A week and a half ago, the biggest data
leak ever occurred. 11.5 million confidential legal documents from the
Panamaniam law firm Mossack Fonseca found its way into the hands of journalists
from an anonymous hacker, exposing the shell companies the wealthy and the
powerful have used to hide their assets from scrutiny. This follows the 2013
Offshore Leaks, where 2.5 million records of 130 000 bank accounts were
leaked that also exposed tax fraud by powerful government officials.
So far, Namibia has emerged relatively
unscathed from the revelations, but leaks of this nature are becoming more and
more common. In the past, Wikileaks had
published classified US diplomatic cables, there were the HSBC and Luxembourg
leaks exposing tax avoidance schemes, and of course we should all be aware of
Edward Snowden’s leaks of the United States’ National Security Agency’s modus
operandi in clandestine surveillance.
And these leaks will keep coming. Information
technology has grown exponentially over the past 50 years, and it’s set to
continue for some time more. When the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War was
leaked in 1971, it was only about 7 000 pages of documents – and it was
leaked by photocopying the documents. In 1972, the state-of-the-art computer
storage system was the IBM 3330 Direct Access Storage Device, which was the
size of a file cabinet and could hold about 100 MB (or could hold about 10 copies
of the leaked documents.) It’s purchase price was US$ 74 000. Much more
unwieldy than a stack of photocopied paper.
By 2005, a 320GB hard drive capable of
holding the 2013 Offshore Leaks was produced, costing only US$130. It could
hold the equivalent of 286 million pages of text, or 1.4 million books. By
2012, the first hard drive capable of holding the Panama Papers sold for
US$150. With a capacity of 3 TB, it could hold 3 billion pages of text, or 15
million books – or 233 DVD’s.
Right here in Namibia, you can buy a 3TB portable
disk drive capable of holding the Panama Papers for a mere N$ 3200, and it
could fit in your pocket. With the amount of storage capacity now available to
individuals, it is not surprising that companies are finding it difficult to
contain secrets that formerly were too bulky to copy and take off their
premises – and with the internet now an additional vector, someone might simply
compromise your systems remotely and copy your documents that way.
In fact, there are several cloud computing
companies that allow you to upload data, and rent computing power. It is thus a
trivial matter to upload the data to a provider like Amazon Elasticsearch
Service and mine the documents for selected names and details – especially
compared to the Pentagon Papers, that had to be read page by page to find
information.
Of course, such a wholesale release of data
would contain a lot of personal information that could be utilized by identity
thieves, and thus the information is only released piecemeal as the ICIJ sees
fit. And as they rightly point out, “There
are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to
suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities have broken the
law or otherwise acted improperly.”
But it is important to remember that just
because something is legal, that does not make it right. Slavery was legal at
one time. So was Apartheid. And even Hitler’s actions in Germany during the
Third Reich was legal. Similarly, tax avoidance is quite legal – it’s only tax
evasion which is illegal. It should therefore come as no great surprise that
people perceive those who have benefitted greatly from their success in
society, and then constructing tax avoidance schemes to avoid paying your dues
to the society that allowed you your success, as shirking their duties and
untrustworthy.
As Dr Quinton van Rooyen has said, your
credibility and your word should always be above question in business. It is a
lesson every organisation and government should take to heart in this day and
age of leaks. You should conduct your business in such a way that even when a
leak occurs, you can hold your head up high.
After all, doing the right thing is a
matter of honour. It’s been said that reputation is what other people know about
you, but honour is what you know about yourself. As Aral Vorkosigan said, “There is no more hollow feeling than to
stand with your honour shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation
wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely
very, very irritating.”
And so it is with these whistle-blowers as
well. As a collorary to my above point, what is illegal is not always wrong.
Edward Snowden lost the life he built in his country by exposing the NSA’s
illegal surveillance, and had to take refuge in Russia, while President Barack
Obama’s ‘most transparent administration in history’ has jailed more
whistle-blowers than any other in history. Is it any wonder that the Panama
Papers whistle-blower has opted for anonymity?
Namibia itself has embraced transparency to
root out corruption in government, with President Geingob even declaring all
his assets. And yet the Witness and Whistle-blower Protection Bill is still
languishing in parliament. Let us hope that his admirable commitment to
transparency is not merely a short-term aberration, but a quality that he is
able to instil into the very fabric of Namibian culture. After all,
transparency and accountability are two sides of the same coin, and if the
Harambee Prosperity Plan is to succeed, what we need above all is
accountability.
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