Information Does Leak
December 10, 2010
In spite of repeated attempts in the last few days to shut Wikileaks down, the bane of the establishment’s existence presses on. Forced to relocate its Web address to a Swiss site, wikileaks.ch, after its original host, Amazon.com, abandoned it, Wikileaks has found refuge in hundreds of mirror sites, other Web sites that duplicate its content and make removal of the information from the Internet nearly impossible.
At last count, Wikileaks was mirrored on 1368 sites.
As documented by several news services, including the BBC, on Monday, founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police onsexual-assault charges. In both cases, the women acknowledge that sex with Assange was consensual, but they claim at some point, it became nonconsensual.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the anti-Wikileaks rhetoric has amped itself up several notches. The Hill quoted former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as saying, “Information warfare is warfare, and Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant.”
As CNN reported, one “statesman” even went so far as to call for his execution.
The standard buzz-phrase defenses are also being trotted out, aptly demonstrated by Sen. Diane Feinstein’s Wall Street Journal op ed, such as “threat to national security” and “placing our troops in harm’s way.”The keen-minded among us should note that these are the same buzz-phrase defenses that have been used to keep the United States mired in at least two wars for the last decade.
Is there evidence that Assange is endangering the United States? Some pundits see powerbrokers are being embarrassed and exposed. How is that a bad thing for the powerless? We understand how it is a bad thing for those in power, however.
After all, as Time Magazine reported, it was the United States government that trumpeted the interagency sharing of intelligence post-911. Naturally, it is the United States government that is appalled when such a wide distribution of “sensitive” information finds its way into the datasphere.
Whatever you may think of the interesting Julian Assange, some see him as doing a service to Americans and to the world by leaking this information. The less we know about our government’s activities, the stronger they become. The more we know, the stronger we become.
No matter how many attempts are made to silence Wikileaks and its supporters or to censor the Web, Assange and those like him are creatures of the Net. It is pervasive in its scope. Thus, Wikileaks or a comparable service will persist.
Can a government bureaucracy control information that leaks to the Internet? We don’t know.
Pete Fernbaugh, December 10, 2010
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Wikileaks is a good example of a hybrid between Spider and Starfish….now that the head is cut off the furious chopping is in vain.