Russians Hacking the Democrats Is a Big Deal for Communicators

It's now been more than a week since the revelations came out that the Russians are behind hacking the Democratic Party headquarters. And this has frankly received little media attention and scrutiny and debate. I think it's a far, far bigger story with greater implications for communications in our modern world, certainly for crisis communications. There is the sense in today's hyper politicized environment that anything bad that happens to one party or the other is somehow fair game because bad things are happening to the other parties and political parties and their candidates do bad things. Forgive me, but I think this is a little bit too glib. This is a little bit too simplistic. After all, one presidency was destroyed, the Richard Nixon administration, because of breaking into another political party's headquarters and stealing secrets. And they didn't even find that much. But now, because it's a foreign power that should concern even more people, the fact that a foreign power can then turn over the information to WikiLeaks and then the WikiLeaks can basically guarantee massive media coverage is, I think, disturbing at many levels. Now you could say, well, this is just showing bad people doing bad things, maybe, although no major smoking gun has come out yet. But what it is showing people who are a part of political campaigns, political organizations, and I have to think increasingly at any business or organization or government entity is go out of your way to hide your thoughts. You can no longer email a colleague with an honest assessment about something because you have to think about how will this look if the entire world saw it? How could this be spun in a negative way? And I'm assuming a lot of you are like I am and that you believe in communication. You want more communication. And if we make people paranoid to ever give an honest opinion about something, that's not advancing the cause of communication in the world, that's advancing secrecy, that's advancing obfuscation. And I just don't see how that helps anyone. The United States government has yet to figure out a way of retaliating against the Russians. But something has to be done, folks. It's very easy for a lot of people to sit back and say, well, I don't like that party, therefore power to them, or I want the other guy to win. So power to anything bad that can happen to my guy's enemy. But I want to ask all of you, would you really be happy, Would you really hold your head up with pride if every single email you've ever sent were released to the world? Maybe you're perfect, but maybe you talked about some psychological or personal problem with a close family member. Do you want that splattered all across the news for everyone in the world to pick apart? I understand in a modern Facebook age, privacy doesn't quite mean the same thing, especially to younger people. But there still has to be some zone of privacy. And if we're saying the only way of doing it is being in a room where nobody has any devices and you're talking one on one and you've checked the room for cell phones and recording, if that's really the only way someone can have a confidential conversation, I think all humanity is in for a big loss. I'm TJ Walker. What do you think? Post your comments here.