Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

SHOULD INFORMATION BE AVAILABLE TO ALL?

I recently watched on Netflix the very good American series Unbelievable, which was “inspired by true events” according to its publicity. That claim often disguises complete fictions, but in this case it appears to have been true. Though the names of characters were changed, the series seems to have followed real events quite closely. Briefly, a young woman claimed to have been raped, but as there was no physical evidence to corroborate her claim, the police who interrogated her, bullied her into signing a statement retracting her claim and saying she had made her story up. Understandably, the series focused on the young woman’s angst; but it also focused on two women detectives who recognised that the circumstances of the rape were very similar to other cases they had come across. A clever criminal had found ways of leaving no trace behind whenever he raped a woman.

How did he learn how to do this?

This is what made me write this posting’s think-piece.

Early in the series, a group of police complained about how hard it was to find clues at the scene of a crime in an age when everybody watches TV series such as CSI, and therefore everybody is informed about the way clumsy criminals can leave traces of their DNA. (As a side issue, I note that, as a lawyer once complained, there are now juries who ignore very good circumstantial evidence and assume that defendants can be convicted only if there’s DNA evidence – but that takes me a little off my theme.)

            If such information is available to criminals, they can learn just what not to do, in order to escape detection. In the true story behind Unbelievable, the serial rapist had got hold of a police manual on how to examine rape scenes – so he knew what to avoid doing. He never forced an entry into the residences of his victims. He always wore a mask and gloves, so that his victims could not identify him. He always wore a condom as he committed rape and he always made his victims shower for twenty minutes before he left – so that he would leave not the least trace of his DNA on their bodies. Information had been put to an evil purpose.

            Not too long ago, there was a great push to have all official information made public. Among those who didn’t consider the matter too closely, there was the idea that the secrets of governments were merely a way of controlling the population; that there could be no good reason to hide diplomatic cables from general view; and that the world would be a better place if all information – technical, forensic, military, diplomatic, economic – were made available to the general public.

This was the (brief) period in which the likes of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were being held up as heroes.

But only gradually did it dawn on the wiser ones that if all information were freely available, much of it could be used by people of ill intent.

Seven years ago on this blog, I reviewed Nick Cohen’s polemic You Can’t Read This Book. It was mainly a long argument against censorship. But when he came to the matter of government censorship, Cohen changed gears. Cannibalising my own review here, I noted that Cohen presented a “critique of the idealistic notion that the Internet can circumvent state censorship by making all information freely available. The reality is that supporters of dictatorship and repression can use the Internet as well as democrats. Did you really think that only nice liberals, who want to improve the world, can read the 20,000-plus stolen American State Department cables that Julian Assange and Wikileaks made public? Secret policemen read them too. Cohen argues that Assange’s chosen representative in Belarus was a supporter of that country’s dictatorship. He promptly alerted the secret police to all the names of Belarus dissidents who were referred to in the cables which Assange had forwarded him. Whereupon the secret police drew up death lists to deal with them. Thanks Wikileaks!”

This is really the rape case writ large - information used by people for immoral and inhumane purposes. There certainly is a case for freedom of information in democratic societies, but don’t imagine that it will always be used for the betterment of humanity.