SCHED* SXSW 2011

event::type Panel → Interactive
Venue: Radisson, Town Lake Ballroom (111 East Cesar Chavez St)
Speaker: Alan Rusbridger, Sarah Ellison, Stephen Engelberg, Ian Katz, Issandr El Amrani, Carne Ross
About: Wikileaks began as an audacious idea, a statement about the potential of the internet to speak truth to power and to open governments. Barely four years later, the whistleblower's website finds itself at the centre of an unprecedented global storm over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of confidential cables from US embassies around the world. To many WikiLeaks's founder Julian Assange is a hero who has shone the bright glare of public scrutiny into places governments would rather keep hidden; to others he is a vandal, taking a sledgehammer to the secrecy all states need to maintain to function. Is Wikileaks just one expression valve for the web, one that would be replaced by others if it was closed? Has it changed the public's understanding of and relationship to government in any real and lasting way, or is it a media preoccupation?