JS-46.1
Unequal Secrets: The Politics Of Information Technology and The Secrets Of The Capitalist Market
In the context of the recent exposures of ‘secrets’ – Julian Assange and Edward Snowden as leakers – the role of information technology has become critical. Challenges to the concealment of the State’s secrets - U.S. military and diplomatic documents and NSA’s metadata collected through mass surveillance – have raised the issue whether the disclosures were indeed acts of treason or as Assange claims, attempts to advance transparency, justice and accountability” and to expose dangers to individual privacy. Did the leakers intend to use information technology as a substitute for human cognitive deficiency among citizens and protect individual rights and privacy?
As the leakers avow that their interest in accessing and disclosing the State secrets was to protect the rights of the individual, why are the disclosures made only against the political secrets of the State, but have not extended to the secrets of the Market? Why have strategies similar to those against the State secrets, not been deployed in order to expose the ‘secrets’ of the Market that have led to the 2008 Financial Crisis and its global fallout? I will apply the concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttari : Secrecy, Deterritorialization/Reterritorialization as they relate to the State and the Market, to discuss the above issues and examine the politics behind the use of technology. Illustrations will be drawn from the market’s secrets and their impact, e.g., global financial liquidity/austerity, Sovereign Debt/ Private Accumulation.