Umberto Eco: "the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp..." | Hacker News Reader

Umberto Eco: "the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp..."

presseurop.eu

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Each Wikileaks dump is a different kind of funhouse mirror, aborbing the gazes of politicians, activists, philosophers, pundits, and what-have-you, repaying them with illusory advancements of their agendas.

So now we get --- respectfully! The Name Of The Rose is one of my all-time top-5 books! --- the take of a blowhard classically-trained Italian semiotician (yeah, there's someone who isn't going to see his life's work reflected in the Wikileaks narrative) on world politics.

And from it, we get these gems of foreign policy:

* The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper

* Embassies have turned into spy centers (heavens!)

* Wikileaks did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama (irreparable! Unlike, say, losing the house and practical control of the Senate?)

* Technology has advanced to the point where governments can't keep secrets anymore

These points, all utterly banal, some dubious, would have been shrugged off in any article not written by a famous person in the context of Wikileaks. But now that we have Wikileaks, anything any famous person writes, be it bridge trolls like Michael Scheurer and John Bolton or has-been literary stars like Umberto Eco, glistens with supposed insight.

I'm not a WL supporter, but I'm worried that the effect it's having on public discourse may be bothering me even more than the underlying principles.

PS: I'll concede the humor buried in the subtext of Eco making reference to Dan Brown.

> The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper

This is the bit that has me the most mystified...none of the released cables reveals anything particularly surprising (or at least not surprising to anybody who pays even minimal attention to world news)...yet the media is acting like these are huge revelations and it leaves me confused -- is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?

To the media, each Wikileaks dump is just another lump of fuel for the attention-gathering machine. Everyone knows this, including Assange, who acknowledges it openly.

One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; it might, perish the thought!, be boring. Where would we find the persecuted elfin protoganist? What about the sex? The gossip? To whom would we sell the movie rights about a policy process story?

> One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate;

This one is pretty real.

For one we now have official confirmation that the Netherlands hosts a foreign countries nuclear weapons inspite of numerous politicians being on the record to the contrary and for that alone I thank Julian Assange.

I'm pretty sure that there are lots of other bits and pieces that are relevant to various parties.

One thing this all shows is that you really can't trust governments with any collection of data and that's another useful thing to know with direct application to everyday life.

To the best of my knowledge the Dutch government, like the Belgian, never confirmed nor denied that US nuclear warheads were stored on Dutch resp. Belgian soil. Everybody knew for at least 25 years that they were there, and nobody was even coy about it - just that there was no 'official' confirmation. So it's not a new fact at all.

What is fantastic and new is that these obvious things are documented and published, by people who are in a unique position to verify them.

We all know North Korea is nuts, but it's news when their BFF China calls it a spoiled child. Then China is forced to publicly acknowledge their desire for Korean unification.

China hasn't publicly acknowledged a desire for unification. We know the same thing now as we knew 3 years ago: that there are elements in Chinese officialdom that would like an end to the horrorshow that is the DPRK, and that the military still views the DPRK as a vital buffer against the west.

erp -- thought I read that somewhere, but that indeed would be a bit much to expect.

I love all the stuff about Afghanistan, the VP with $50MM in walking around money. There's abstract corruption, but the detail is what really stirs the pot.

There are five thousand results on Google News for 2009 on [karzai corruption] alone. Come on. This isn't "abstract vs. concrete"; it's "information vs. narrative". Narrative is addictive. We lap it up. That's why the press runs it. That's the vulnerability WL takes advantage of (for better or worse).

Right. In the great rock-paper-scissors game of ideology-nationalism-money, money wins every time. South Korea is a much better trading partner than the black hole in the ground that is North Korea. A hole in which China has dumped billions of dollars with pretty much no return outside of fulfilling a desire for a cold-war style buffer zone. Plus the bonus of South Korea not really being a threat to China anymore (you could debate they weren't ever a threat and the end to the Korean war was a big misunderstanding but that's a different debate).

> In the great rock-paper-scissors game of ideology-nationalism-money, money wins every time.

Why did WWI happen, then?

Money.

Or if you want to get precise, imperialist policies (which are about Money in the end).

What? Imperialism is seldom about money. Trade is much better to make money than war. War only costs money, and 'acquired' territories don't make money, they just cost it - so much that many a kingdom with too aggressive expansion policies has gone (nearly) bankrupt because of it.

I agree. Some people, like defence contractors do make lots of money with war, though.

What is Imperialism about then?

It's always about resource acquisition.

One can argue that some resources are not equal to money -- say China's imperialist expansion into non-resource rich areas as a method of buffer zone acquisition against strong foreign powers -- e.g. resources = security model.

But from before Rome on, most empires adopt an expansionist policy as a method of acquiring resources to turn into money. Kill the inhabitants, take their stuff, everybody gets rich. resource = money model.

Here's some relevant background

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.

Yes, though that's not the whole story.

Have you heard of principal-agent conflicts? What benefits certain subgroups / lobbies may not benefit the organisation as a whole.

>"is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?"

The media is doing what it usually does. It is reporting on the easiest things. Wikileaks is a bonanza because it contains thousands of documents which can be summarized with trivial analysis and hyperbolic rhetoric. All packaged in conformance with the no-gel foot orthotics fear mongering journalistic favored by the US main stream media.

I.e. Wikileaks can be used to signify pre-existing narratives.

I disagree somewhat, there is revelation in these cables. There is a huge difference between "I know x is true" and "I know that you know that I know ...".

To use an example from Pinker's talk on language, in a dictatorship everyone knows the regime is bad, yet the value of public demonstrations is that you find out that others also know it and then you know that they know that ..., which is exactly why gatherings of people are usually controlled in a dictatorship.

has-been literary stars like Umberto Eco

I've read quite a bit of Eco, and he probably has more genius in one of his little fingers than all of your heroes put together.

Yeah, this sure sounds like an awesome argument to have.

I like him. I loved Rose and Foucault, tried and failed to get into Island, liked bits of Travels..., was bored to death by Kant..., and liked that little book where he was arguing with the Catholic Cardinal.

It is possible, you know, to be simultaneously a genius, a has-been, and a blowhard.

(My literary heroes? I admire David Foster Wallace, Vollman, and Pynchon. Who do you admire? Besides has-been blowhard Italian geniuses?)

dunno what travels is ( I guess "Travels in Hyperreality"), but if you hadn't read baudolino, you should :)

I did and found it somewhat worse than Pendulum and Rose which were both excellent.

The essays in Travels in Hyper-Reality predate both novels.

What purpose do the ad hominems serve, except to illustrate your own arrogance? For very good reason, Eco has a large readership and following, and many people will be interested in his opinions on almost any subject. Why shouldn't he publicize his views if lots of people are interested?

I was just trying to be cute (well, in the one comment you replied to). I wasn't trying to be emphatic.

>"Why shouldn't he publicize his views if lots of people are interested?"

For the record, Eco has been writing for newspapers and magazines for many years. Travels in Hyper-Reality is a collection of such articles.

> It is possible, you know, to be simultaneously a genius, a has-been, and a blowhard.

There has yet to be someone writing about wikileaks that was not attacked by you in a very loud voice, ad homimen or otherwise, you keep complaining about the volume of words that is 'wasted' on the subject and yet a large part of those words are yours.

The irony of you calling Umberto Eco a genius and a blowhard at the same time does not escape me, especially not after damning him with 'faint praise'.

What's your favorite Eco book, Jacques? I listed mine at the top of the thread.

Foucaults pendulum

I like Foucault's Pendulum too. It's the first Eco book I read! My friend Mike Tracy, then a CBOE trader, turned me onto it when I was in high school; gave me the impression it would be a difficult read. Mike needs to read more Pynchon. I'll tell him tomorrow (I've hired him at 4 different companies, including this one).

Rose is still my favorite; it resonates with my career, for obvious reasons.

Have you read many of his essays? He can get stuffy and pompous. Maybe I just don't understand him.

I think you have a good idea what I think of Umberto Eco at this point. Now, you really think I'm "damning him with faint praise"? Of course I'm not. Could I have written The Name of The Rose, or even Cognitive Types and Nuclear Content? No.

But he wrote a shitty article. It makes banal and, in at least one case, stupid points. It reads as beneath him; less an attempt to cast a lense on the mass-leaking phenomenon and more a chance for him to holler "I'm here! This is my milieu! Include me in the conversation!" I've heard more trenchant analysis of Assange's effort from blog posts, hell, from Megan McArdle.

You are, as always, welcome to disagree with me. But as I am not (in this instance) casting aspersions on your arguments, the "ad hom" label seems lazy. Hominus Eci conpetendus est.

˚ ˚ ˚ ˚ ˚ ˚ ˚

By the way: Jack Schafer did a fine job sticking up for Wikileaks. And I'm normally inclined to think of him as a curmudgeonly contrarian. There's one.

And, oh, look! Here's Clay Shirky, an acquaintance of Assange's, sticking up for the "short run" value of WL as a corrective. I have a hard time finding anything to disagree with in this article:

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/12/wikileaks-and-the-long-...

Feel free to post that article to HN and collect the karma. I'd rather not add more fuel to the fire.

I liked Foucault's Pendulum too, but didn't see it as anything more than an elaborate metaphor for kabbalism as intellectual cancer, although he was clearly having fun with the Holy Blood, Holy Grail stuff.

In contrast, Name of the Rose is brilliant on so many different levels, not the least being the way he pulls off the actual mystery. We can read it as a straight detective story, as a parable about faith versus reason, or on books-speaking-of-books (I remember him comparing the burning library to the burning bush as one point).

That said, have you read this essay of his on Casablanca? I've seen Passage to Marseille (the unofficial sequel to the film) and think this is one of the most fun things he has written. Not sure if it has been anthologized elsewhere:

http://andrewswebsite.net/books/eco_casablanca.html

The Name of the Rose is a remarkable book, so I'm with you there. But I smiled a little when I saw you mention Pynchon. Although I realise that appreciation of literature, like music, is a subjective thing, Pynchon could be the most overrated writer of the 20th century. Although it pains me to do so I can do no better than to quote Gore Vidal, someone certainly in a position to know: "Comparing Pynchon's prose with that of, say, Joyce, is like comparing a kindergartener with a graduate student."

I like puzzles. I like historical settings. I like the settings Pynchon chooses. I haven't really thought to building a coherent mental model of his prose style (unlike say DFW or Galeano or Eco, for whom I could do that rapidly).

What don't you like about him? I like criticisms of things I like.

As far as I know, none of the documents were actually "Top Secret" status, a security designation reserved for much more delicate documents. The idea that these papers are the "most secret secrets" is a huge overstatement, along with the idea that a hacker has compromised the security of a nation.

The fact that Top Secret documents haven't been unearthed is both assuring and scary.

You make some valid points, but I think Eco intends this as an amorphous investigation into how the Wikileaks events affect the prevailing Zeitgeist. His assertions aren't meant as hard truths, but as launching points for reflection and discussion.

Something like "The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper" is clearly not a factual statement and Eco certainly knows this. It's hyperbole designed to emphasize the changing relationship between the populace and the state.

After all, Eco is foremost a craftsman of fiction and fantasy. I don't think it's off base for him to inject a bit of literary whimsy if it adds insight or enlivens the dialogue.

I said two things about his points, and you acknowledge only one of them. Yes, I think some of these arguments are dubious. But I think they're all banal. They're things anyone could have said about the US government 5, 10, or 15 years ago.

>"Eco is foremost a craftsman of fiction and fantasy."

I would say above all he is a scholar and public intellectual. His novels are a means of communicating his ideas about semiotics to a wider audience.

This coming from the blowhard-in-residence. You're a "bridge troll" (in your words) of Y Combinator News. I'm surprised you get anything else done.

Eco isn't writing a novel here, he's simply musing over current events in a short article for a broad audience.

> I'm not a WL supporter

Keep up the good fight. There is a desperate need for valiant defenders of the status quo like yourself.

> but I'm worried that the effect it's having on public discourse may be bothering me even more than the underlying principles.

Yes, you're constantly bellyaching against individual rights at the expense of the poor misunderstood government.

I'm not sure if people upvote you because they actually agree, or if it's because of the phenomenon that people who act like authorities can fool the easily impressionable (as with snake-oil salesmen, energy healers, mediums and psychics).

Oh please. A new account, just for that?

Reading the article I had a very difficult time conciliating point 1and 2 from your summary in the same reality

I like Umberto Eco, but a lot of this is what I call "profundity by paradox". Technology goes backward as it advances! The real secret is that there is no secret! Etc.

this is philosophy you know, not everything is what it sounds like at first!

Sadly, I find this extremely common in Italian writing (I am Italian). I wouldn't be lying if I said that this kind of logic (or lack thereof) is one of the main reasons why I left the country.

I'd have to agree.

Also, that phrase "profundity by paradox" is a nice one. And remarkably little-used. Right now it gets just 3 Google hits (a 1993 book, a 2007 quote from that same book, and a 2009 philosophy discussion); perhaps we should see what we can do to increase that.

>> "but (digital) CDs now only allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another"

They say to write what you know about ...

Even though Umberto Eco probably does not realize that mr. Mannings activities do not really qualify as hacking he's right on the money in that any large trove of data will sooner or later become public.

There is a ratchet action at work here which causes information to be disseminated even when you really don't want to. The mere existence of information that more than just a very few people have access to almost guarantees a leak and eventual publication, with some direct numerical link between the number of people that have access and the chances of the information being leaked.

Those tasked with guarding our privacy are worried about all this precisely because they seem to be incapable of doing so, even when dealing with stuff that would never have seen daylight 20 years ago.

With every advance in telecommunications technology, computing and storage the amount of information explodes further and avenues through which it may leak out multiply.

Cellphones with cameras are one nice example of this effect.

When you put together a 'list of sensitive installations' you need to realize the impact of just creating such a list. Once created you have to assume that eventually it will fall in to the hands of those that you don't want to have it (and what a banal list it is, is that the best they could do?).

Spy novels have been preaching 'need to know' for a long time, and governments the world over have always struggled with finding the right balance between being able to do their jobs as well as not helping their perceived enemies or other parties to the information they so painstakingly collected.

It looks to me as though the big lesson of this leak (besides a bunch of important details in the cables themselves) is that this process is currently failing.

Jacques your rhetoric on Wikileaks is quite frankly awful. Here are some specific pieces I take issue with:

The mere existence of information that more than just a very few people have access to almost guarantees a leak and eventual publication

Empirically not true. What percentage of classified information has been leaked in the course of history? It's infinitesimally small.

With every advance in telecommunications technology, computing and storage the amount of information explodes further and avenues through which it may leak out multiply. Cellphones with cameras are one nice example of this effect.

The government can control what technology they allow into secured facilities. Cellphones with cameras are irrelevant when they aren't allowed into secure locations.

what a banal list it is, is that the best they could do?.

Obviously not. Do you really think the list that was leaked is the only such list? More detailed lists would obviously be classified at TS.

It looks to me as though the big lesson of this leak (besides a bunch of important details in the cables themselves) is that this process is currently failing.

The stuff that's been leaked is relatively low level Secret stuff. To claim that recent events prove that the government's ability to protect classified information is failing is ridiculous.

Why the standard of debate so low for this particular issue?

It seems that Eco's DVD player has no "pause" button.

Also, the interesting part regarding Berlusconi in the WL cables are not the facts, but the american opinions about them, which apparently are quite different from the official ones.

Makes sense. Another article spoke of how documenting the Bush and Obama presidencies will be tough and probably not that thorough, as the juicy bits are written on scraps of paper that are immediately disposed of.

There is a market for an offline, secure technology, like a modern day codex.

The Bush and Obama White Houses are still producing documents at a far greater rate than any prior White House, I'm willing to guess. If anything, it'll be a difficult job because the Bush and Obama Presidential Libraries will be filled with so many dull emails between White House staff members that you'll never be able to find the interesting ones.

Anyway, the really juicy bits have always happened in face-to-face meetings.

Great article. I especially liked this thought provoking segment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976276

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