Diplomatic WikiLeaks

contadino · Post by **contadino** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:07

Vortex wrote:Haven't any of you worked inside government or inside a large corporation?

Or for the military?

Or perhaps been close friends with someone who has?

Surely you must see that 'the system' is going to swing into action to deal with this new threat?

Trendy-lefty wishful thinking won't prevent what's to come.

(And before you have yet another go at me, check out my avatar. I do my bit for freedom too ... and with greater personal risk than posting socialist platitudes from behind a keyboard.)

I've worked in all the institutions you mention, and they've all suffered from the inability to make changes quickly.

Furthermore, government would be unable to, say, nationalise the UK domain registry, without a long-winded impact assessment, and consultation with business stakeholders. Any new legislation would need such an impact analysis.

Plus, the more I read about these 'hacktivists' the more confident I am that they'd be able to run rings around the various government IT companies. The government may try to play the game, but it would be a very expensive waste of money.

P.S. You are being a bit of a drama queen on the subject.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:15

eatyourveg · Post by **eatyourveg** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:18

caspian wrote:Good lord, Vortex, are you always this much of a hysterical drama queen? "2011 the year the web died"? Give me a break. The only thing that'll kill the Internet is a lack of power to run the servers. It's too late for governments to put the genie back in the bottle. There are any number of ways to circumvent state control. The Russian Business Network hasn't had any trouble continuing its activities, and al-Qaeda's media wing, As-Sahab, hasn't been stopped from issuing its propaganda videos.

Just as an aside, I would suggest that the US or the UK have no interest in shutting down AQ's web activities, they need an outside threat to maintain a jolly good thing for the populace to worry about.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:20

Using agent orange didn't win them the war, it just hurt a lot of people and continues to cause malformed babies to this day, making Monsanto top of my evil corporations list, and their sponsors the US government, fairly near the top of my evil governments list too.

Some of us seem to be forgetting, in this discussion, that this is PowerSwitch, the forum that recognises that the end of cheap oil is nigh. The global system is not only under threat of cyber-hackers and wikileakers, it has to contend with the drying up of its lifeblood. The system will pass. Our job is to ease the transition so that the least harm is done.

Think of it like the Lord of the Rings. We are elves and ents and dwarves. We fight our skirmishes and battles as we must but the course of war will be determined by Frodo taking the ring of finite fossil fuels to the Crack of Doom.

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:21

Internet in the UK is already censored, by a nice chirpy body call the Internet Watch Federation or some such. 99% of users are already covered, wouldnt stop much to drag in the other 1%.
If you go to a blocked site, you just get a 404.

The body that controls *.uk is prepared to block a site on request from the police

The Government could have killed the Wikileaks story with a D Notice, baring all tv channels, radio stations and publications from mentioning it.

Authority doesnt need "total victory", its just needs good enough.
A few dozen people passing round floppies containing back issues of the HuffingtonPost arent a threat to the government.

Vortex · Post by **Vortex** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:28

Rather than cowering under a table, which seems to be your proposal.
Rather than cowering under a table, which seems to be your proposal.

I'm not sure why I should be 'cowering'.

I have no strong position on this, although I tend towards thinking that the information release was handled poorly.

However I do feel a bit annoyed that a single attention seeking twerp has caused so much fuss ... in fact, enough fuss to cause the rest of us some trouble in the future.

Assange and his associates - however well motivated - have given governments carte blanche to do what they like to the Internet.

The short term news releases will affect the world - briefly. The long term changes to the Web will affect us all ... for ever.

I like the Web as it is (mostly) ... and I suspect that the ISPs etc will now start blocking ports, limiting bandwidth, constraining emails and so on.

Also we could see DNS servers restricting our selections to 'approved' sites.

(And, yes, you CAN work around these blocks ... but most people won't have the skill to do that)

Anyway, that's my last word on this - most points have been covered by now.

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:29

The Government could have killed the Wikileaks story with a D Notice, baring all tv channels, radio stations and publications from mentioning it.

Nobody is disputing the fact that traditional media can be censored if the governments wants to. The internet is different, with enough skill any individual can find a way of find the truth. Thats what savvy Chinese hackers do if they want to read stories that the Chinese governments doesn't want them to.

The reason the Chinese censorship has been relatively successful is that the majority of the Chinese youth are apolitical and quite happy using the internet to chat to friends, watch downloaded films and music. If they wanted to, say a mass anti-government movement, they could cause severe problems for Chinese internet censorship regime.

Vortex ignores the fact that different governments have a interest in maintaining internet freedom, if only so that 'their' hackers can cause immense damage to say Pentagon cyber defences in the event of war. Ultimately, whilst states can try and control the internet I can't see how they can.

What they can do is contain and make it difficult (like in China) to access dissident information/sources but that depends on the general attitude of the general populace; are they that interested?

DominicJ · Post by **DominicJ** » 09 Dec 2010, 14:45

LB
But the government doesnt need to control ALL of the people, just most of them.
And it can control the internet well enough for that, quite easily.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 09 Dec 2010, 15:20

This is funny.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/de ... eace-prize

What a farce.

As for the sexual allegations, all the salacious details are spread over the non-European internet in contradictory detail.

In matters of private lust, the truth is impossible to tell. In the UK this case would never lead to an arrest let alone conviction.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 09 Dec 2010, 15:37

Grauniad wrote:Russia has suggested that Julian Assange should be awarded the Nobel peace prize, in an unexpected show of support from Moscow for the jailed WikiLeaks founder.

Wow, Putin on I, on the same side, who'd have thought it. We live in interesting times.

2 As and a B · Post by **2 As and a B** » 09 Dec 2010, 15:38

clv101 wrote:There is one aspect to Vortex's argument that has merit. It's certainly technically possible to have a controlled Internet.

The Internet would be nothing without multi-million pound physical infrastructure projects. These facilities are all owned and operated by corporations that HAVE to play by the law. Laws can change, corporations and their infrastructure will then fall in line.

Probably some new H&S regulation!

- - -

Now, in all this, aren't there two issues?

1. The US has an incredibly lax attitude to keeping 'secret' information secret. The UK is pretty bad as well, what with leaving stuff in trains, taxis, restaurants, and so on. The solution to this is NOT to tighten controls over the flow of information in the public domain, it is to make the secret information secure - to close the stable door so the horse can't bolt.

2. The digital rights people and hackers targeting corporations and organisations. I know little about that.

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 09 Dec 2010, 16:53

eatyourveg wrote:Just as an aside, I would suggest that the US or the UK have no interest in shutting down AQ's web activities, they need an outside threat to maintain a jolly good thing for the populace to worry about.

Yes, that might well be true, although I don't think the same principle applies to the RBN.

caspian · Post by **caspian** » 09 Dec 2010, 17:00

DominicJ wrote:The Government could have killed the Wikileaks story with a D Notice, baring all tv channels, radio stations and publications from mentioning it.

The DA Notice is purely advisory and not legally enforceable. One was issued prior to the WL disclosures and it doesn't appear to have had much effect on the press.

woodpecker · Post by **woodpecker** » 09 Dec 2010, 17:53

"In a twist to the story it has emerged that DODGY TAX AVOIDERS, which last week refused to host Wikileaks, is selling a Kindle version of the documents Wikileaks has leaked." [BBC news online]

Now that, if true, is funny.

contadino · Post by **contadino** » 09 Dec 2010, 18:12

woodpecker wrote:"In a twist to the story it has emerged that DODGY TAX AVOIDERS, which last week refused to host Wikileaks, is selling a Kindle version of the documents Wikileaks has leaked." [BBC news online]

Now that, if true, is funny.

As of this morning, they were still selling Wikileaks t-shirts, mugs and other tat.