The criminal of conscience and his many supporters may be wondering if the world wide web is of any use at all if it isn’t used to expose the hypocrisies of diplomacy and politics.
Clean your room. The bathroom’s a mess too. And if you don’t start taking care of that cat, it’s not staying in this house.” The modalities of taking care of the world’s most high-profile asylee, it would appear, are all too similar to disciplining an errant child. But like most good parents, the Ecuador embassy in the United Kingdom, which has given refuge to the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, seems to know that there must be a carrot at the end of the stick if the pro-transparency activist-anarchist-hacker is to be kept in check.
In a memo written in Spanish by the embassy (a language the hacker does not know), Assange has been told that in addition to his own personal hygiene and the health of his cat, he must keep to his promise of “not interfering in the internal affairs of nation-states” and only use the computers and data sources made available to him by the embassy. In return, Assange will be granted limited internet access and, of course, continued residence on Ecuadorian soil in Britain.
The criminal of conscience and his many supporters may be wondering if the world wide web is of any use at all if it isn’t used to expose the hypocrisies of diplomacy and politics. Such idealism is also a bit naïve. The reason that governments did not fall and the international order did not crumble after the WikiLeaks may have a simple explanation: It’s not that people did not know about the cynicism of the powers-that-be, they just didn’t have the energy to care. Between taking care of the cat and binge-watching hours of content on the web, who has the time to worry about antics of governments? Ecuador’s carrot to Assange then, is the contemporary opium of the masses. He can use the internet, as long as he doesn’t make trouble; he deserves protection only if he is docile.