While watching news over the past few days, I just noticed a trend involving politics and the internet. Rep. Weiner (whose name I find to be rather unfortunate) and his involvment with photos of his bulging pants and sending it to women through his Twitter account. You have Sarah Palin's release of e-mails from the time she was governor of Alaska, which can either help her or hurt her, based on the public's reaction to some of them. Then, you have the leaks published on Wikileaks, which while now falling apart, had the ability to completely destroy or damage relationships between countries, all by putting sensitive information on a website. Meanwhile, the governments affected are doing damage control and wonder to themselves how it got on the website.
Which brings up what all of this makes me think of. These people (or entities) have been in contact with political information that can affect people's lives in some form or another. And they all have affected their lives, or the lives of others, by what sort of actions they have taken. For instance:
In the case of Palin, her attempts to try to keep her emails private shows that she's somewhat uncomfortable with whatever is in them. For someone involved with American politics, and for someone who had a reality show, or whatever we want to call that, wanting to hid your emails from your public life beforehand makes no sense. Also, when some of the email released show an attempt to discredit a rival through their connections to another person (referring to Frank Murkowski and Bill Allen), you run the risk of looking like a dirty politician, at least in the eyes of some within the political arena, particularly if the rival in question was already defeated.
When many diplomatic wires came out on Wikileaks, I personally myself was a bit horrified. Yes, I'm all about the freedom of information and whistle blowing, especially if the violation of human rights are involved. I'm also a realist. When two countries are talking about peace talks behind closed doors and information gets out that can personally piss off the other side, that has a risk of not just jeopardizing the talks, but the citizens of those countries. However, I have one question for all of the government officials who didn't push for the encryption their messages, as well as those involved with the security of sensitive documents. What the Hell is wrong with you? How come you did not think about someone wanting to steal the information, particularly hackers or pissed off individuals who have had their rights violated? Come on, you're all not that dumb.
And Weiner... Oh Weiner. You are a moron. Did you not learn how Twitter can make and break people? I mean, seriously. You do not send pictures of your junk to women over Twitter. Come on, Twitter has helped to spark revolutions overseas. You should know its power. Or, for that matter, you don't send that to women over respectable sites. That's what porn sites are for. Besides, did you learn nothing from Mark Foley, a former Republican counterpart from Florida? That shit stays on the internet, no matter how hard you try to get rid of it. And let's face it. You have political enemies who will jump on this like a trampoline. You sir, are your own undoing.
I guess what shocked me the most about the government officials and former politicians is that they think their technological incompetence is excusable. Well, it's not as if the Internet was created yesterday, so we all know the risks associated with using it. More importantly, just because someone's a public official, it doesn't mean they get special rights to the internet. If Weiner posted his junk on the web, well then guess what? It's out there for the world to see. It seems to me that if someone comes to a position of power, they themselves feel entitled to special rights, due to their authority. And in the case of Wikileaks, it shows public officials the risk of not protecting their information more securely. As said previously, once it's out there on the internet, it's out there. I pay taxes, and since the majority of them go to defense spending, I want to know if we have non-military hackers as part of the defense budget. They can compromise the government's information, they're also the ones who can protect it. Yet, I'm also aware of the fact that this protection can only reach to an extent. The jurisdiction of a government does not have the same boundaries in the technological realm as they do in the real world. The government become become like the rest of us, susceptible to the same benefits and risks.
I know that there are risks to using the internet. I'm just surprised that people in powerful positions don't seem to know them.
They can at least be classy about how this stuff is discovered. At least the John Edwards scandal was caught by the National Enquirer.
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