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A State of Cyber War Exists
WikiLeaks supporters in the hacking community are fighting back. They’re now trying to cripple the websites of companies that have chosen not to assist in what some are calling an internet grassroots rebellion and others call anarchy. Whatever you call it, the World Wide Web has now become a battleground.
The phrase, “one man’s freedom-fighter is another man’s terrorist,” has never been more apt. Using the technology of the modern age of communications, Julian Assange has revolutionized the impact of the internet, using its reach and its many hiding places to wage guerilla combat against the governments of the world. The attempts to stop the WikiLeaks movement have been almost laughable as governments and others- the establishment, if you will- try to figure out how to stop these folks from doing deadly damage.
Particularly alarming to U.S. authorities this week was the leak of a State Department cable that listed sites around the world whose loss could “critically impact” the communications, economy and security of the United States. We are now beyond guessing motives and looking for journalistic logic to explain the content of these leaks. With this particular release, it’s tempting to conclude that we are in a state of cyber-war and the rebellion just might actually mean to cause us real harm.
The list WikiLeaks published includes our bridges, mines and dams; critical underwater communication cables and oil pipelines; specific factories that make vaccines and weapons parts. The State Department calls it an Al Qaeda targeting list.
And so the establishment is trying to fight back. Somebody- we don’t who- has waged sophisticated denial-of-service attacks on WikiLeaks web sites. Governments have succeeded in getting many companies whose servers were being used by WikiLeaks, to kick them off their platforms. Credit card companies and PayPal are now refusing to process donations to the rebellion. Assange himself sits in a British prison as Swedish authorities seek his extradition on what may or may not be legitimate charges of rape against two women, allegedly committed last August.
And now the rebellion is responding. From this morning’s Washington Post:
LONDON — WikiLeaks supporters struck back Wednesday at perceived enemies of founder Julian Assange, attacking the websites of Swedish prosecutors, the Swedish lawyer whose clients have accused Assange of sexual crimes and the Swiss authority that froze Assange’s bank account.
MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday, also seemed to be having severe technological problems.
The online vengeance campaign appeared to be taking the form of denial of service attacks in which computers across the Internet are harnessed – sometimes surreptitiously – to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.
The online attacks are part of a wave of online support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity Wednesday, while the site’s Facebook page hit 1 million fans.
The establishment’s attempts to silence WikiLeaks have, so far, been ineffective. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of mirror web sites that have sprouted across the globe that are keeping the site up. The list of these web sites is easy to find and WikiLeaks is not hard to get to on your office or home computer.
Where all this ends is anyone’s guess. This really does seem to be right out of some edgy science-fiction book. A novelist, I think, could surmise how this story will unfold as well as any security expert or CIA analysis team.
Ultimately, one would think human nature will run its course. Heady with excitement with their cause and their impact, and now counter-attacking against the establishment with cyber warfare- how far will the rebellion go? Will they start taking down web sites of bloggers who disagree with Assange? Why not? They have no qualms attacking the web sites of companies who have every right to conduct business with whomever they want.
One thing becoming clearer in my mind, is that when WikiLeaks releases documents revealing America’s security soft-spots and Assange’s supporters start taking down the web sites of those who they perceive as disagreeing with them- this movement seems to become increasingly less about free expression and more about creating chaos in the name of truth.
Wikileaks: Do-Gooder or Scoundrel?
I have a developing opinion of this Australian guy who runs Wikileaks and who seems to have made it his business to embarrass the United States on a quarterly basis. The journalist part of me is tempted to view him with a certain amount of patience. The American part of me wants to deck the punk.
This last batch of leaks- diplomatic cables that amount to juicy, cocktail-party gossip about half the world’s leaders- are amusing and interesting in a People magazine sort of way, but I see little news there. Julian Assange’s motives behind this latest leak are not clear to me.
But the fellow does seem to have quite the persecution complex. The NY Times, for example, did not get these latest documents directly from Assange. It got them from the British newspaper, The Guardian. Apparently, Assange did not like this article written about him last October in the NY Times, so he decided to leave them out of the document dump.
A friend asked this morning if Assange can be charged with treason. Well, he’s not a U.S. citizen, hasn’t pledged loyalty to this country, and has not openly aided and abetted the “enemy,” though just to be fair, it would be nice if the guy found some embarrassing documents that paint equally unflattering pictures of the bad guys.
Treason is a very carefully worded provision that appears in Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution- “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” It is also a capital offense that can be punished by death and less than 20 people have ever been convicted of it in the entire history of the United States.
The guy who is in a very deep pool of trouble is Private Bradley Manning, the Army Intelligence analyst who has leaked a lot of this stuff to Assange. Treason is such a big charge, that it doesn’t appear even Manning will be accused of it. But it appears he will be prosecuted for at least two violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and if convicted will be spending many years in a military prison (Fred Kaplan explains all this in Slate).
And here’s a great take on all this from Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast:
For better or worse, this is the world we now live in. But living in it is one thing; celebrating it is another. When journalists gather information that genuinely changes the way we see some aspect of American foreign policy, or exposes government folly or abuse, they should move heaven and earth to make sure it sees the light of day. But that’s a far cry from publishing documents that sabotage American foreign policy without adding much, if anything, to the public debate.
So Beinart argues for restraint on the part of the media. Some outlets, like the NY Times have cooperated with the government and the State Department in particular, and so explains here.
Since this Assange guy leaks absolutely everything he gets his hands on, irrespective of its importance, substance or consequence- it really is up to the media on how to play it and what NOT to reveal, including the names of people whose lives he regularly puts in danger in his haughtily high-minded pursuit of what he sees as “the truth.”
Even “Pentagon Papers” leaker, Dr. Daniel Ellsburg, who generally sides with Assange’s right to leak his little heart out, says there are some things that should be kept secret.
So, I guess my opinion is still forming about Wikileaks. But it’s only the principle of watching over government for things like waste, fraud and abuse that keeps me from wanting to throttle this smug, paranoid, self-important former criminal hacker.
The convictions were from the early 1990’s, but in the interests of the truth, I thought it was fair game to put out there. You can read more about Assange’s hacking into government networks and bank mainframes, here. He got a plea deal from a judge who said Assange didn’t mean to be malicious, just got carried away with his own curiosity. Otherwise he would have spent ten years in federal prison.
Garcia Media Life 
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