Julian Assange stated his goal (PDF) for WikiLeaks back in 2006: (via)
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power...
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption...
We can marginalise a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to, its environment...
Now it looks like the Obama Administration is reacting exactly according to plan.
Prompted by fear of the witch hunts into the leaks that incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee Rep. Darrell Issa has threatened, the Obama Administration is instituting new and highly restrictive information management and personnel control procedures that will do exactly what Assange hoped:
Trying to prevent more WikiLeaks embarrassments, the Obama administration is telling federal agencies to take aggressive new steps to prevent leaks of classified documents, including instituting "insider threat" programs to ferret out disgruntled employees who might be inclined to leak classified documents, NBC News has learned.
As part of these programs, agency officials are being asked to figure out ways to "detect behavioral changes" among employees who might have access to classified documents.
(The 11-page memo) suggests that agencies use psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the "relative happiness" of workers or their "despondence and grumpiness" as a way to assess their trustworthiness. The memo was sent this week to senior officials at all agencies that use classified material.
The memo also suggests that agencies take new steps to identify any contacts between federal workers and members of the news media.
You can read the memo here (PDF). (Evidently an unhappy, despondent, or grumpy employee leaked it to NBC.)
It is, to say the least, thorough, if not utterly paranoid, in the measures it goes to to control the potential leak of material in future. In short, it's a complete freak-out on the part of the Administration.
Security experts say the new measures are extreme and absurd and will be counterproductive:
"This is paranoia, not security," said Steven Aftergood, a national security specialist for the Federation of American Scientists, who obtained a copy of the memo.
What the administration is doing, he added, is taking programs commonly used at the CIA and other intelligence agencies to root out potential spies and expanding them to numerous other agencies — such as the State Department, the Energy Department, NASA, Homeland Security and Justice — where they are unlikely to work.
For example, the idea of requiring workers to report any contacts with members of the news media, as though all such contacts are suspicious, is "absurd" at the CIA, where it has long been standard policy, said Aftergood.
"It’s triply absurd at most other agencies," he added.
Heh. One of the new measures seeks to determine whether employees might have visited the WikiLeaks website before their employment or after leaving or retiring. Good luck with that one boys - it seems like a tall order. Unless of course they're monitoring everywhere all of us go online already anyway.