Cav's Place

It’s about time to wrap up the week’s news regarding WikiLeaks and prepare for the next one, which will certainly also see a lot of action and further developments in all related areas. I can only hope that the developments will be positive, which is to say that I hope support for WikiLeaks and, more importantly, the concepts it stands for will grow significantly both on-line and off-line, but also that the movement will become more organized and focused, because our opponents certainly are and we won’t be able to properly fight against them if we pull in all directions at once.
I’m saying that because, despite some pretty good new strategy ideas, there is simply no focus anymore and trying to organize these efforts seems to become quite similar to trying to herd cats. And that’s a huge problem, because without focus and discipline their skills and enthusiasm are being completely wasted, no matter how useful they’d otherwise be. Not that anyone thought it’d be easy to organize such a group, if it can even be called a group, but good leaders know how to make the best use of the people they have available. We sure need a few of those to step up if we are to have a good chance at winning this…

Yet, even though the Avaaz petition, despite the very good start, is now gathering signatures far slower than expected and is certain to fail reaching the goal of one million by the end of the week by a large margin, we do have good news as well. What’s more, said good news are about off-line efforts, which are certainly much needed in our repertoire. There are plans for protests in several countries around the world and those that took place in Spain and, most notably, Australia already managed to gather a significant number of participants. This is very important not only for the issue at hand but also as a way to show the powers that be that we can still see what’s going on in the world at large, think with our own heads and fight for important causes no matter how much they try to beat us into submission with the economic crisis and scare us into inaction with the threat of terrorism.
It’s very important to start piling up the pressure at street level as well, so this will become a battle that the society at large is interested and involved in and not just an “infowar”. Not that the on-line component is any less important, far from it, but those in charge often react faster to one thousand people marching in the streets than to one million signing a petition, plus that many other people are more likely to notice such a protest than an on-line campaign, which means they could also decide to join. Or they could decide to fight for the other side, of course, but that’s always a risk you have to take.
If each such protest could manage to gather at least one thousand people, it would already be a victory, though of course even much smaller numbers can make a difference as well. If something like this would take place in all the countries where officials have expressed views against WikiLeaks and similar projects, as well as in front of as many embassies of such countries as possible everywhere else in the world, it would send an extremely powerful message. The United States, United Kingdom and Australia are of course of particular importance, but the pressure must be maintained at high levels everywhere. No matter where you are, follow what your elected representatives have to say about the issue, ask them if they don’t volunteer their opinion, and react accordingly.
What worries me is that I’m yet to see anything about protests actually taking place in the United States. I see that they’re planned, but I can’t readily find information about any that already took place. Does anyone know of any? How many people showed up? How did they behave? How did the authorities react? I don’t think I need to point out how important it is to send a particularly strong message there…

In other good news, some companies do have some backbone and choose to support WikiLeaks despite the pressure. And that list sould also include EasyDNS, which was at first wrongly accused of dropping WikiLeaks even though they never had anything to do with the site in the first place and then ended up actually providing services for them.
While certain authority figures keep stressing the dangers, this situation also outlines the benefits of helping WikiLeaks, as the people who approve of WikiLeaks will, as shown in the EasyDNS statement, fully appreciate this course of action and possibly show that appreciation by choosing that company’s services over those of its competitors. So if you know of any other companies that should be listed here alongside DataCell, EasyDNS, Flattr, OVH, XIPWIRE and, at least for the time being, possibly also Facebook and Twitter, show your support and at least promote them. Such gestures serve to simply make it good business to support such controversial projects despite the pressure coming from the authorities, and that can really go a long way.

Finally, it seems that some former members of the WikiLeaks team will launch a competing project called OpenLeaks. Normally I’d say that any such projects, like the new Balkan Leaks and perhaps also the older Cryptome, can only be a good thing, because they promote transparency and freedom of speech and information, fighting against those who want to control everything themselves. However, the fact that OpenLeaks will obviously refuse to take responsibility for their actions, instead choosing to hide behind the other companies or organizations chosen to publish the information they’ll receive, makes the concept questionable at best, and most likely detrimental.
While I’m at it, I need to mention that Cryptome seems to have recently turned itself into a conduit for opinions and information shining a bad light on WikiLeaks. As long as it’s accurate information, it should obviously be revealed, but the opinions are the part I have a problem with when it comes to such a service. Still, it certainly could be true and Assange and WikiLeaks may have some dirt to hide as well, but it wouldn’t make any difference. As I keep saying, this war is about way more than WikiLeaks and pretty much not at all about Assange himself, as you may have noticed that I didn’t even mention his name in this post until now. That means that we need to stop bickering and fight together for the common cause. If some bad apples need to be thrown out of the basket, they will be, no matter who they are, but that must never be allowed to jeopardize our real quest.