Can WikiLeaks and its like(s) plug the information and ethical gaps?

Kelvin Teo

The following conversation (made fictitious after modifications) took place between the sales director of a blue-chip pharmaceutical company and a medical education provider at the headquarters of the former’s company.

Sales director: Are the pamphlets and documents ready for dissemination?

Medical education provider: There is a problem with the contents in one of the documents. Are we really going to leave out the limitations of the company’s blood glucose testing devices, whilst focusing on the limitations on that sold by our rival companies?

Sales director: Yeah. I have sales targets to reach you know! Our company was hoping we can gain headway in the blood glucose testing devices market.

Medical education provider: Are the doctors who will be receiving documents and pamphlets aware of the limitations of your company’s blood glucose testing devices?

Sales director: No. The research data on the testing of our blood glucose testing devices remains strictly in our company’s records. We did not publish them on any scientific or medical journals.

Medical education provider: Hmmmm ok. I thought it may be good that the doctors know about the limitations of your company’s glucose testing devices so that they can better advise their patients.

Sales director: Yeah but I cannot jeopardise my sales target.

Medical education provider:……………………… (cheekily considers whether he should release the research data to WikiLeaks)

As the world remains divided in terms of terms of opinion towards WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, one thing that remains inevitable is that the site has captured the public’s imagination for better or worse to the extent that it has the sown the seeds that has resulted in the spawning of sites in the similar mould – OpenLeaks, Brussels Leaks, TradeLeaks, Balkan Leaks and IndoLeaks.

The political jousting between WikiLeaks proponents and opponents aside, a pertinent question arises on the role of WikiLeaks or sites of a similar mould in plugging the information gap, economically speaking, and secondly, to provide a selection pressure for corporations and organisations to conduct themselves in an ethical manner.

To address the first point on information gap, information asymmetry is a common occurrence in economics and social contract theory which garnered George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics “for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information”.

What happens in information asymmetry is that the either one of the party between the buyer and seller (or customer and service provider) have access to information that the other party lacks. Thus, it may be that the seller has information on the limitations of a particular product that the end user is unaware of, which the above fictitious example is driving at, and the latter may end up using the product in a way that is beyond the limitations of the product, which is really futile.

Thus, a diabetes patient who purchases a glucose monitoring device is unaware of its limitations, which is not made known to him by the pharmaceutical company that sold it to him. The latter ended up using the device in a way that went beyond its limits, and thus was not able to obtain an accurate reading of his blood glucose. He ended up thinking he had excess blood glucose and took extra insulin injection shots, which lowered his blood glucose to dangerously low levels, and harming himself. In such a scenario, the patient has a case of being harmed by a bad product caused by information asymmetry – ignorance of the device’s limitations hidden from him by the drug company.

Information asymmetry also plaques the seller, and the prime example of such can be found in the insurance industry. High risk individuals either medically or in terms of activities have a vested interest in insuring themselves. Such individuals have an interest not to disclose their full risk profile to insurance companies. The latter on the other hand have the interest to have full information on the risk profile of the said individuals. However, such is not possible due to privacy protection laws hampering access to private information and limitations of the screening procedures that the companies require insurance purchasers to go through. In such a scenario, information asymmetry can result in bad customers (high risk insurance purchasers) too.

Thus, can WikiLeaks or sites of the similar mould plug the information gap that typifies information asymmetry? In the hypothetical example, consider what happens if the medical education provider uploads the research data from the pharmaceutical company into WikiLeaks or sites of the similar mould. One thing for certain is that patients who are prospective buyers will have access to the same ‘classified’ information regarding the blood glucose monitoring devices as the companies selling to them, and the latter would be able to make an informed decision about the purchases. Doctors who are privy to such research data can better advise their patients about the use of such devices.

However, it seems that WikiLeaks and other similar sites may only plug the information gap that places consumers at a greater advantage. Consumers will now have access to information on products or services that they may not be privy to, but not so the other way round. WikiLeaks and its similar fold don’t put sellers at an advantage. The reason is simple. No one will really venture to do a WikiLeak exposé on his next door neighbour whom sellers want a full customer profile of (e.g. the full risk profile of the individual that insurance companies crave), unless there is really bad blood between the neighbours. Otherwise, no one would give two hoots about leaking private information of his average joe neighbour next door.

Much has been discussed about plugging the information gap, but what about pressurising companies to conduct themselves in an ethical manner? In a nutshell, if an entity conducts itself ethically, it is adopting a form of practice that is in line with social norms and expectations, and what society in general regards as right. Thus, how WikiLeaks and similar sites come in is to publish exposé on companies with ethically questionable practices. In fact, TradeLeaks, the WikiLeaks spin-off, which was founded by Australian Ruslan Kogan, attempts to accomplish this. TradeLeaks’ raison d’être is to ensure “individuals and businesses should attain values from others through mutually beneficial and fully consensual trade, rather than force, fraud or deception.” Under such intense public scrutiny, errant firms have no choice but to clean up their acts.

WikiLeaks and other similar sites are hugely dependent on one thing, which is on the obvious side – the source that comes forth with the leaks. Such sources usually come in the form of disgruntled or disillusioned employees at the receiving end of the bitter stick brought on by circumstances within their companies. Employees who take it upon themselves to “right the wrong” are also potential informants. Or it could be from those who were formerly from such errant organisations and either out of personal or altruistic purposes, want to expose their former employers.

The determining factor of the future of WikiLeaks and spin-offs of the similar mould is their viability. WikiLeaks currently maintains its contents on more than 20 servers worldwide and on hundreds of domain names. The biggest fear over WikiLeaks is that it is susceptible to litigation that threatens its viability, but on evidence it is not. Despite receiving more than a hundred legal threats, almost no one has followed through with a law suit. When WikiLeaks published an embarrassing memo involving the British bank Northern Rock, the latter threatened to sue the former, but was reduced to begging. As reported in a New Yorker article, Assange tells would be litigants to go to hell.

Arguably, one of the benefits of WikiLeaks is that it is able to transfer information power into the hands of consumers. From the perspectives of sellers and service providers, WikiLeaks and its like don’t seem to benefit them in terms of providing ‘comprehensive’ info about consumers. Much will depend on the willingness of informants to come forward, and the speed at which the information can reach the community at large. Such requires collaboration with major media outlets. It appears that WikiLeaks is capable of just that, possessing links with major news outlets such as The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The former released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to the three outlets. And in the United States Diplomatic Cables Leak, the three media outlets plus Le Monde (France) and El Pais (Spain) in addition to WikiLeaks simultaneously published the leaked confidential diplomatic cables.

With the possibility of leaks to the outside world, organisations and corporations will come under continually increasing scrutiny for any ethically questionable practices that will lead to public fallout and eventual pressure to clean up their acts. For instance, we read with horror in the past about how highly unethical human experimentation were carried out, an example of which was by the United States Atomic Energy Commission whereby radioactive iodine was fed to infants via gastric tubes in 1953. If there was a WikiLeaks in existence then, it would have brought about a public outcry which could put an end to such unethical experimentation that occurred through the post-war years till as far as the 1970s, and prompt the establishment of ethical standards of clinical research involving human patients.