At a London news conference Monday, Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer handed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange two discs of alleged Swiss banking records. After approaching multiple outlets with this information, which tangibly includes more than 2,000 records of offshore accounts and criminal tax evasion, Elmer has become the media’s new “It Boy.” With his help, WikiLeaks will express an entirely new agenda: revealing the corrupt nature of the individual’s private life rather than exposing the government’s mishaps.
The WikiLeaks documents originally confirmed transparency as one of the government’s most important elements, bringing information to the public that otherwise wouldn’t have been accessible. Having that access puts power back in the hands of the people. In the case of banking records, however, things are not so black and white. Undoubtedly, shady information will be uncovered, but at what cost?
Historically, it has been considered a triumph if senators and CEOs are exposed in the media for their wrongdoings. Elmer’s plan, however, has the potential to damage the reputations of innocent people by inciting investigations into their finances simply based on their association with the now-infamous WikiLeaks brand.
This data has the potential to wreak havoc on a personal level, which makes Elmer’s agenda questionable. What he has to gain is anyone’s guess. Regardless, his attempt to cause financial controversy is evocative of age-old feudal societies in which peasants resorted to violence and scare tactics to bring down the nobility. Perhaps Elmer should have taken the modern approach: sharing such potentially explosive material with an intelligence agency.
As Assange continues to produce documents with unprecedented impact, his power should be checked as regularly as those he accuses of wrongdoing. The manner in which information is revealed is sometimes more damaging than the information itself, especially when it involves people and their finances.
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