Just two weeks before WikiLeaks released its diplomatic cables, Alec Ross, a leading proponent of all things digital at the US State Department, delivered an excitable talk at an internet conference in Chile. The title was the “battle between open and closed societies”; Mr Ross argued that openness always wins. Yet barely six minutes in he managed to infuriate his Latin American audience by saying that the network “was the Che Guevara of the 21st century”. “Will you try to kill it too?” inquired someone in the audience, anticipating that the US might soon feel ill at ease in a digital, networked world.
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