Two posts from SocialBarrel indicate that while WikiLeaks may be having serious issues elsewhere, its continued presence on major social media sites is not in apparent, immediate jeopardy. See:
Also see Facebook and Twitter Stand By Wikileaks…For Now from Mike Isaac's blog at Forbes.com.
Many see WikiLeaks as the Robin Hood of online journalism - taking from the secrecy-obsessed and giving to the information-starved. That may be an interesting, if academic debate, at this point. As Time asserts, WikiLeaks: Winning the Info War Despite Assange's Arrest
For anyone with a shred of continuing belief in the nation-state as an institution, however, it is the fallout of the "cables" affair that is of increasing concern.
Beyond the obvious political and diplomatic ramifications, I am frankly unsure which of these related developments is more frightening and ominous:
- The world's major corporations beginning to march in lockstep - absent any judicial or legislative direction - to shut down the site and end its funding (i.e. MasterCard and Visa; Paypal; Amazon; SwissPost), or
- WikiLeaks' army of "hacktivist" supporters, now resorting to clearly criminal activity with"Operation Payback" a series of largely successful cyberattacks aimed at shutting down the websites of the Swedish prosecutor, SwissPost and Amazon in response to action against the site and Julian Assange's arrest yesterday.
If this cat-and-mouse game is all eerily reminiscent of a Bruce Willis movie (with no Bruce Willis in sight), it is also a wake-up call about the extreme degree of unchecked, self-interested power that exists as a blatant fault line in this new, global-digital epoch whose birth we are apparently witnessing in real-time.
I'm not sure where this is leading us, but I suspect it's no place good.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
Update: Add Mastercard and Paypal, and VISA and Senator Joseph Lieberman to the list of sites targeted by "Operation Payback."
- GJW
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2 comments:
And the most evil of empires; Mastercard, has been zapped.
No place good, indeed. You've identified the troubling problems that became crystal clear in the last week. It's possible for the USA to prevent any website, no matter how legal, from being hosted and domain name linked, anywhere in the world, if it turns its full attention to it. It's a cyber war, the States vs. Citizens on the Internet.
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