Posts Tagged ‘ WikiLeaks ’

Are Cyber-Activists Cyber-Criminals?

I recently encountered a blog post that handles the typology of online criminal activity and, amongst others, defines online activists as criminals. Needless to say I was outraged.

Why?

Well, to make things short, online activists are not criminals. I like to assume that the author didn’t mean all online activists are criminals, but defining online activism as a type of criminal activity per se is very problematic.

Even more problematic is to include the three groups criminal organizations (organized crime), cyber activists and secret services (state institutions!) in the same category.

What and who are cyber activists?

You, me, and everyone else who ever supported a cause in Facebook or Twitter; signed an online petition; made an angry comment on a company’s website or Facebook-page etc.

Evgeny Morozov (in contrary to Clay Shirky that almost mystifies the power of online tools to mobilize people) also warns of Slacktivism.
This is a kind of conscience relieving act (liking a cause in FB) that makes a person feel she did her part and thus negatively affect her activism in offline life, which is much more important in many cases (more on the subject of social media and collective action in my thesis ‘CollectiveAction 2.0′).

Sandor Vegh defined three general categories for Cyberactivism: Awareness/advocacy, organization/mobilization, and action/reaction.

The most distinct type of cyber activists, the action/reaction category, is the one addressed in the mentioned article. The activists directly attack certain aims. These aims are the online presence of real-world organizations and entities; these could be companies or corporations, governments and state institutions, NGO’s or political organizations.
The attacks serve a social or political statement and usually cause reversible damage such as taking websites offline; sometime the damage is less reversible when, for example, sensible information (that has to do with the statement that is to be made) is published. In the majority of the cases, the information turns out to be of public interest by proving the unjust that was done.

The people who do it (the cyber activists) are usually idealistic motivated with limited financial resources but if they are devoted enough to their cause or mobilize enough like-minded, they have significant human resources.

Now it is quite clear that centralized groups such as WikiLeaks, as well as decentralized groups such as Anonymous (theoretically, anyone can be Anonymous), are all cyber activists of the third category (action/reaction).
Also individuals, such as Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovido with their genius Hacking Monopolism Trilogy, are cyber activists of that category (or at times of the first one).

Criminalizing activists

But is it really a criminal act to expose unethical and corrupt behavior? To expose scandals on national and international scale? To expose information of public interest that was hidden from the public for the sake of personal interests?

The targets of cyber activists (and of the offline world activists as well) are mostly very powerful, politically and financially, so there is no surprise that they have the ability to criminalize the activity against them.

Take a look at some comparisons that run around the internet:

Source: unknown.

Source: unknown.

But why criminalize?

A criminal target is an easy target. It is much easier to neutralize a person or a group that were declared as criminal.

But more important, when criminalizing a person / group / type of activity, their place in public discourse is affected – the person (group, activity) is being delegitimized and contra-positioned against the law-obeying (and thus “ethical”) public.

And in democratic societies, control over public discourse – that is control over information, communication, and public opinion – is the strongest and most important weapon.

Cyber activists are criminals

Just like in non-cyber-space, it doesn’t matter if your activity is ethical or not; for the benefit of society or of your own; legal but unjust, or just but illegal.
It matters if you’re in position of power (political, financial, lobbying…) to legitimate your activity and criminalize those who oppose you.

Cyber activists are criminals just because they have high-profiled targets.

Society on the other hand, should support a reflective and ethical discourse, not populist accusations and sweeping criminalization of activists made by corrupted politicians and lobbyists.

2012
06/13
CATEGORY
Activism
Information Ethics
Politics
1 comment

WikiLOCs

Libraries are institutions with important values regarding information. They have their codes of ethics, which are derived from the broad field of information ethics and varies between countries.

35 Countries have official professional codes of ethics for libraries and the US is of course one of them, with American Library Association (ALA) codes of ethics.

And I quote the 2nd and 4th points:

“We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources.”

“We treat co-workers and other colleagues with respect, fairness and good faith, and advocate conditions of employment that safeguard the rights and welfare of all employees of our institutions.”

With these values as the principles shaping its world-view, the information-society was quite shocked as the Library of Congress (LoC, the national library of the USA), which plays a major role in the ALA, has started filtering WikiLeaks on December 3rd. The filtering applies within the library – for its users and its staff.

As the library officially stated:

“The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

Librarians around the country called the ALA to condemn this move and library users made some interesting suggestions, like the one that the user “mardish” posted in Reddit:

“So I’ve got this idea to print out the Wikileak Cables and put them in a binder and donate it to my local library. Think this could become a movement? […] If it’s in a library, and the federal government tries to take down Wikileaks, they’ll have to take down the libraries as well, but I firmly believe that if any organization would be willing to support this cause, it’d be the librarians.”

Censorship and libraries as a federal agency– a stress ratio

So is it or is it not censorship?

Generally speaking, YES. Denying access to any kind of information, especially one, which is openly accessible (on the internet for example), is censorship. Furthermore, denying access to WikiLeaks at times of an ongoing public debate on the matter is not just “plain old censorship” it is a violation of freedom of opinion and going against the people’s information literacy and information autonomy (other issues, on which libraries work very hard), thus harming democracy and the people’s right to take part in it.

Regarding the fact, that the library workers are being most affected from the filtering, the contradiction between the codes of ethics cited above and the act of filtering WikiLeaks is obvious.

But in this case, the answer to this question gets a bit more complicated.

The LoC, as a federal agency, had to comply with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget instructions, saying that “[… f]ederal agencies collectively, and each federal employee and contractor individually, are obligated to protect classified information pursuant to all applicable laws, as well as to protect the integrity of government information technology systems.”

The issues of national security, secrecy of governmental documents and government transparency were already discussed within the Drawer2.0 coverage of the WikiLeaks case. That’s why I will address this point differently in the case of LoC.

A library is not like any other federal agency. As an institution, whose primary goal is to create access to information, uphold censorship, collect and preserve cultural assets etc., the library is a federal agency in order to insure its independency from other factors (market factors for example) and to have the law by its side. Only in this way, libraries (above all a national library) are able to fulfill their mission.

When saying that library should make information accessible, the information addressed is all information, which is publically available (no matter in which form or medium). Secret government documents (i.e. secret government information – let us separate the information from the medium document) are of course not publically available and thus are not being collected and set for the public to read by the national library.

But once this information was made public by someone, it is information, which is publically available and libraries DO have the right to give access to this information. There should not be a consideration of form or medium, that is to say – if information is still in a “raw” state of a document posted on the web or already processed by a journalist in order to present its essence and then published in a newspaper (or on the paper’s website).

It is unimaginable (for those of us, who are used to have free speech and no censorship) that a library will deny access to a newspaper or its website. It should be the same considering WikiLeaks.

So how I see it, using the fact that a library is a federal agency in order to enforce censorship is no other than abusing the state-library relations for a goal which is completely contradictory to its original one.

** This post is a part of the Drawer2.0 alternative coverage of the WikiLeaks case: What the media doesn’t tell you and which issues are really at stake. Click here to read more.

2010
12/19
CATEGORY
Censorship
Library Values
WikiLeaks
3 comments

The WikiWitch-Hunt

…or what officially called Intermediary Censorship (1, 2).

The term intermediary censorship was coined by Ethan Zuckerman, in a very interesting ONI-publication named Access Controlled, which handles the strategies of governments around the world to shape and control cyberspace.

The situation today is that the internet is almost entirely privately held. For us as users it means that although the normative belief of having a (cyber-)space, in which we have a protected free speech, the fact is that we are always bound to terms of use, which are written by the service providers. The boundaries set by these terms of use can reflect social norms and law frameworks in the country or region, where the service provider is located, as well the service provider’s financial interests or personal world-view.

Of course the service providers have the right to do so and we as users have the choice whether to use those services or not, but the main issue here is to which extent can we rely on privately owned spaces (i.e. services) for us to carry out our free speech? Especially if those services have a lot going-on on their agenda before free speech…

The last few weeks we have had a clear example of how this situation can get completely messed up, and yes, I mean the way WikiLeaks and its activists are being hunted down in all possible fronts.

Of course each issue from the ones I am about to mention has an official explanation (e.g. violation of the Amazon terms of use), but when looking at the big picture, adding the timing and sequence of the different occurrences, it is not just that these explanations seem to be farfetched, but it is clear that these are a result of political pressure and lobbying, in which explicit threats are not to be excluded.

Some of the highlights

(please keep in mind – what you read here is just the tip of the iceberg, there have been and probably will be many more):

  • Amazon stopped hosting WikiLeaks’ website due to violation terms of use. This happened directly after being contacted by US Senator Joe Lieberman.
  • French hosting company OVH, to which WikiLeaks moved after Amazon stopped hosting the website, took WikiLeaks’ server offline in response to pressure from the French government.

Those cases raise two concerning issues:

First, as state above, to which extent can we rely on private companies to protect free speech?

Second is the worrying phenomenon of governments, which are normally supportive of free speech, not just trying to take WikiLeaks out but doing it outside of their authorities. It is clearly defined that if someone is to decide whether a website (or some of its content) should go down, it is the court of law. Not the government and especially not one politician (remember Joe Lieberman?) or political-party.

Those institutions have too the right not to give their services to certain clients. But again there are several concerning issues that are to be raised:

First are the clear double standards. Ku-Klux-Klan is just one of the horrible institutions who continue to receive services from Visa and Mastercard, PayPal probably has also a few on its list. So how could those companies claim they have stopped their service to WikiLeaks because they don’t support illegal activity (although no court of law found WikiLeaks illegal yet), but still support institutions, which are openly calling for racism, discrimination, violence etc.?!

Second is the right of a client to do as he/she wishes with his/her money. The clients (and not the financial institutions!) are the ones to decide if a contribution to WikiLeaks is ethical or not and it is their money, which is being contributed. This applies also to the Swiss bank – a bank does not have anything to do with the intended purpose of the money in an account, let alone a legal defense of a person in court. Let us not forget that the accusations are for a sexual crime and (allegedly) don’t have anything to do with WikiLeaks. But the intention is clear – closing on Julian Assange.

Having three major financial institutions in the (neo-liberal) US and one in (the neutral) Switzerland surrendering to political lobbying is a frightening fact. It shows us that if governments are not able to take down an institution that they don’t like within their legitimate authority (in WikiLeaks’ case – official censorship in the US or Europe is possible only with a court order), they are still able to financially suffocate this institution and its activists.

Outlook

The actions taken by the US government and others (who had to play along?) have clear watch and beware tactics. These can make one wonder…

  • What are the US and other governments so afraid of? What else could WikiLeaks unveil?
  • Is it so controversial that they’re willing to sacrifice their support of free speech and principles of democracy for it?
  • Why are they so anxious to frighten potential followers of WikiLeaks from taking its place (if and when it will come down)?
  • Doesn’t it create a contra-productive affect, making people more interested in the real revelations on WikiLeaks (and not the government-gossip)? Making people more supportive of WikiLeaks’ struggle? Making the media and public more critical?
  • Or is it just a kind of psychological compensation for the US government, demonstrating its power after being embarrassed publically (once again)?

** This post is a part of the Drawer2.0 alternative coverage of the WikiLeaks case: What the media doesn’t tell you and which issues are really at stake. Click here to read more.

2010
12/12
CATEGORY
Censorship
Information Ethics
Intermediary Censorship
Politics
WikiLeaks
2 comments

WikiLeaks’ Legitimacy in Terms of Information Ethics

The main issue that interests me about WikiLeaks’ work in general and the Cablegate leak in particular is its legitimacy in terms of information ethics.

As many of my previous blog posts show, information ethics is a field with many aspects, which are often positioned very differently between cultural spaces or due to personal point of view and/or interests. It will be quite hard to bring them all together when tackling this issue, but I will try to address the ones that I see most relevant.

To my point of view, WikiLeaks doesn’t operate in the name of freedom of expression. It is more that freedom of expression gives a certain amount of legitimacy to WikiLeaks’ work. WikiLeaks has a clear stated position saying that their “primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” (WikiLeaks:About).

WikiLeaks (and I mean the team standing behind this organization) expresses its position by exposing unethical conduct of governments, especially when those are trying to quiet these actions down. People and organizations, which did exactly the same thing while risking their lives in different sorts of regimes and contexts throughout history, were hunted down and severely punished in case they were caught, but they are considered heroes today.

Think about it when you hear about the witch hunt of WikiLeaks activists like Julian Assange.

I see Government transparency as highly important when it comes to information ethics in terms of politics. Activists or whistle blowing organizations like WikiLeaks are actually a vital instrument when it comes to Government transparency and democracy. Having actors, who are steadily observing government activity, criticizing it and exposing flawed conduct to the public, is one of the most important control mechanisms for a democracy. But WikiLeaks differ from the traditional role player, the media, in two ways:

  1. WikiLeaks is not bound to any government control (due to national security for example) or hardly to any law frame. It uses a very sophisticated encryption of its communication and operates from countries, where its operation is within the restrictions of the law (mostly Sweden, which is highly liberal regarding freedom of the press). This fact makes WikiLeaks capable of exposing a lot more information.
  2. WikiLeaks is a non-profit organization that operates first of all out of principles (which I cited above). The media’s first goal is financial profit; social justice comes at the second place (best case scenario). It means that the media have financial considerations, which influence its decisions whether to publish something, when and into which extent. WikiLeaks just puts it all out there and lets us choose what is relevant and build our opinion to it. The Cablegate leak is a clear example – those documents contain various information of inappropriate governmental conduct on an international level, but all the media is talking about is this tabloid-level government gossip.

BUT there is a fine line between government transparency and the certain amount of secrecy, which is essential for diplomatic contacts (one of many articles/essays to this issue by Clay Shirky). So some of the information exposed by WikiLeaks in the Cablegate leak probably crosses this line, but I will still argue that it doesn’t make the leak unethical.

In days of over-censorship and cover-up as everyday government practices, the public is being constantly denied of information, which is in its own interest. After all, the public elects its governments and governments work for their public. Shocks from the kind that WikiLeaks produces appear to be the only way to control governments and their conduct.

I believe that the major success of the Cablegate leak could be an increased government transparency by governments around the world (and not just the US). Who knows, maybe they’ll also start conducting more morally.

I hope it won’t be used as an excuse to limit our alleged freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, or who knows, maybe to start censoring the internet also in western parts of the world (more to the new methods of censorship used in the WikiLeaks case soon on this blog).

And finally, when looking at the top 10 of the Cablegate revelations, one needs only to use some common sense in order to realize that the leak is ethical; the leak does reveal unethical conduct of several governments; and although some of the diplomatic information revealed maybe should have been kept secret for a certain period of time, this information does not differ WikiLeaks from any other news-agency, who would have found out about it sooner or later and reveal it.

National Security is an issue that usually has the top hand when it collides with ethical issues like human rights, privacy or freedom of expression. Sometimes it’s just a good excuse when they’re being violated.

Until now, although the US government made repeatedly those accusations, there was no proof of any leak to be a real threat to national security and/or the security of individuals, which are mentioned in those documents (mostly in other countries, like in the War Diaries case). Primarily because those documents were produced several years prior to their exposure.

Furthermore, prior to the Cablegate leak, WikiLeaks contacted the US Embassy in the UK in an attempt to prevent publication of information that might put individuals in risk.

Any cooperation? Yeah, Right!

So making those accusations retrospectively will be far fetched. Accusing WikiLeaks of damaging the US relations with some other countries? Well, just look at the documents if you want to know who’s really to blame.

** This post is a part of the Drawer2.0 alternative coverage of the WikiLeaks case: What the media doesn’t tell you and which issues are really at stake. Click here to read more.

2010
12/10
CATEGORY
Freedom of Expression
Information Ethics
Politics
WikiLeaks
1 comment

WikiLeaks and what the media doesn’t tell you

Almost two weeks have passed since WikiLeaks published 251,287 leaked United States embassy secret documents. This is the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents give an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.

Since then I’m following one of the most exciting debates regarding freedom of expression. As said regarding the 1st amendment: the people have the right to know!

Or do they?

If you’ll ask Senator Joe Lieberman, they do not.

If you’ll ask Sarah Palin (a lovely character who appointed herself years ago to the unofficial US-Censor), it’s not just that the people don’t have the right to know, the ones who fight for this right should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden (and we all know how successful the US was with him).

How come that this specific leak is making so much noise?

WikiLeaks have made it to embarrass the US Government many times before, so what exactly triggered the current witch hunt and why is the audience suddenly so interested?

Among others, WikiLeaks published two War Diaries, one with Iraq war logs in October and another with Afghanistan war logs in July, showing the world explicit violations of human rights by the US Army in those countries. Violations, which were kept a secret by the US Government.

Those leaks made a few headlines, but the media and the public basically said “we don’t really care”.

But the new Cablegate leak, that’s something else. Here we have loads of juicy tabloid government-gossip material!

Teflon-Merkel, Sarkozy didn’t try Arabic food in Saudi-Arabia, Alpha-Male-Putin, Elton John performing on a birthday party of a Kazakhstan official etc.?

The media is having a blast and the people can’t get enough. A glorious day for the civilized west :)

So maybe it was the last straw and maybe, just maybe, the US started to really care when it comes to government-tabloid-embarrassments. Embarrassments which could actually harm the US relations with some countries, a fact that will directly impact trade relations with those countries and severely damage to the US economy and the American dollar.

And money, this is one good reason for a witch hunt.

What’s coming up:

The next posts on the Drawer2.0 blog will offer an alternative coverage of the WikiLeaks case.

In order to offer you an insight on the real issues that are at stake (beyond what I’ve just described as government tabloid gossip), different aspects of information ethics will be analyzed in reference to the current developments in the WikiLeaks case.

Among these issues you will find: freedom of expression, government transparency, privacy, censorship, intermediary censorship, information freedom and many more…

The relation of these issues to politics, democracy and national security are utmost important in the WikiLeaks case; and to my opinion, the case cannot be fully understood without having them presented.

In order to follow the Drawer2.0 WikiLeaks coverage use the following link or choose the WikiLeaks category on the sidebar.

http://drawer20.wordpress.com/category/wikileaks/

2010
12/10
CATEGORY
Politics
WikiLeaks
Leave a comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 384 other followers

%d bloggers like this: