ME:

Taking a Gmail leak to its natural conclusions how would you see such an event happening? Is it on a website with a searchable database that any fool can use? How would the media cover it? Potentially a lot of celebrities have gmail accounts so would TMZ types crawl through it?

CHUCK:

It’s hard to concoct a reasonable motive as to why someone would do this. Somehow, it’s easy to imagine it happening, but hard to imagine why. It would necessitate some diabolical, misanthropic genius who hates Google for ideological reasons. And I don’t really know how it would work from a technological standpoint. Like most people, I never looked at the actual Sony leaks — I just reads various transcripts of what they contained. But if this DID happen, and if all the billions of emails were instantly on some searchable database… I actually think the celebrity angle would be pretty minor. This would be so vast and intrusive that thinking about celebrities would feel facile.

I mean, let’s say a massive dirty bomb was successfully detonated in the center of London — it’s not like people in America would be like, “Oh my God, do you think Colin Firth is okay? Do you think Damon Albarn was hurt?”

The first reaction would be, “I can’t believe this happened to the world.” People would mainly be concerned about themselves.

What could go wrong first for people?

It would create a huge amount of general insecurity. It would radically damage a lot of major and minor relationships. But I also think if this happened on a mass scale, there would be a certain degree of blanket forgiveness. There would suddenly be so much scandalous information in the cultural bloodstream that a lot of people would simply have to go, “I’m just going to accept all this and move on.” And this is partially because they would have secrets that need forgiveness, too.

In the podcast you mentioned that a lot of people would change their tune pretty quickly if this happened; did you mean people who delighted in the Sony leak and the ‘I have nothing to hide’ brigade, who were vocal during the Snowden leaks?

I just think there is a continually widening chasm between how people view public figures and how they view themselves. People don’t perceive leaked information about celebrities as having any kind of human impact. They only care about the professional impact. When a bunch of nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence get leaked, the reflexive sentiment everyone expresses is how this is a horrible invasion of privacy — but virtually every conversation beyond that focuses on how this will change her career or what this will mean to her brand or what this reflects about internet culture. It’s mostly just a public conversation about a very modern problem. But if every Gmail account was suddenly hacked, there would be a collective existential crisis.

People would be overcome by anxiety over the things they’ve written, but also confused and disenchanted by this secret world of second-hand conversations they never even knew were constantly happening all around them. It would be like taking the red pill in The Matrix. The consequences would be pretty profound.

Do you remember when WikiLeaks released those diplomatic cables in 2010? The information in those leaks was not major “news,” for the most part — a lot of it was just high-end gossip, where you could suddenly see off-the-record accounts of how someone like Hillary Clinton honesty viewed rival diplomats. The leaked information didn’t change the world. But it did stop any future diplomat from ever, ever writing down anything that could feasibly prove embarrassing in the future. After that leak, no intelligent diplomat ever write anything down that he or she wouldn’t want the public to see. There was one avalanche of absolute transparency, followed by a subsequent lockdown on every sensitive diplomatic conversation that will ever happen for the rest of time. If there was a mass Gmail leak, the same thing would happen to the general public: There would be one moment of insane transparency, and then everyone would immediately stop using email for personal purposes. E-mail would just become a work tool.

Would you be inclined to search the database… for friends, for famous people?

I would have very little interest in famous people. Maybe I would look up Axl Rose or something. But I would read the entire inbox of every one of my personal friends. I could not help myself. To me, the inner lives of my friends is the most fascinating thing in the world.

How would navigate the world knowing all this stuff your friends have written in emails and knowing that your friends probably know all this stuff you’ve written in emails?

There’s no way to answer this unless it actually happens. I don’t think I’ve written anything about an authentic friend that he or she would view as unforgivable. But who can really say? Sensitivity is hard to gauge, including my own.

We’re not supposed to know everything. You shouldn’t have to ethically justify every private conversation you ever have.

That’s not reasonable. But I’ve certainly had email conversations about casual acquaintances that would probably make those acquaintances think, “Fuck that guy,” so some of my less meaningful relationships might change.

And I suppose part of me would almost be pleased that the things I’ve written about people I truly dislike would suddenly be public knowledge, because I couldn’t be held accountable for their publication. I mean, this wouldn’t be like taking a shot at some stranger on Twitter, which I would never do. That’s juvenile and desperate, and it always reflects much worse on the person throwing the insult. But this type of scenario would be more like someone breaking into my brain and stealing my private thoughts. And I can’t really help what I *think* about people, you know?

Potential upsides: it could be a great source for stories… are there any burning questions you might want answered?

Actually, I disagree. Email leaks are not a good source for stories, because the leak *is* this story. If I can access the actual emails, I don’t need some low-end media blogger to contextualize it for me. All I need them to do is post the fucking email. This is the complicated thing about the culture of email leaking. Take the Sony situation, for example: We all see these insane emails between Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin, and everyone feels weird about seeing them. George Clooney scolds the media for publishing them, and his argument feels superficially reasonable. But let’s say that exact same information had come from a different place.

Let’s says David Fincher had taken a reporter aside and said, “Look — this is what’s happening between Pascal and Rudin. These are the kinds of jokes they make when they think no one is listening. This is what Rudin thinks about Angelina Jolie. Here is the nature of their relationship.” If that happened, the universal response would have been that this was a great interview and awesome journalism.

There would be no ethical complexity for anyone, except maybe Fincher himself. And paradoxically, that’s partially because there would still be a possibility that what we were reading was false. A reasonable person could still think, “Well, maybe Fincher just had an axe to grind. Maybe his subjective reading of these events is slightly inaccurate.” It always comforts people to know that gossip might be untrue, because that makes the experience of consuming it more like the consumption of fiction. Gossip that can’t be verified is just entertainment. But that’s not the case with an email leak. When you look at an email leak, you know you are seeing hard reality. So there is no need for anyone to write anything else. There is no need to create a narrative. It’s just raw information. And that makes consumers feel like criminals.

Are you personally relaxed about such events?

Not really. But it’s so technologically beyond me, it almost seems worthless to worry about it.

I too haven’t got enough of a grasp on the technology to know what’s what but I have this nagging feeling that some of the threats of cyber security and hacking are being overstated: cyberwar as the new military industrial complex. How it’s in everyone the interest of everyone involved to play up the dangers — military/security/govt types can say spending still needs to be high to protect against it; the companies that do cyber security play up the dangers so that they get massive govt contracts. In some ways it feels similar to the Cold War, War on Terror etc… just change the terms, play up the fear and so on. Granted this theory wouldn’t withstand two follow-up questions, and this article plays into said fear, but do you have any thoughts on that?

Every fear is overrated, until something bad actually happens.