Did you go to a pub, club, or restaurant last night? Did you stand around in the street, maybe, talking to friends? If so, there’s quite a good chance that a picture or video of you is already somewhere on the internet – even if you didn’t yourself post pictures on Facebook or another networking site.

You may not be at the front of the picture: quite possibly you were just walking by or standing a few yards behind, when someone aimed the camera at someone else, and you just happened to get into the frame. Have you ever been ‘tagged’ on Facebook in a picture you didn’t even know had been taken? if you’re under about 35, the answer’s probably yes.

Did you get any spam in your email today? If so, someone you don’t want to have your address has already got it, and will pass it on. Did you send an email today? If so, the recipient can forward it to someone else without your knowledge.

What has all this got to do with Wikileaks? More than you might think. The fuss being made about the site by governments misses what I believe is the real point. If Wikileaks gets suppressed, in a matter of months (or weeks or days) other websites will spring up doing the same thing. Now that, thanks to computers and the internet, any document can be copied in a microsecond and sent around the world in a few seconds more, it is simply becoming impossible to keep anything secret.

Anywhere you go now there will be someone with a mobile phone, video camera or digital camera – usually all three rolled into one. When I was in New Orleans last spring, my friend Ken took a few pictures – as I thought. Once I was home, I found that he’d in fact made and edited a video with clips showing many of the things I’d done, and the people I’d met, during my visit. I don’t object at all, in fact I’m pleased. But I didn’t know it was being done, and by the time I did it was on YouTube. I’ve also become quite used to turning up as a bit-part player in other videos turn up on YouTube and elsewhere – as well as being tagged in photos I never knew were taken. As Ken says succinctly, ‘Video is the new paper.’ I’ve slotted in the video above in case you’re interested.

The accusations of torture at Abhu Ghraib came out because people with mobile phones took pictures. Now the police routinely check out Facebook for evidence against criminals, and they quite often find it.

Almost none of us is untraceable now: your bank card, your mobile phone, your store cards, and the countless CCTV cameras in the street mean you can be traced just about anywhere. The truth is that to a great extent privacy, like copyright and for the same reasons, is already dead. Government secrecy is going the same way. It’s simply too easy for things to get out.

Whether this will lead to better or worse things, I have no idea. It’s only just starting, and time will tell. But the bigger issue behind Wikileaks is simply this: nothing can be kept secret any more, least of all a document. What happens to Julian Assange is not going to change that. Rather than being pro or con him, maybe we need to think about that bigger picture.