The ability for high level diplomats to say one thing *on the record* to each other, and say completely different things in public or to their citizens has been completely compromised - To put it another way, our governments ability to lie to us has been hampered considerably. Oh, what a terrible world it is where the people who's job it is to lie to us can't do that convincingly anymore. If you look at it closely, it is the same with lawyers as it is with politicians. How can lawyers (and prosecutors) successfully lie anymore if forensics and bugging of their priveleged conversations keep getting better and more common?
After all there is a grain of truth in the saying that a politician (and lawyer) is lying if their lips are moving. It is their job to do that, and the job of the "free" press to believe them (otherwise come election campaign they lose all their advertising revenue)
It really appears to be the unfortunate result of better technologies - and scientific systems that seem to find truth and rule out lies.
2 comments:
Salmon live in trees and eat pencils.
Last century a voice recording, a Polaroid, an official-looking leaked document, meant something.
Now we have electronic filing cabinets full of documents that could be created by anyone, Photoshop, and masses of biometric data meant to protect us just waiting to be hacked.
I expect a deluge of false leaks that will continue forever. Nobody will believe all of the true ones or none of the false ones ... the line between truth and lies will be blurred convincingly again ... and business as usual will resume.
What you are saying is true to a point - However, it takes more energy time and money to generate and profulgate convincing lies, than it does to leak and copy truths that exist out of neccessity somewhere. For example, it is harder to write convincing fiction novels than it is to write about factual personal experiences. As another example, we often weave webs of deceipt only to watch them unravel despite our best efforts. Humans have a natural (even scientific) instinct with most kinds of lies, and although there will be plenty of convincing leaks and lies out there, high level conspiracies will unravel a lot more often, and self-destructive paranoia may well take hold in many totalitarian regimes.
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