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    Wikileaks: The Death Knell of the Internet?

    By we are stardust on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 6:14pm |

                                    

    Julian Assange is being held without bail.  He has pissed off some Serious People, and there have been a lot of attempts to prevent Wikileaks from posting what he says is killer information on Bank of America (it’s assumed), Guantanamo Bay (Prison, it’s assumed), and more.

    Wiklieaks was kicked off Amazon’s servers; his new site in Sweden is up and down, and the group claims it’s due to hackers sending huge data packets to disrupt the service.  And yet: the information is still out there to be released.  Now Wikileaks’ bank accounts have been frozen by Mastercard and Visa. Uh-oh.  But the information leaks are still a threat.

    What's next?  Perhaps this:

    On Nov. 18, 2010, Patrick Leahy introduced Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeit Act passed out Judiciary on a 19-0 vote.  (19-0; WTF?)  But apparently Senator Ron Wyden has put a hold on it in committee, meaning it won’t be passed this year.  But next year?  What would it/could it mean for us?

    From Raw Story:

    A group of academics, led by Temple University law professor David Post, have signed a petition opposing COICA.

    "The Act, if enacted into law, would fundamentally alter U.S. policy towards Internet speech, and would set a dangerous precedent with potentially serious consequences for free expression and global Internet freedom," Post wrote in the petition letter (PDF).

    "Blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system," explained the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), a privacy and digital rights advocate group, is a "reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech."

    Many petitions have been delivered to Leahy, the ACLU is actively opposing it and other internet freedom groups.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/oregon-senator-vows-block-internet-censorship-bill/

    Emptywheel at Firedoglake wonders (and assumes, yes, it is): Will Wikileaks Be the Internet’s Titanic?  She links to and quotes Ian Walsh’s piece on the bill which starts:

    “Let’s just state the obvious here: we’re seeing the end of the open internet with what is being done to Wikileaks.  It’s one thing for Amazon to toss them, it’s another thing entirely to refuse to propagate their domain information.  This has been coming for quite some time, and Wikileaks is not the first domain to be shut down in the US, it is merely the highest profile.  Combined with the attempt to make NetFlix pay a surcharge or lose access to customers, this spells the end of the free internet.

    The absurdity, the sheer Orwellian stupidity of this is epitomized by the State Department telling students at elite colleges not to read the leaks, or they won’t get jobs at State.  As if anyone who isn’t curious to read what is in the leaks, who doesn’t want to know how diplomacy actually works, is anyone State should hire.  In a sane world, the reaction would be the opposite: no one who hadn’t read them would be hired”.

    Different suggestion in comment streams advise the tech-minded to figure out ways around any domain kills; BB as Compuserve used to use was mentioned.  Beats me.

    But what I'd like to know is if you think Americans would just passively accept any of this were it to happen, or what scale of shutdown might be a tipping point?  It seriously creeps me out. 

    Zimbio has a lot to say about the bill, and figures Weyden may be an internet hero ond day.  He also has lists of supporters of the bill.

     

    Comments

    Star, like I was sayin: To piss off the CIA and DOJ is one thing. But to threaten a bank, now you got trouble.

    When this is over and Assange is in jail, we'll pine for the likes of Wiki-Leaks.


    by Oxy Mora on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 6:24pm

    LOL!  Fed memos would be great, too!  Arrrgghh!


    by we are stardust on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:17pm

    Not to complicate matters, but I don't know what happened to Lieberman's bill, Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA,  SB 3480.  I think it passed the Senate, but can't find out much more.

    "This bill provides new tools to DHS to confront them effectively and make certain that civil liberties are protected." In June, Harman introduced a House version, H.R.5548, of the Senate committee's bill that is still pending in Thompson's committee." (then)

    Jane Harman has a House version of SB 3480.  Man; the bills are gettin' thick.


    by we are stardust on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 6:29pm

    Everyone who used paypal or a credit card to donate to Wikileaks should demand proof that the money was delivered as promised, dispute the charges, call their attorney general and state bank regulator.  Hopefully some lawyer will gather them all together as a class because if those payments weren't delivered it's definitely consumer fraud.

    As for whether Americans will step up to defend freedom on the Internet... I'm afraid that most people use it for celebrity gossip, to pay bills and for Facebook.  A country that can't even support a newspaper industry is not going to get up in arms about State Department Cables that they don't want to read anyway.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:04pm

     think lots of groups, even Evangelical Christians, have come to rely heavily on online communication among their groups.  It's sure the tech possibilities I don't grasp. 


    by we are stardust on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:21pm

    Have to keep in mind that most people believe the government will never harm them because... they aren't doing anything wrong.  Sure, some wingnuts want the government out of their Medicare but when it comes to actual civil liberties violations they're pretty sure the government is only going after Islamic and Lefty radicals.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:27pm

    You're right about the 'doing nothing wrong part, Destor.  Passivity can come from that.  Dailymail, UK, says: "

    "While the US Government would not be able to control the internet in other countries access to the most popular sites would be cut off.

    Google,Yahoo and YouTube, the top three most visited sites, are all based in the US.  Google logs an estimated two billion hits a day from 300 million users.

    Under the cyber law any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also 'relies on' the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. 'information infrastructure' would be subject to command by a new National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

    Google, the world's most popular search engine, refused to comment. A spokesman said the law was not yet Government policy.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1287695/Obama-given-right-shut-internet-kill-switch.html#ixzz17TaqgdAD

    Shoot, the big Com companies would obey the G's orders in a Milwaukee minute.


    by we are stardust on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:45pm

    And so Julian Assange becomes a martyr and hero. And Wikileaks data - and the data on other similar sites that have and may crop up in the future - gets validated rather than discredited.

    Smooth move (government) dudes. Bet you didn't figure that to happen.


    by cmaukonen on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:55pm

    Haven't some offshoots started their own Wikileaks clone? I'm not sure I'd really see the genie being put in the bottle on this one, though I may very well be wrong.


    by Orion on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 8:01pm

    Far from a death knell for the internet rather, maybe we're about to see a lesson about an individual's hubris (perhaps right out of "Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten",) we'll see--in any case, there will be alternatives, the egg can't be put back together again:

    WikiLeaks: What happens next?

    Whistleblower site criticised for its reliance on Julian Assange and its inability to publish new material

    Robert Booth, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 December 2010 21.17 GMT

    [....]

    WikiLeaks is so reliant on his leadership that there is no natural replacement. Tonightplans were even being drawn up to allow him to manage the organisation from a prison cell if his incarceration proves prolonged.

    Critics say Assange's imprisonment has highlighted a key weakness of WikiLeaks – its over-reliance on one person.

    "I am the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financier and all the rest," Assange reportedly told a colleague who questioned his judgment in September. "If you have a problem with me, piss off."

    There was a damaging schism in the organisation in September and now WikiLeaks faces a rival start-up group.

    [....]

    In the longer term, WikiLeaks's pre-eminence is set to be challenged. After an internal row in September over the handling of the publication of the war logs, one of Assange's key lieutenants, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, quit to set up a rival group taking key staff with him.

    Domscheit-Berg's rival, yet to be launched, aims to tackle what he sees as some of the weaknesses of WikiLeaks decision to focus on publishing only big parcels of headline-grabbing information. He said there had been "a lack of transparency about how decisions had been reached", "a lot of resentment" in the organisation, and that not all of the work was "being done correctly"....

    [....]

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-what-happens-next

    I should add that the hubris and lessons learned goes both ways. The U.S.'s whole classification and security clearance system sucked and was stoopid for this day and age, plain and simple.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 8:18pm

    I think Emptywheel's concern, and that of many others, is NOT just for the Wikileaks info making it to print media, say, or to online major media networks.  It's the attempt to control search engines, and the disasters the federal government could wreak on other information and control in its attempt to shut things down to guard their secrets. 

    The rivalry info is really interesting, AA, as is your reiterating the lameness of US govt. security.  Shorter: when you try to protect everything, you may fail to protect the real secret stuff.


    by we are stardust on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 8:50pm

    30 years ago there were several organizations that did things like Wiki-leaks.  They were called "the press".


    by Gregor Zap on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 12:39am

    Ron Wyden makes me proud to be from Oregon! 


    by Gregor Zap on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 12:34am

    It's odd to me that his hold of the bill, nor the draconian bill itself, garnered so little attention, Gregor.  I can only think that there has been so much breaking news on so many fronts that we're pushing back against that the issue went begging.  Free and open internet is crucial by now to Democracy, and there's no reason to give any administration such power to close down the parts they don't like. 

    Glad you can be proud of Wyden, and I hope he can continue to win this one.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 6:38am

    This is what I have been afraid of from the beginning: that Mr. Assange's data-dump was going to give "them" the excuse they needed to castrate the Internet. I live from the Internet... I don't "need to know" diplomatic gossip... I need an open Internet. Thank you Julian.


    by David Seaton on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 6:38am

    If someone who does feel they need to know "diplomatic gossip" can't also use the internet to share information germane to their own spheres of interest, you already don't have an open internet. At best that would be an interntet censored in such a way that it does not negatively impact your own pesonal desires. Good looking out David.

    When they came for the diplomatic cable discussers, I didn't say anything because I "don't need to know" diplomatic gossip. Then they came for the anti-Israel conspriacy nuts ...


    by kgb999 on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 6:53am

    Speaking of anti-Israel conspiracies. A commentator on my home blog asked the following:

    Where are the cables critical of the Israelis? Why so much talk of Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq, The Saudis, etc...

    Here in the Spanish press we have tons of material of the American diplomat's comments on all the major Spanish politicians, the judges etc. Am I missing something, or is there no gossip coming from the US embassy in Tel-Aviv?


    by David Seaton on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 8:47am

    I don't blame Assange for whatever this government, or the governments we are and will be coercing into attempting to squeeze down the internet's openness.  I think it's a fight worth having.  When our government lies to us regularly about matters of grave importance continually, and there are no longer ways to prove the lies, it's really hard for me not to applaud the leaks.

    There are questions I have about it all; for instance the conventional belief that all the data was stolen by Private/Corporal? Manning.  It seems like many people may have contributed to the site.  I question whether Assange is as tech-savvy as he claims, but that's mainly due to criticism in areas I don't know much about.

    I had a twinge when I read about the list of critical global targets that needed to be protected, and the outrage that brought out.  But then I remembered how often 'Security Experts' went on the talk shows and pointed out how many installations and ports and whatnot in the US were exposed and unprotected, and I'd snark: Hey, Al Qeda: Over Here! 

    From what I've read, Assange gave our government the chance to weigh in what docs should be redacted, and they didn't always take him up on the offer.  I don't know which info might prove to be game-changing, but as with the info on which entities received the Fed's Emergency Loans and Grants, that info IS gamechanging, and we wonder at all the categories of info they still hide from the public and Congress.

    I don't really think that this government actually needs draconian security laws passed; it evades the Constitution and international law all the time.  But I can't see making those moves legal. The freaking Patriot Act seems to give carte blanche to the President to incarcerate indefinitely anyone he deems to be a threat to security.  That's hideous.

    It's always said that the hackers who work for the government aren't as good as those in the private sector, but I'd hate to have to count on volunteers trying to keep things open for us, though I still don't understand how hard or easy it would be to shut down all 'they' might want Shut Down.  As kgb said, keeping the internet as we know it might be really difficult if 'they' really want to muck it up.

     


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 7:11am

    Stars, a lot of this boils down to what Bismark said, "people like to eat sausages, but they don't like to know how they are made". As I told somebody the other day, what Assange has done is like going up to a mafia hit-man, pulling a water pistol on him, and squirting him in the face while yelling, "Bang, Bang, you're dead!" Then expecting that there will be no consequences.  It is all so incoherent and contradictory... it is all posited on the idea that at one and the same time the USA is this murderous, imperialist, ogre and simultaneously a sort of "Our Lady of Mercy" that forgives everything. If the USA is as bad as Assange says, then he is a dead man walking or none of this makes a mite of sense.

    Here is a series of questions by paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan that are pretty to the point:

    As these documents have apparently come out of Pentagon files, what does that tell us about the U.S. military's ability to keep a secret? Are U.S. battle and war plans also unprotected?
       
    How is it that, thus far, only PFC Bradley Manning has been apprehended?
       
    Who vetted Manning? Is it possible one 22-year-old with a computer and disks can get access to, download and transfer to anti-Americans the entire correspondence of the Department of State with U.S. embassies?
       
    Some 250,000 documents -- thousands classified as confidential, secret and "no foreign" distribution -- were thieved.
       
    Who was in charge of securing those secrets? Why have heads not rolled? What has happened to the idea of accountability?
       
    A few years ago, a leak of the name of a single CIA analyst, Valerie Plame, had the national press in an uproar, with a grand jury impaneled and a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, named to investigate the leak right up to and into the Oval Office, if necessary.
       
    Vice President Cheney's aide, Scooter Libby, was prosecuted for lying about the leak. Karl Rove was hauled repeatedly before a grand jury.
       
    Why is the Obama White House getting a pass when this national humiliation and diplomatic Pearl Harbor occurred on its watch?

    All of this is pretty weird I think.


    by David Seaton on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 9:02am

    I may not be reading your metaphors right, but Assange gave himself up to the police in London.  Clearly accountable, by my book.  If you mean he shouldn't have tried to hide from people who might want to assassinate him, that's another matter for which you'd need to make a case, and I'd go crazy about.  ;o)

    Buchanan's question conflating Plame's outing and the outing of Wikileaks is pretty idiotic: Obama didn't have anything to do with the leaks, and his DOJ is 'pursuing investigations with an eye toward prosecution' or whatever he said.  Pat's smart enough to know that 'battle plans' would be classified more tightly, for God's sake; his mouth just outpaces his brain at times; well, maybe a lot of tiimes...

    Sausages: Hmmm.  I'd counter that many of us don't like the sausages, believe that the sausage-makers lie about what's in the sausages, we know that this is so in other areas, so we think it's our right to see how and why the sausages were made. 

    I'm still scratching my head over your mafia hit-man analogy, sorry.

     


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 10:01am

    I'm still scratching my head over your mafia hit-man analogy, sorry.

    Very simple, Stars, if the US is as badass as Assange maintians in his online "manifesto" then, by provoking the US government, he is in the deepest shit imaginable. That is what I mean about squirting a waterpistol in a sicario's face. The people that the US has to worry about will take it as utter weakness if Obama doesn't nail Assange's skin to the barn.This is like a junky not paying his pusher... if the word gets around, nobody is going to pay.  Didn't Assange calculate with that? I think he suffers from delusions of grandeur.


    by David Seaton on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 10:55am

     

    (Boy am I sacrificing an ocean of snark with this comment.)

     

    In its simplest form, Mr. Assange is operating on the assumption that things like the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the many other similar sentiments, codified or not, regarding the nature of a free society, are operable principles which inform modern life.  If he is killed or otherwise done away with this proposition is not proven false.  Even if the GWOT is to be fought on every hard drive on every computer in the world,  neither the technology nor the best efforts of tyrants can change this fact:

         Stone walls do not a prison make,

         Nor iron bars a cage;

         Minds innocent and quiet take

        That for an hermitage

                                                    To Althea, From Prison   Richard Lovelace


    by LarryH on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 12:03pm

    I had to google Lovelace, I confess.  They're great lines, and I really like your 'simplest form', Larry, and find your sentiments rather bracing.  I do wonder which snark you're sacrificing, though.


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 12:25pm

    In its simplest form, Mr. Assange is operating on the assumption that things like the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the many other similar sentiments, codified or not, regarding the nature of a free society, are operable principles which inform modern life.

    Mr. Assange could be wrong. Remember that no less than Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus when he found it convenient.


    by David Seaton on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 12:30pm

    “Convenient” you say?  The American civil war was a convenience?  Perhaps you are thinking of our last President of fond memory who saw “convenience” in being a “war president.” (Note:  Lovelace penned the little poem I quoted while in prison during his own “convenient” little civil war in England circa 1640.  His biography might be instructive when considering Mr. Assange.)

    Mr. Seaton you are a technologist and I greatly admire your professional abilities and your contributions to the welfare of your fellow man.  Again I find myself at odds with you and in disagreement, but I want you to know that I do so with great respect for you.

    There is nothing inherently “weird” in Mr. Assange’s behavior.  It is elementary civil disobedience.  Anyone who has decided to stand against a police line or a hostile crowd in peaceful protest knows the choice to do so is not unencumbered or without risk.  There is always anxiety and concern.  But no one can be forced to take part in such activities.  They must be freely chosen.  The aim of all such actions is to prick the moral sentiment of the general population and in that way place “good” above convenience.  As Mr. Assange points out in his op-ed in yesterday’s Australian, there is not a single documented case of anyone being harmed physically by anything WikiLeaks has distributed.   He freely chooses to make his protest.  We need not posit self-delusion or euphoria to explain his behaviour.  It is to be seen how the general population responds and how the established order reacts.  For Mr. Assange and his supporters the last few lines of Mr. Lovelace’ poem are enough. 

        If I have freedom in my love

        And in my soul am free, 

        Angels alone, that soar above,

        Enjoy such liberty.


    by LarryH on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 1:49pm

    I do want to make sure that you understand that this diary was not about Assange or Wikileaks per se, but the potential attempts of our government (or other nations it might/will pressure), to shut down portions of the internet in order to prevent leaks, freeze accounts, crash domains and search engines, etc. I am a supporter, and I want to make that clear. 


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 2:00pm

    Sorry Dusty, I didn’t mean to hijack your post.  I guess it is just that those of us with a passing exposure to technologies like computers get a kick out of the idea that any of this stuff is secure or securable.  You might recall that the Steves ( Jobs and Wozniak) started out as “phone freaks.”  And so the delinquent teenager joins the police force and spends his time arresting delinquent teenagers – just part of the great Mandala of life.

    Like Scotty said, “the more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain". The teenagers who understood that joke and laughed at it in 1984 are now 40 something today.  Let’s say that they decide to quarantine anything containing WikiLeaks material.  Why not just salt every site, especially places like MSNBC or FOX, with WikiLeaks material?  Hey this may turn out to be fun.


    by LarryH on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 2:25pm

    Ya didn't highjack it, Larry; I just couldn't suss out your 'snark' comment; and I hope you're right that no laws can be passed that will shut us down as they try to contain infoleaks.  Kgb said 'not and keep the internet functioning', or close to it.


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 2:35pm

    Sorry stardust.  The "snark" comment wasn't aimed at you.  It is just that I've got a lot of miles in the world of software from bank data processing to software development for the big guys.  Cmauk told me the other day that the security cameras at Orlando airport are not connected to anything because DHS only funded the cameras, not recording devices etc.  You can't shut down the internet without compromising the power grid, nuclear reactor safety, commerce and the rest.  I say "Bring it on."  But I thought there were sincere and serious responses to your post and I didn't want to interrupt that.


    by LarryH on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 2:55pm

    Ta, Larry.  ;o)


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 4:09pm

    From Davidseth at docudharma.com:

    From the NYT:

      LONDON - A broad campaign of cyberattacks appeared to be under way on Wednesday in support of the beleaguered antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, which has drawn governmental criticism from around the globe for its release of classified American documents and whose founder, Julian Assange, is being held in Britain on accusations of rape.

     

    Attacks were reported on Mastercard.com, which stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks; on the lawyer representing the two Swedish women who have accused Mr. Assange of sexual improprieties; and on PostFinance, the Swiss postal system's financial arm, which closed Mr. Assange's account after saying he provided false information by saying that he resided in Switzerland.

    At least some of the attacks involved distributed denials of service, in which a site is bombarded by requests from a network of computers until it reaches capacity and, effectively, shuts down.

    It was unclear whether the various attacks were independently mounted, but suspicion was immediately focused on Anonymous, a leaderless group of activist hackers that had vowed to wreak revenge on any organization that lined up against WikiLeaks and that claimed responsibility for the Mastercard attack.

     

    Anonymous, according to the Times, has expressed its philosophy in two manifestos released this past week, and is battling for nothing less than free information on a free Internet:


    The group, which gained notoriety for their cyberattacks...  released two manifestos over the weekend vowing revenge against enemies of WikiLeaks.

    "We fight for the same reasons," said one. "We want transparency and we counter censorship."

    The manifestos singled out companies like PayPal and Amazon, who had cut off service to WikiLeaks after the organization's recent release of classified diplomatic documents from a cache of 250,000 it had obtained.

    In recent days, Gregg Housh, an activist who has worked on previous Anonymous campaigns, said that a core of 100 or so devout members of the group, supplemented by one or two extremely expert hackers, were likely to do most of the damage. Mr. Housh, who disavows any illegal activity himself, said the reason Anonymous had declared its campaign was amazingly simple. Anonymous believes that "information should be free, and the Internet should be free," he said,

    Information, as the law now stands, is anything but free. But the Internet for more than a decade and a half has eroded much of the traditional deference to ownership of information. Napster and its progeny have brought a generation of people who think music and film should all be free.  Readers of Blogs are never disturbed by what amounts to wholesale infringement of copyrighted photos and videos and text. Wikileaks has carried this a step further by publishing enormous amounts of material officially designated "secret".  The trend on the Internet is toward free and unfettered access to all information.  But those who own the information have no intention whatsoever to allow it to flow without charge and without a fight.

    Today's attacks, I think, mark the Cyber Battle of Lexington and Concord.


    by we are stardust on Wed, 12/08/2010 - 6:43pm