The coming era of the mega-leak
A lone hacker comes along, dumps a massive trove of secret information about the global super-rich and powerful on the world’s media, and then, fearing for his safety and freedom, drops out of view, probably forever. Welcome to the era of the mega-leak. It’s the modern-day equivalent of David and Goliath—with the anonymous hacker or whistleblower playing the role of the hero in most cases—and the mighty and the wealthy had better get used to it, since they are the main targets. And they’re never going to know whether what they’ve been trying to hide for decades, employing a battery of expensive lawyers or accountants, could become tomorrow’s headline.
The Panama Papers leak last week is thus only the latest example of what is plainly becoming a trend, one that comes out of a confluence of two factors. First, the powerful have more to hide than ever. Second, with the development of encrypted communications, whistleblower software, the Tor browser (which allows for anonymous web browsing), and other tools to securely pass documents to journalists, a kind of infrastructure now exists to support leakers, who have also exhibited savvy when choosing the recipients of their secrets.
Edward Snowden, remember, chose to approach filmmaker Laura Poitras on the basis of her celebrated documentary work and her experience with government surveillance. It’s not clear why the person calling himself “John Doe” who obtained documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm specialized in maintaining off-shore hideaways for the assets of the global rich, reached out to a Suddeutsche Zeitung reporter named Bastian Obermayer—asking him simply, “Interested in data?”—but it was likely because the German journalist had already been involved in several investigations into financial scandals. The anonymous leaker said he feared for his life, would not meet the reporters at all, but wanted “to make these crimes public.”
In the world of today’s super-rich, and growing inequality between haves and have-nots, the sense that the unvarnished truth can only be found through accidental disclosures has given leaks a new currency. And we are far from Daniel Ellsberg surreptitiously photocopying pages of the Pentagon Papers. Today’s leakers deal in documents numbering into the thousands or millions, and if they do their job carefully, as the source behind the Panama Papers has done, their identities may never be known, but their impact may be immense.
http://www.politico.eu/article/the-coming-era-of-the-mega-leak/
