Hacking is the new social justice activism, and the Panama Papers are the result of an epic hack. Consisting of 11.5million files and 2.6TB of data, the body of content given to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous[1] source and then analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), is uniquely behemoth. It puts Wikileaks 1.7GB to shame.
The documents were obtained from Mossack Fonseca. The company is among the largest offshore banking firms, and their emails and other electronic documents tell a compelling (if not entirely surprising) story about untraceable monetary exchanges and the ways that state leaders manage to grow their wealth while maintaining a façade of economic neutrality. By forming shell companies, people can move money without attaching that money to themselves. This is not a sufficient condition for illegal activities, but certainly fosters illicit ones.
Much of the media content around the Panama Papers—both social and broadcast—focus upon the obvious scandals: Putin’s offshore accounts and the ties between those accounts and members of his inner circle; Iceland’s Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson’s undeclared assets and consequently, his decision to step down amid citizen protests; China’s Xi Jinping’s implications in The Papers and the subsequent block upon this information for those searching Panama Papers from within China.
Indeed, the Panama Papers contain a lot of stuff. And typically, it is the stuff of data leaks that we find so interesting. It’s the stuff that we pore through, highlight, copy, paste, and share. The stuff is the evidence we need to substantiate wrongdoing. In this case, the data concretize a nebulous concern that many already held. The data provide hard evidence on a large scale. We knew that leaders weren’t economically neutral, nor did they make clear the status of their wealth. That people in power act unscrupulously was an open secret that, thanks to the Panama Papers, is now an open fact.
But what is equally interesting, maybe more so, is what the data do not show.
Namely, the U.S. gets very little play. In all of the Panama Paper’s documents and images, only 200 U.S. names appear. Although it may be momentarily tempting for some Americans to wave their stars and stripes in moral superiority, Delaware quickly puts a damper on this impulse. Delaware incorporates more than 1,000,000 businesses. Or in the words of the State of Delaware website, “more than 1,000,000 business entities have made Delaware their legal home.” Thanks to Delaware’s loose tax and regulation policies, and similarly loose policies across the U.S. (especially in Texas and Florida), the United States is a far better tax haven than Panama. In fact, the U.S. is ranked 3rd in the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index, while Panama takes a more modest 13th place.
Data hacking can be and is, effective in providing evidence of wrongdoing—whether illegal or just ill-mannered. The Panama Papers smacked us in the face with the reality of surreptitious practices among government and corporate elites. But the data do not speak for themselves and sometimes, the silences can speak the loudest.
This makes for an interesting paradox in data-based activism. Revelatory leaks give citizens and law enforcement agencies something to hang on to. They produce a tangible case against those who would prefer their practices remain obscured. At the same time, leaks create a standard by which guilt and innocence can be judged, and offer a workaround for those savvy enough to avoid data-capture.
The U.S. is mostly excluded from the Panama Papers because financial secrecy is built into our legal system. The availability of damning documentation against China, Russia, Iceland, and others aims focus upon those whose practices translate neatly into data points. That is, leaked data make the actions of those who are implicated hyper-visible. In doing so, hyper-visibility becomes the metric of blame. A latent effect of this may be that those whose actions cannot be datafied enjoy a buffer of protection.
Hacks are still important, as is a continued citizen-led insistence upon transparency. And in this insistence, should be the recognition of everything activist imposed transparency entails, including its unintended but potentially counterproductive effects.
Jenny L. Davis is on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis
Headline Pic: Source
[1] Note: not Anonymous