Acropolis Corporation has called in for an extra ordinary general body meeting to discuss the potential threat from Wikileaks. Acropolis corporation controls 80% of market share of Ping Pong balls and has systematically managed its connection with government to block entry of any worthy competition. It has also manipulated for last 40 years the import duty on Ping Pong balls which has anguished many a global players to enter local market. The independent experts, who monitor this industry and advices the government, are in fact paid employees of Acropolis. The Chairman has learned that some Pathetic Loser employee has uploaded incriminating stories on the Wikileaks which may go public anytime soon. The board members are not fully aware of impending threat and are joining the EGM without much fanfare. The security at the Acropolis has been on high alert; the members are required to deposit their laptops and mobile phones. This is quite unusual. The CIO is red-faced as the security wouldn't even allow him to carry a pen-drive which holds today’s presentation.
Navin joined Acropolis as a trainee and thanks to his family’s ministerial connection he was the youngest person to be inducted into the Acropolis’ distinguished board. Navin is not sure of his role as a board member, but it is comforting for him to know that most of the other family board members of Acropolis were exactly in the same position. There are a few investors from insurance and banking who attend these board meetings mostly to collect their gifts from the company. This EGM is unusual in more than one ways, board members have not been provided with the usual brief. A board member without a brief is like a minister without a speech. Navin wonders his way to the boardroom and couldn’t help notice all the awards and trophies collected by Acropolis over the years. The meeting is about to start and Navin takes his delegated place in the room.
The Chairman makes an opening statement, “We are under attack from within. One of our disgruntled employees has leaked many of company’s documents to an Internet website called Wikileaks. We are not sure who this person is and we are not sure what all has been leaked. It is a cause of grave concern that your company will see erosion of shareholder value which has taken years of hard work to build. We owe this responsibility to ourselves, our employees and our shareholders that our interests are protected. I seek one suggestion from each one of you and five minutes to present it to the board members. Each board member will then vote for any 3 suggestions. Top 3 voted suggestions will be implemented by the IT Team at a highest priority. Let us put our heads together and start generating solutions.”
Navin is an ardent social networking addict and devours everything that the free Internet has to offer. He has read about Wikileaks and considers it as some kind of a Monopoly Game. Navin raises his hand and seeks permission to speak, which he is granted. “Sir Mr. Chairman, social media is riding on free and unregulated medium, which has its own rules. We cannot fight it by age old voting procedures akin to reality TV shows. Some of the members may suggest that we should approach Courts to block Wikileaks from publishing; I suggest we say Tata to such suggestions. Witch-hunting may also be high on the agenda in the minds of many, if that would work, James Bond would have got Wikileaks shutdown! Wikileaks is a powerful “idea”, on Internet the websites may come or go but the ideas live forever. I have formulated certain strategies to combat high-value-ideas executed on a low-entry-barrier platform from gaining a position of dominance. If you allow me to present my case, I will outline these here.” Navin continues his monologues and for the benefit of readers these are published here.
1. Junk-in Junk-out: Wikileaks make no editorial judgment of content provided by its sources. Hypothetically speaking we can produce hordes of disgruntled employees by reaching out to ex-employees, retired employees, contract workers. We can force high volumes of deliberate leaks, most of which will be misleading and factually incorrect information. Since Wikileaks will have no way of validating its sources, they will publish everything or most of it. If we can prove 10% of published information to be factually incorrect, people will turn away from the core issue.
2. Riding the wave: When a website builds a certain critical mass it tries to get repeat visitors by creating waves. Website then rewards its contributors by letting them ride the wave. Just like blogging, Wikileaks has no monetary reward mechanism for its contributors. This loophole needs to be exploited. Social activists and journalists will be appointed to create an information collection network. We can even use a small seed fund for a Pyramid Marketing Scheme for rapid recruitment of agents. Our Network will promise to dole out huge sums of money for legitimate information collection. Our agents can choose to sell collected information back to the traditional media or Wikileaks or other agents higher in the pecking order. The payback mechanism (not to be confused with Operation Payback) will make espionage dependent on the very business it is trying to expose.
3. Power of Anonymous: The Internet makes it possible to keep the source Anonymous, which somehow makes the information more credible and sought after. There are factors like sympathy, fair share and level playing field which tilt the balance against large corporations. People often forget that they are cutting off the branch they are sitting on. The best approach to deal with these issues is to be sensitive to people’s need for consumption of high quality gossip from real anonymous sources. This can easily be developed by having an internal online anonymous grievance redress system. People can raise issues or suggest solutions to hot issues.
Just when Navin was done with his top three suggestions the CIO walked in with 20 printed copies of his presentations. The Chairman stood up and hugged Navin. Navin was appointed as the Chief Security Officer. The CIO looked puzzled and asked, “There is yet another org change?”
