An article published on Yahoo! News acknowledges that the CIA – it is not clear whether officially or as a personal initiative of some officials – would have considered kidnapping and even killing Julian Assange.
The news has clearly aroused vehement criticisms that are completely understandable but somewhat naïve if analyzed in a geopolitical and non-legal context, which nevertheless did not grasp a fundamental aspect of the story: the role of “perceived threat” of the free circulation of information.
Let’s start from the news story that concerned Assange: taking into consideration and possibly carrying out kidnapping or assassination operations is a standard activity of the “total conception” that some countries (not just the US) theorize on national security.
Limiting itself to recent times, just remember the operation Wrath of God with which Israel avenged the massacre of its athletes on the Munich 1972 Olympic campus and the institutionalization of the targeted killing as a tool in the fight against terrorism. Or the Loughall case which in 1987 involved British soldiers operating undercover accused of illegally killing eight members of the Irish Revolutionary Army about to commit an attack. Or even the news on the involvement of the highest French institutions in similar operations; and finally the extraordinary rendition of Mullah Abu Omar that the CIA organized in 2011 in Milan. In the face of clandestine but “official” operations, it must also be remembered, there are also those subject to plausible deniability which do not allow direct attribution to a state. This is the case, in 2006, of the poisoning of the Russian spy Litvinenko and of other similar events never certainly and definitively attributed to theestablishment russo.
Therefore, from a geopolitical perspective, the extraordinary rendition (kidnappings committed on foreign soil) and the targeted assassination (targeted killings of political or industrial personalities or in any case considered dangerous for national interests) are not “evils in themselves” but tools to achieve a purpose to be used according to a cost / benefit criterion. However, the problem posed by the use of these tools is that they are irremediably incompatible with a democratic system. This is why the decision to use them is preceded by very quirky legal analyzes, or exorcised by parliamentary investigations. in the aftermath, as in the case of the Church Report who in 1976 investigated the involvement of the CIA in plans to eliminate anti-American political leaders.
In this scenario, analysts working for intelligence structures play a central role. They spend their time creating scenarios, even the most unlikely, to allow decision makers to have as many options as possible to make critical choices. Conceptually and technologically, years have passed since the time of The three days of the condor e Wargames. Big data and the ubiquitous AI are gaining more and more space in supporting strategic analysis: for some years now data analytics tools contribute to and influence all major intelligence functions in the contemporary US national security apparatus and the human factor risks being marginalized as it could also happen in operational theaters. However, the substance of the facts remains: deciding means choosing between a range of options, from the most unlikely (or unthinkable) to the most “ordinary”.
What makes the Assange case different from the others is that we are not dealing with the perpetrator (direct or mediated) of massacres, a facilitator of terrorist activities or an ideologically “dangerous” political leader but a subject whose “fault” is that of having created a technological infrastructure for the anonymous circulation of information. There may be legitimate doubts about the Wikileaks project, but not to the point of considering its creator a “threat” that deserves (even if only abstractly) a death sentence without trial.
However, the Assange case goes far beyond the public debate on the lawfulness of political killings or not because it involves the very essence of the relationship between citizen and state and the role of technology as an instrument for exercising citizenship rights.
As I wrote, the point is whether knowing the internal corporis of power is a right in itself or, on the contrary, the state must make its actions public to assume the responsibilities related to the exercise of power. … ma … when it comes to state and government affairs, are we entitled to mere curiosity? Now that the surveillance capacity of the state is brought to an unprecedented level of pervasiveness, this is no longer a mere theoretical dilemma.. … Citizens are supposed to have the right – that is, from the point of view of the politician, to artificially constructed social fictions that can be denied at the snap of the fingers because of the “greater good” – to both know the internal facts of the state and prevent the state from its own personal sphere. Rulers, on the other hand, have the crude power to hide from the prying eyes of citizens and to guide public opinion by building consensus. Secrecy, therefore, becomes a currency of exchange in the relationship between citizen and political power, with the rule of law and the separation of powers acting as intermediaries.
If, however, a technology that is not out of control but, on the contrary, firmly in the hands of entities whose agenda does not necessarily coincide with that of the actors of the democratic process gets involved in this dialectic, the construct based on the relationship between state and citizen is destined to collapse with a crash.
In conclusion, therefore, the Assange case collects and makes explicit all the issues and contradictions caused by the spread of information technology not accompanied by adequate political and social maturity. And as in all explosions, when the bomb is detonated, only the victims can be counted.
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