The WikiLeaks War – I
As expected, the war has started and it won’t end anytime soon, especially since protests are not just on-line anymore. Or it won’t end unless, of course, the other side will surrender, allowing WikiLeaks to continue as planned, including once again allowing donations through PayPal, MasterCard and Visa, and also, even more importantly, truly strive for a far more open society, where information will no longer be controlled by a few, but freely available to all. Which we all know they’ll never do unless forced, and perhaps not even then. So we get mad, put whatever skills we have to use, fight to the best of our abilities, and force them!
But let’s take a step back for a moment and see what happened in the first part of this war, which started with the attacks against www.wikileaks.org. Then Amazon ended its partnership with WikiLeaks and EveryDNS removed www.wikileaks.org, citing the attacks aimed against the site that were affecting its entire infrastructure. WikiLeaks reacted by telling people to go directly to the site’s IP address and then, helped by Pirate Parties everywhere, started a massive campaign meant to create a large number of site mirrors, so the site will never be taken off-line again. Currently, there are 1368 mirrors listed, even though the site itself is now nearly impossible to take down.
Next came the financial front. PayPal and PostFinance blocked their accounts and then MasterCard and Visa refused to accept payments made to WikiLeaks anymore. In response, DataCell, who is the WikiLeaks payment processor, announced that they will sue MasterCard and Visa, while donations for WikiLeaks are now accepted by another firm, namely Flattr. Recently, PayPal has announced that they will release the remaining funds in the WikiLeaks account, though they will not accept any other donations made for the site.
Otherwise, Julian Assange has been arrested on rape charges, after turning himself in as soon as the proper warrant arrived from the Swedish authorities and being denied bail. The charges are obviously quite weak, in fact only being possible thanks to the very drastic Swedish sex laws, and they were originally dismissed by the Swedish courts some months ago, so the fact that they have been brought back into focus just as this scandal started is extremely dubious to say the least. But, once again, Julian Assange may be the founder and leader of WikiLeaks, but he is not WikiLeaks and this is not about him. He certainly needs to be defended from those who wish him harm because of WikiLeaks and look for other topics to bring up because they have nothing to charge him with, but “the show must go on” even while he’s in jail or, if it comes to that, even if he’ll be assassinated. But I doubt they’d go that far, because that’d turn him into a martyr and make even more people rise up against them.
As for the attacks against the sites of the companies that acted against WikiLeaks, they seem to be winding down, those who organize them saying that they are switching focus to what can they do to actually support WikiLeaks. At the same time, Avaaz has finally acted and started a petition in support of WikiLeaks, which they hope will gather at least one million signatures by the end of the week, which doesn’t seem hard at all when you consider that WikiLeaks’ Facebook page has over one million fans already.
In some other news, I’ll start with the good and say that Bradley Manning, who is currently accused of leaking the data released by WikiLeaks, may be declared a hero. At the same time, Amazon tries to make money off WikiLeaks, despite, as I said before, ending their partnership with them as soon as this scandal started. As for this paragraph’s bad news, those come from Pakistan, where the media has taken advantage of the WikiLeaks scandal to publish fake cables that support the nationalist agenda. Then again, as we all know, “the first casualty of war is always the truth”.
This is only the beginning, but it is where we are today. What next? Well, it partly depends on what “they” do next, because we will need to react in time and in force to any new developments. But we also need to be active by ourselves, not just when we have something to react to, and this movement has certainly gathered enough supporters and gained enough momentum to achieve amazing results. We do not lack ideas, but they must be selected carefully, though also swiftly. We cannot waste all of this potential, which means that we can’t wait, but we also can’t act rashly and make mistakes that will come back to haunt us, forcing us to spend precious time and resources to fix the damage caused.
This is a big fight, an important fight. It is a battle for freedom of speech. It is a battle for freedom of information. It is a battle for the right to know what our elected officials are really using their powers for and to make our opinion heard. It is, as I said before, ultimately a battle for control, because “he who controls information controls the world”. It is a dangerous war to fight and will certainly become even more so. It will also very likely be a long war, with many difficult battles. But we cannot back down, no matter what. The outcome of this war will have extremely important consequences, likely deciding the direction of the world, at least from certain points of view, at least for the next few years. We must make sure that we will emerge as victors!
All I can say in the end is this: Stick to what you know you can do, but make full use of whatever skills and resources you have and do your part! Do not expect to win every battle, because we certainly will not, but fight every step of the way, never giving in and never giving up! If we all work together and refuse to be frightened into inaction, we will prevail!
