Tinkering with truth
Editorial, Guyana Chronicle, 16 August 2007
Two recent stories which have made headlines relate to the ongoing
debate on the validity of the internet as an instrument for the
publication of Truth cum facts, and thus a tool for democracy and the
related tenets of transparency and accountability.
The first deals with the case of the son of the Republic of Congo’s
leader, Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso. An international transparency
NGO, Global Witness, had posted information on Mr. Sassou-Nguesso’s
luxury shopping sprees in Paris on its website. The credit card bill
transcripts, as seen online, show a life of luxury being lived by a
public official of a country in which the majority of the citizens live
below the poverty line. While the purchases in themselves simply show
that that Mr. Sassou-Nguesso has very expensive tastes, the fact that
the credit card tab was picked up by the state run company which he is
head of made for very damaging circumstantial evidence.
What makes this case interesting is that Mr. Sassou-Nguesso had
actually challenged Global Witness’ exposure in a British court citing
confidentiality issues. Yesterday this challenge was struck down and
the transcripts will remain online.
The second story, and this has wider implications, is the discovery
that a host of entities had tinkered with Wikipedia entries of special
interest to them. For those not yet au fait with Wikipedia, suffice to
say that is an online encyclopedia open to editing by anyone with a
computer.
Featured prominently was the company Diebold, responsible for the
production of electronic voting machines, which deleted references to
possible voting fraud during the last US presidential elections and the
fact that the company’s President was a generous donor to the Bush
re-election campaign.
The computer programme which linked the deletions to the company also
discovered changes made by the CIA, the Vatican, and the US Democratic
Party. With the exposure of the discoveries, the changes were quickly
rectified.
It is because of its very nature that the Internet is perhaps the
greatest tool available to democracy in the present era. The greatest
man-made tragedies throughout history have invariably been brought
about by the actions of a few with access to the corridors of power,
and – most importantly – the means to conceal, obscure and otherwise
manipulate the truth of what they have done or intend to do with that
power.
This has been evident in the extremes of Nazi Germany and modern day
Rwanda, where the media were used to both incite violence against the
enemies of those who controlled it, but also to both downplay and
rationalize the atrocities which subsequently took place. What the
Wikipedia furore and the Global Witness court case prove is that the
temptation to distort Truth is ever present in the minds of those who
control power.
More importantly, it shows however that the democratization of
information technology translates into the democratization of facts,
and thus the democratization of the Truth which those facts contribute
to.
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