You might ask: who is manipulating who?
Well it is good timing considering all the publicity around WikiLeaks to raise several other issues. Incidents like this are and should be wake up calls. But I am not talking about any of the content of that website, not its controversial, or even revolutionary documents. Talking about so called freedom of Internet and how it is used in conflicts to manipulate public information.
Because it is so touchy subject I would like not to mentions my personal opinions about content of the WikiLeaks website or documents published there. Like my mother used to say, true is always somewhere in the middle. From one end admiting that there are political and international security consequences. Some people directly affected by possible conflicts might pay for this with their life. So it is not all just fun and games. Not all of us are natural-born politicians. Most of us are just “screamers” fighting for our own rights. We need leaders, we need governments, we need law if you want to be able to send your kids to school, not being afraid that something going to happen to them. And as politics are very delicate subject, most of it is done behind closed doors. Is that wrong? Probably is, but it seems to be the only working way. It is issue so old as man kind existence. We all have our own interests in mind, but at the same time we need to work on collective interest of our groups (country, golf club, work place, family etc). It is simple conflict of personal and public interests.
On the other hand, we should be aware of what is happening to us, this is our right. And making important decisions behind closed doors doesn’t really help. Also people in position to decide about our lives, intent to overuse their powers from time to time. There is no difference, ideologically, between Chinese government sending “uncomftable” people to prison, and west country governments doing the same, just different way. Same principle (or problem if you would like), different solutions.
Now a bit of facts. WikiLeaks (http://213.251.145.9)was launched in 2006. Within a year their database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents. Julian Assange was described as its director. The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. They were controversial as since the beginning they intent to talk differently about certain events. But they came to light in 2010 after publishing video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by U.S. forces. That was followed by publishing huge number of top secret documents just recently.
WikiLeaks was originally launched as a user-editable wiki site (same software as wikipedia uses), but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model, and no longer accepts either user comments or edits.
Company which was originally hosting WikiLeaks website, terminated the site because of hackers attacks on their servers. Following that incident WikiLeaks spreaded their site into multiple locations, with main public domain located in Switzerland (wikileaks.ch). Server was located in France, but due DOS attacks was moved back to Switzerland. Where it is at the minute. After only couple of days site was cloned across multiple locations. Wikipedia provides updated list of those locations under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks as well http://213.251.145.96/mirrors.html (didn’t check it, but it must be over 300 locations). Administrators of WikiLeaks used their popularity and support of public to spread their content. They even have online form http://213.251.145.96/mass-mirror.html where you can host (publish from your server) their website as one of the clones/mirrors.
On this stage WikiLeak is unstoppable.
Their publicity is so strong, that after MasterCard and Visa refused to collect their founds/donations via PayPal action PayBack started.
Today (9th Dec) after morning attact on PayPal, PostFinance and Swedish prosecutors PayBack activists directed their attention against MasterCard andVisa servers. They are using very same method of attack called denial-of-service (DOS) which was used towards company hosting original WikiLeaks website. Also on Facebook and Twitter, profiles on which call for attacks were posted seems to disappear for a while.
Looking on those events, you can say hackers are soldiers, and DOS is a weapon on modern digital world. Or maybe modern propaganda, or sabotage should I say?
According to latest information from 7th of December 2010 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was remanded in custody by a British court over allegations of sex crimes in Sweden.
Australian journalist John Pilger, British film director Ken Loach and Jemima Khan, former wife of Pakistani cricketer and politician Imran Khan, all offered to put up sureties to persuade the court Assange would not abscond.
Pilger, who offered 20,000 pounds ($31,600), told the court: “These charges against him in Sweden are absurd and were judged absurd by a senior Swedish prosecutor.
source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B61PX20101207
In meantime cloud of WikiLeaks supporters is growing. Facebook accounted over 1 million of WikiLeaks fans. Not mentioning twitter, where this subject is all over the place.
But no one is listening to arguments of either sites of conflict. It seems to be a bit blind collective movement.
What is your opinion?
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Australia: Wikileaks may be a criminal offense. “Unauthorized obtaining” of documents “certainly involves criminality,” says Australian A-G; opposition urges support for Assange.
“Mr. Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorized release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network,” Rudd (Australian FM Kevin Rudd) said in an interview with Reuters.
source: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=198693&R=R4
A British judge jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday, ordering the leader of secret-spilling website behind bars as his organization’s finances came under increasing pressure.
source: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=198403
One congressman wants WikiLeaks to be designated a “terrorist” organization, which would make it a crime for any company or individual to provide it with material support. And the number of mirror sites continues to grow at the pace of one every few minutes, topping 1,000 this afternoon.
Thuy Ledinh, a representative for the Public Interest Registry of Reston, Va., which operates the .org registry, told CNET today that the organization has not been pressured by the feds to make Wikileaks.org permanently disappear from the Internet. We “have not been contacted by any governmental authorities regarding the domain,” Ledinh said.
source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20024935-281.html?tag=rtcol;inTheNewsNow
Equally, assuming from not-confirmed facts, it can be planned sabotage to maintain image of strong governance of certain powers on international political scene. Expecialy now in times of economical crisis and questioning US vs. Chinese financial abilities? Whole story how those documents leaked, seems familiar looking back in history. Lack of attention to security, confusion, feeling its out of control are signs of something being “left-behind” marked “not important ANYMORE”. Either it is not important, or it was on purpose, or maybe what might be even more scary it was none of those. From history of Eastern Block we found that leak of information was first sign of Eastern Block getting weaker. When eventualy it callapsed.
Maybe, maybe not. Same way we can make other theories right? Issue I have with it is, that it will be ordinary people who will “suffer” from effects of juggling information one-way or other.
There is evidently a lot for me to study outside of my books at http://gargasz.info/index.php/cyberwars-of-wikileaks-trues-payback. Thanks for the important read,