such as this very important is that the future of social networking and even citizen journalism are dependent on their success .

Social networking is no longer a first world country entitlement as it has proven to be of immense help to human beings and countries in times of crisis. The efforts of Africa’s open source community are already creating an impact. Following the Haiti earthquake, those affected could use geotagging software to shout out for supplies and the pleas would appear on the website www.ushahidi.com . The software behind the project was produced by developers from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Botswana among other countries.

According to Dorothy Gordon, Director General kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, big multi-nationals are paying more attention to Africa than ever before. However, this attention has been directed at developing e-government systems. “If you look as the national level, or even if you look at the whole continent, you will see that many of the technologies we use are imported” she commented. This of course means that African Nations and their governments are quite vulnerable, since all the systems in use are imported, this creates a dodgy dependency on those countries for technological maintenance and advancements.

The programme One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and the East African Community (EAC) aims to deliver 30 million laptops in the region by 2015. The two groups aim to find donors to help pay for the machines, which currently sell for more than $200, despite intentions to sell them for less. At the end of the day it’s all about money, ideally we would love to live in a world where governments can equip every kid to be educated and computer literate but that’s not the case. Governments have their agendas and the improvements in telecommunications and social networking are not always the number one priority. It is therefore up to Africans to initiate movements to take care of our problems cause frankly, no one else will.