The WikiLeaks War – V
It’s about time for another WikiLeaks update. You may not believe it, since even the WikiLeaks staff seems to have taken a break for the holidays, but quite a lot of things have happened since the last one. It’s not an open war anymore, but the combatants are gathering forces and making plans. And, of course, a lot of people and organizations weigh in, especially since a year just ended. As a result, I’ll really be hopping from one thing to another in this post, likely also grouping together some issues that should be presented separately, in an attempt to cover every new development, so you are strongly encouraged to read the articles I’ll link to in order to get more details.
To start with what’s happening on the Internet, WL Central has posted an updated list of whistleblowing sites and WikiLeaks-related games, though they point out that neither they nor WikiLeaks endorse any of them and at least a few may well be fakes, including attempts by intelligence agencies to recapture leaked material or persuade would-be whistleblowers to reveal themselves to them and therefore get caught. Yet they didn’t stop there, posting links to even more sites shortly afterwards, not to mention showcasing the Internet’s power to keep something interesting and in the public’s eye.
On the other hand, when it comes to what’s left of the front lines of the war, Bank of America did end up under attack, as expected, but so did Anonymous. Yet what’s more relevant is that the FBI is cracking down on Anonymous as a direct result of PayPal’s actions, which makes PayPal and its parent company eBay the top corporate “bad guys”. (You may notice that I didn’t even link to either of those sites.) Now there is a new weapon being developed to aid those who choose to lead the on-line battle against just such corporate “bad guys”, but its power and potential seem far too hard to control and I fear what may happen if it’ll end up being used on a large scale.
But let’s take a break and look back, as many have done at the end of the year, choosing to award various honors to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Actually, the honors were mainly awarded to Assange, since the focus tends to be on people instead of organizations, WikiLeaks as a whole only being named top newsmaker of 2010 by Al Jazeera, which I’m not even sure is exactly something to brag about…
Personally, I really can’t stand the way Julian Assange speaks. It’s not as much about what he says, though there are obvious problems there as well, but about the way in which he says it, which I find quite infuriating. And, based on all I’ve gathered about him as a person, he seems to be quite an asshole… But you don’t have to like someone as a person in any way in order to support what they’re doing, and this particular asshole is doing something that really needs to be done, so he deserves all the support he can get at the moment. And that I assume to be the rationale behind the latest bunch of honors awarded to him, such as Readers’ Person of the Year from The Nation, Readers’ Most Intriguing Person of 2010 from CNN.com, top newsmaker of the year according to Postmedia editors and canada.com and even the “Free Dacia” award from Romanian on-line publication Cotidianul, “for his struggle to defend the freedom of the press and democratic values“. Yet of course there are always some who decide to go the other way, perhaps the weirdest recent example being the fact that Peruvian shamans have sentenced Assange to “spiritual punishment”.
Under these circumstances, there’s no surprise that the deals he signed for his autobiography are expected to be worth over one million pounds. In fact, that amount could even appear rather low, considering how many people are likely to want to read that book. Then again, if I’m to assume that his writing is not significantly different from his speaking, many of those who would be interested in reading something about him may be far less keen on reading something actually written by him.
Moving on to what traditional media actually does together with and in support of the whistleblowing site, shortly after Russian weekly Novaya Gazeta announced its partnership with WikiLeaks, El País editor Javier Moreno explained at length why did he choose to publish the cables, making it very obvious that the major Spanish daily is fully committed to seeing this operation through despite the associated risks. I can only hope that the other publications are just as committed and that even more will join in as time passes.
On the other side of the pond, Amazon’s and Apple’s contracts with the government are being exposed and generally considered to be the reason why these companies have so swiftly distanced themselves from WikiLeaks. At the same time, things look unsurprisingly grim at the highest levels, as the federal government is demanding a firewall meant to block employees from accessing WikiLeaks documents regardless of their source and, in an obviously related story, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act is reported to have been blocked anonymously, through the use of cowardly tactics. That is perhaps particularly relevant for Bradley Manning, who probably is the actual whistleblower in this case and whose health is declining as a result of the harsh conditions of his imprisonment.
Still, I’d much rather end this post with good news, and for that I need to get back to Europe, as the UK information commissioner thankfully points out the obvious in an interview, stating that “the best form of defense is transparency” and that “if all of us just accept that this is the people’s information and 99.9% should be out there in all its tedium, you wouldn’t have WikiLeaks“.
Now wouldn’t that be nice? But does anyone really think that the powers that be would ever willingly allow those they rule over to know about all their plans? Right, I didn’t think so… Which means we need to keep up the fight and force them. And, unlike a certain other individual who used this slogan only to prove he actually could not, yes we can!
