Ian WhiteLittle Brother vs Big Brother: The Internet War
December 10th 2010 13:56
Category: No Category
It appears that the revolution could be here.
The transparency struggle has finally reached a boiling point due to the war on Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange after he gave the media another word to add the suffix 'gate' on the end of with the diplomatic cable scandal. The internet apparently is tired of anybody against the government getting away with hiding its rampant power abuse being labeled a terrorist. Specifically 4chan. After mirrors of the Wikileaks website have gone up around the world to insure it can't be taken down, everyones favorite English-language imageboard website has decided to join the fray with their sights set on the companies that abandoned and/or tried to undermine Wikileaks. When they weren't popularizing internet memes like Rickrolling and Pedobear, 4chan's army of demented, but self-righteous freedom fighters have been known to scuffle with billion dollar companies. In September they unleashed an assault on the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America because they hired Aiplex Software to attempt a shutdown of the torrent site Pirate Bay. When the dust settled, the 3 companies had their websites inconvenienced with temporary shutdowns. But the associated law firms were taken on as well, in particular ACS: Law who had over 300 megabytes of private company emails posted to the web.
4chan now is getting payback on behalf of Wikileaks, unleashing a plethora of distributed denial-of-service attacks on PayPal, PostFinance, Visa, and MasterCard. The companies all had similar fairyta-I mean reasons for their abandonment of Wikileaks claiming violation of use policy, which in prepared statement-speak means they were under political pressure. Paypal's blogs thus far have been the only thing taken down but PostFinance and Mastercard's sites are being crushed under the weight of e-fury. To add insult to injury Datacell, who takes care of payments to Wikileaks, is threatening to sue MasterCard over Wikileaks' account suspension.
A war with the internet may be the last thing the government wants. This isn't an enemy whose country you can just occupy and bomb (that still hasn't worked), this enemy is anonymous and is fighting with an idea: freedom. Nothing good has come from waging war on ideas, i.e. terrorism (unless you count raised Haliburton stock) and history has not been kind to the status quo when the subjugated people remove the boot from their throats and throw a leg sweep. Hackers are vast, they are cunning, and don't have many social obligations. This would be like the Lion vs the Shark, with the Lion taking the fight to the ocean.
If these companies start fearing the hackers more than the government and decide to stand their ground on transparency, things could get ugly fast. I don't know what'll happen. Maybe the government picks up the phone and dials 1984, declaring martial law on internet access. Maybe to retaliate the Pentagon's computer's get shut down, or the Dow plunges sub zero. This is the digital age. We are so technologically dependent on everything that a full-scale conflict could be the cyber equivalent of having a firefight in Times Square during New Years. But it'll be a necessary one. The corruption at the upper echelons of power need to be exposed. The government has its place, and it needs to learn it. In a democracy the government fears its people, in a dictatorship people fear their government. We've been lulled into a dictatorship. Transparency is how we can keep government in check, show them that little brother is watching them too. Then maybe we'll be able to one day live in a society where the body of officials sworn to protect it, don't use their authority for personal gain. And if they do, they'll have no place to hide.
The transparency struggle has finally reached a boiling point due to the war on Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange after he gave the media another word to add the suffix 'gate' on the end of with the diplomatic cable scandal. The internet apparently is tired of anybody against the government getting away with hiding its rampant power abuse being labeled a terrorist. Specifically 4chan. After mirrors of the Wikileaks website have gone up around the world to insure it can't be taken down, everyones favorite English-language imageboard website has decided to join the fray with their sights set on the companies that abandoned and/or tried to undermine Wikileaks. When they weren't popularizing internet memes like Rickrolling and Pedobear, 4chan's army of demented, but self-righteous freedom fighters have been known to scuffle with billion dollar companies. In September they unleashed an assault on the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America because they hired Aiplex Software to attempt a shutdown of the torrent site Pirate Bay. When the dust settled, the 3 companies had their websites inconvenienced with temporary shutdowns. But the associated law firms were taken on as well, in particular ACS: Law who had over 300 megabytes of private company emails posted to the web.
4chan now is getting payback on behalf of Wikileaks, unleashing a plethora of distributed denial-of-service attacks on PayPal, PostFinance, Visa, and MasterCard. The companies all had similar fairyta-I mean reasons for their abandonment of Wikileaks claiming violation of use policy, which in prepared statement-speak means they were under political pressure. Paypal's blogs thus far have been the only thing taken down but PostFinance and Mastercard's sites are being crushed under the weight of e-fury. To add insult to injury Datacell, who takes care of payments to Wikileaks, is threatening to sue MasterCard over Wikileaks' account suspension.
A war with the internet may be the last thing the government wants. This isn't an enemy whose country you can just occupy and bomb (that still hasn't worked), this enemy is anonymous and is fighting with an idea: freedom. Nothing good has come from waging war on ideas, i.e. terrorism (unless you count raised Haliburton stock) and history has not been kind to the status quo when the subjugated people remove the boot from their throats and throw a leg sweep. Hackers are vast, they are cunning, and don't have many social obligations. This would be like the Lion vs the Shark, with the Lion taking the fight to the ocean.
If these companies start fearing the hackers more than the government and decide to stand their ground on transparency, things could get ugly fast. I don't know what'll happen. Maybe the government picks up the phone and dials 1984, declaring martial law on internet access. Maybe to retaliate the Pentagon's computer's get shut down, or the Dow plunges sub zero. This is the digital age. We are so technologically dependent on everything that a full-scale conflict could be the cyber equivalent of having a firefight in Times Square during New Years. But it'll be a necessary one. The corruption at the upper echelons of power need to be exposed. The government has its place, and it needs to learn it. In a democracy the government fears its people, in a dictatorship people fear their government. We've been lulled into a dictatorship. Transparency is how we can keep government in check, show them that little brother is watching them too. Then maybe we'll be able to one day live in a society where the body of officials sworn to protect it, don't use their authority for personal gain. And if they do, they'll have no place to hide.
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