The NYT == WikiLeaks. The NYT has always been a supporter of the First Amendment. In print. For itself. But its record of supporting it for writers on the web has been spotty. And when the chips are down, when we need a friend the most, you can be pretty sure the Times will be on the other, wrong, side. It happened in the very early days of the web, with the Communication Decency Act. The Times, and many politicians of both parties, including the President and Vice-President (Clinton and Gore) wrote, passed and signed legislation that basically said the First Amendment doesn't apply to the web. And it's happening with WikiLeaks.
It happened again this weekend in a piece by David Carr, their media columnist. I know the usual added-value arguments. I don't think either of them are over. The Times doesn't have an exclusive on intellect. <a href=" The Internet's Voltaire Moment. Subscribe to this blog About Author With a focus on open source and digital rights, Simon is a director of the UK's Open Rights Group and president of the Open Source Initiative.
He is also managing director of UK consulting firm Meshed Insights Ltd. Contact Author Email Simon Twitter Profile Google+ Profile Linked-in Profile Let me say up front that I am not a massive fan of Wikileaks. For me, it falls into the same category as The Pirate Bay; there's plenty to disagree with in what they are doing, but the crisis they provoke is fundamental to the operation of the Internet and we ignore it at our peril. Topological Change The weaknesses are not caused by Wikileaks. The problem arises from the fact that those serial intermediaries believe the solution the challenge to their existence is to reinforce their hub-and-spoke control points. Is Your Cloud Safe? Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay similarly stress the uncomfortable weaknesses in our various democracies.
Vote With Voltaire. What the attacks tell us. The current row over the latest WikiLeaks trove of classified US diplomatic cables has four sobering implications. 1. The first is that it represents the first really serious confrontation between the established order and the culture of the Net. As the story of the official backlash unfolds – first as DDOS attacks on ISPs hosting WikiLeaks and later as outfits like Amazon and PayPal (i.e. eBay) suddenly “discover” that their Terms of Service preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks — the contours of the old order are emerging from the rosy mist in which they have operated to date. This is vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the Net. As I read the latest news this morning about the increasingly determined attempts to muzzle WikiLeaks, my mind was cast back to a conversation I had in the Autumn of 2000 on an island in the Puget Sound. 2. 3. 4.
Yep. Wikileaks, The Pirate Party, And The Future Of The Internet. How to save Julian Assange's movement from itself. American diplomacy seems to have survived Wikileaks’s “attack on the international community,” as Hillary Clinton so dramatically characterized it, unscathed. Save for a few diplomatic reshuffles, Foggy Bottom doesn’t seem to be deeply affected by what happened.
Certainly, the U.S. government at large has not been paralyzed by the leaks—contrary to what Julian Assange had envisioned in one of his cryptic-cum-visionary essays, penned in 2006. In a fit of technological romanticism, Assange may have underestimated the indispensability of American power to the international system, the amount of cynicism that already permeates much of Washington’s political establishment, and the glaring lack of interest in foreign policy particulars outside the Beltway.
Indeed, it’s not in the realms of diplomacy or even government secrecy where Wikileaks could have its biggest impact. Twitter & wikileaks. Wikileaks hounded? Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.
Earlier this week, after the publishing several hundred of the 250.000 cables it says it has in its possession, WikiLeaks had to move its site from its servers in Sweden to servers in the United States controlled by online retailer Amazon. Amazon quickly came under pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and its chairman, Sen.
Joe Lieberman, in particular. After being ousted from Amazon, WikiLeaks found a refuge for part of its content with the French Internet company OVH. This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. Ron Paul: ‘What we need is more WikiLeaks’ | Raw Story. By Stephen C. WebsterFriday, December 3, 2010 14:36 EDT Popular Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul is no stranger to breaking with his party, but in a recent television appearance the libertarian-leaning Rep. went even further than any member of Congress in defending whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Speaking to Fox Business host Judge Napolitano on Thursday about recent revelations at the Federal Reserve, Paul’s typical candor showed through. “What we need is more WikiLeaks about the Federal Reserve,” he said. “Can you imagine what it’d be like if we had every conversation in the last 10 years with our Federal Reserve people, the Federal Reserve chairman, with all the central bankers of the world and every agreement or quid-pro-quo they have?
It would be massive. People would be so outraged.” Paul, a longtime critic of the US Federal Reserve, is the incoming chairman of a House subcommittee on monetary policy. “In a free society we’re supposed to know the truth,” Paul insisted. TIME Cover Dec 6. WikiLeaks et la censure politique d'Internet: nous voila prévenus !
Wikileaks et l’'hystérie de l’ancien monde «
Twitter / Wikileaks : DoJ Subpoena. Espionnage / Shield. Threats. France adds to US pressure. The French government today added to international calls for WikiLeaks to be prevented operating online, warning that it is "unacceptable" for a "criminal" site to be hosted in the country. Today's move by the French government is particularly significant because the 250,000 US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to the Guardian and four other media organisations are hosted by a French company, Octopuce. The industry minister, Eric Besson, today wrote to the French body governing internet use warning that there would be consequences for any companies or organisations helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country.
French companies are banned from hosting websites that have been deemed "criminal" and "violate the confidentiality of diplomatic relations", Besson added. The site's cache of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables are also hosted in part by Octopuce, though they are also widely available on peer-to-peer filesharing sites which do not sit under the jurisdiction of one state. Twitter.