Wikileaks And Assange’s Anonymous Army Kill The Old Media New Media Debate: Hackers Are Today’s Intrepid Reporters
DO hackers approve of the action of the meme Anonymous that calls for Julian Assange’s supporters to bring down Mastercard, Visa, Amazon, Paypal and anyone who declines to do business with Wikileaks?
The think irony that a bank and credit card companies would make stand on ethics is not lost on many. But is attacking them damaging to Wikileaks in the long run?
Operation Payback will right wrongs and make the companies think again. Right? Chris “Coldblood” Wood is the group’s human face (albeit blurred when he’s on the telly). But is it a group? And what good does it do attacking companies that surely are free to choose whom they work with?
And what is the good of being a skilled hacker if you are going to make yourself known? Jester, the US patriots, State Department wonks or whoever is the individual or group that brought down the Wikileaks site have made no telly appearances.
Is that more terrifying and worrisome than Chris Coldblood and the 16-year-old nicked in Holland for his involvement in Operation Payback?
Anorak is big fan of 4Chan. At its best it a tool for radicalism and an outlet for talent. This is its call to arms on Wikielaks.
Wikileaks is all about truth and transparency. But hacking and covert operations by people with aliases makes it look shadowy and up-to-no-good. Can this hacking be to the detriment of the cause? If you want change you need to woo The Man. Honey and not vinegar might be better way to go.
And there is a huge opportunity. Big media has stuffed up. They have acted as a conduit for Government spin and duplicity. The New York Times’ behaviour or Iraq was lamentable. And its take on Wikileaks belies a bias.
Investigative journalism with its experts, sources and insiders is a myth undone by Wikileaks. Did any old media get the scoop they now seize on and champion or decry from their front pages? As with the MPs expanse scandal, it took a whistleblower to make the story. The old media miss edit utterly. The Telegraph was just a channel that paid best for the information. Did the Guardian get the Wikileaks scoop because it made a decent donation, or because it made the story?
Sites like Order Order are a hit because they give you the inside take on power and expose the media lobby for what it is: a cartel of minds with an agenda to make their expertise pay and their paymasters happy to keep them on the staff. This journalism seeks no answers: it seeks to engage in the big debate.
Anyhow, this is what 2600 Magazine, “a quarterly journal for the hacker community that has published since 1984” says about Operation Payback:
Denial of service attacks against PayPal, Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, and other corporations and entities have been underway for the last few days, as widely reported in the mainstream media. Each of these targets had previously taken some sort of action against the whistleblower website wikileaks.org and its affiliates. The media reports almost invariably refer to “hackers” as being behind these actions. While there is great sympathy in the hacker world for what Wikileaks is doing, this type of activity is no better than the strong-arm tactics we are fighting against…
What the above named corporations have done to Wikileaks is inexcusable and constitutes a different sort of denial of service attack, one that is designed to eliminate an organization, an individual, or an idea. We find it inexplicable that donations can easily be made to hate groups and all sorts of convicted criminals through these same services, yet somehow a website that publishes leaked information – and which has never been charged or convicted of a crime – is considered unacceptable. We believe it’s not the place of credit card companies or banks to judge the morality or potential threat level of anyone, let alone those who are following in the long tradition of journalists and free speech advocates worldwide.
You say hacker? Time to call them investigative reporters tapping phone records, getting the raw data and feeding the journalists to make sense of it. Perhaps, after all, there is no old media nor new media: there is just a lot of media. The voracious reader will make up their own mind. The good journalist will present the see thought the chaff and present the essence to the consumer…
Posted: 10th, December 2010 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
