Japan syndrome shows why we need WikiLeaks The damaged third and fourth reactors of the Fukushima No1 power plant. Source: AFP IN December 2008, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed to "a serious problem" with nuclear reactors in areas of Japan prone to earthquakes. Recent earthquakes "have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants", he told a meeting of the Nuclear Safety and Security Group of the Group of Eight countries. The information was recorded in a US diplomatic cable and comes to us courtesy of WikiLeaks. Unfortunately, all this information, including the original cables, was released only this week, through The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian newspapers in Britain. But without WikiLeaks most of it probably never would have seen the light of day. The Japanese government did not completely ignore the IAEA concerns: it built an emergency response centre at the Fukushima plant. This week Julia Gillard said she had a lot of respect for whistleblowers.
Wikileaks : l’État, le réseau et le territoire « Mais où est-ce qu'on est ? Politique Published on décembre 12th, 2010 | by Anthony “ Infowar”, “cyber warfare”, “opération riposte”, “guerre de l’information”, … les titres couvrant l’affaire Wikileaks ont largement puisé dans le vocabulaire militaire pour décrire les événements qui ont suivi la publication des “cables” diplomatique par le site de Julian Assange. La multiplication des déclarations violentes de journalistes et hommes politiques à l’encontre de Wikileaks, l’acharnement des États a vouloir faire fermer le site en vain via les hébergeurs ou les fournisseurs de noms de domaines, et bien sûr la “riposte” des Anonymous par attaques DDoS, tout cela participe bien d’un climat de “guerre”. Mais quelle guerre ? L’Internet, un territoire étranger Cela dit, la menace terroriste ou les questions de droits d’auteurs que soulèvent les usages de l’Internet attirent l’attention de l’État sur le réseau. Même le gigantesque firewall chinois n’est qu’une chimère. Ce qui est inscrit sur le réseau devient le réseau
Hillary Clinton and internet freedom (civilized) At the beginning of 2010, her speech coincided with the incident between Google and China. This time, Clinton waited patiently for positive results from the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions before launching into her diatribe. With a storytelling air, she started her speech by referring to the temporary Internet black-out initiated by Moubarak: A few minutes after midnight on January 28, the Internet went dark across Egypt. She did not waste much time before mentioning Neda, the young Iranian women who was murdered during the demonstrations against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. What happened in Egypt and Iran – where this week again violence was used against protesters – was about a great deal more than the Internet. Without questioning Facebook’s role in the riots inspired by Sidi Bouzid or the importance of a “downgraded channel” in an isolated Egypt, Clinton’s statement seems obvious – but it is not trivial. Hillary Clinton's discourse in 2010... ... and in 2011
“Why I nominated WikiLeaks for the Nobel Peace Prize” Could WikiLeaks, the organization that caused more than a migraine for diplomats around the world, join the ranks of other Noble Peace Prize winners? This what Snorre Valen – a member of the Norwegian Parliament – hopes. This 26 year-old blogger/musician/government official submitted his nomination to the Noble Peace Prize committee, which ultimately shook the White House. Parliament members, university chancellors, presidents, and past winners are able to suggest names of individuals and organizations for this prestigious award. A decision should be made by early October, and if WikiLeaks wins it will follow last year’s winner Liu Xiaobo. It is not unusual for organizations to be nominated; since 1901, several organizations have been distinguished for their work. Although this nomination is particularly controversial, the Noble Peace Prize committee has seen worse nominations. Contacted by OWNI, Snorre Vallen explains his nomination: The original post was published on Valen’s blog.
The Anonymous WikiLeaks protests are a mass demo against control The Anonymous web protests over WikiLeaks are the internet equivalent of a mass demonstration. It’s a mistake to call them hacking (playful cleverness) or cracking (security breaking). The LOIC program that is being used by the group is prepackaged so no cleverness is needed to run it, and it does not break any computer’s security. Calling these protests DDoS, or distributed denial of service, attacks is misleading, too. No – the proper comparison is with the crowds that descended last week on Topshop stores. The internet cannot function if websites are frequently blocked by crowds, just as a city cannot function if its streets are constantly full by protesters. In the physical world, we have the right to print and sell books. Reading, too, is done on sufferance. In the physical world, we have the right to pay money and to receive money – even anonymously. I started the free software movement to replace user-controlling non-free software with freedom-respecting free software.
If you rule by code you will fall by code: the philosophy of Wikileaks » Article Humans are animals of protocol. Our behavior is determined by rules – conscious and not. Until recently, the protocol was an instrument of hegemonic power: the rule-ing elites were makers and masters of the protocols that were used to control the people. The writing and policing of protocol was reserved for the elite. The Internet today is the place through which humanity is coming to realise that liberty will require that we – the collective we – take control of the building and re-design of protocol. In what way are the Internet and diplomacy similar? Changing the rules of conduct What is on the surface on the web is joyful chaos, depravity, free expression, every manifestation of the kaleidoscope of humanity. Wikileaks was born of hacker culture. The will to become autonomous The world of diplomacy, the world of the rulers, is certainly no sacred realm. Whosoever rules by code will fall by code.
From Indymedia to Wikileaks From Indymedia to Wikileaks: What a decade of hacking journalistic culture says about the future of news The first time I ever heard the words “mirror website,” I was sitting at a debris-strewn desk, hunched over a desktop computer, on the second floor of a nondescript office building on East 29th in Manhattan. I’d recently started volunteering with the New York City Independent Media Center, an organization that would turn out to be one of the first “citizen journalism” organizations in the United States — though certainly no one would have called it that at the time. The IMC was in its third day of participant-powered coverage of protest actions taken against World Economic Forum (WEF) meetings in New York. It was less than five months after September 11; the city was cold and bleak, and people were tense. “It’s going to crash,” I muttered. The Internet-powered introduction of new “objects” into the journalistic bloodstream The long rise of the news geeks
Ebook: le cahier 2010 Wikileaks En quelques mois, Wikileaks a changé radicalement la vision de ce que sont des révélations journalistiques à l'heure d'Internet. La nouvelle guerre de l'information est en marche. Après avoir méticuleusement œuvré dans l’arrière-cour de l’administration américaine (en dévoilant la bavure d’un hélicoptère Apache de l’armée en Irak, puis en publiant des milliers de documents relatifs aux conflits afghan et irakien), WikiLeaks a définitivement enfoncé la porte de la sphère publique à la fin du mois de novembre. Beaucoup de choses ont été écrites sur WikiLeaks, par cercles concentriques : il y a eu le traitement des révélations contenues dans les documents, puis les commentaires sur le processus de publication, auxquels sont venus se greffer les commentaires de commentaires, dans une vertigineuse mise en abyme. Sans prétendre à l’exhaustivité, nous avons parcouru nos archives et compilé les meilleurs articles sur WikiLeaks publiés sur OWNI les six derniers mois.
“La véritable histoire de WikiLeaks”, 1er eBook d’OWNI "La véritable histoire de WikiLeaks", le premier ebook d'OWNI, sort aujourd'hui en français, en anglais et en arabe. Retrouvez des extraits, son auteur en chat à partir de 16h00 et nos projets éditoriaux augmentés. Retrouvez Olivier Tesquet, l’auteur de l’ebook, en chat, mardi 7 juin à partir de 16h, ainsi que notre premier ebook sur OWNIshop ! Découpé en neuf chapitres, La véritable histoire de WikiLeaks essaie de répondre aux questions les plus régulièrement posées: Comment fonctionne le site? Ce court (50 pages) ouvrage pédagogique s’attache aussi à élucider des points plus rarement soulevés. Quelle idéologie pour WikiLeaks? Dans le discours de Julian Assange, deux expressions reviennent inlassablement, quel que soit l’interlocuteur et quel que soit le sujet: “Maximiser l’impact”, et “obliger les gouvernements à être transparents” pour que l’exercice de la démocratie puisse se dérouler en place publique. L’histoire de WikiLeaks en une infographie Crédits photo: Flickr CC mataparda
The WikiLeaks You Missed - By Joshua E. Keating Since the first few Julian Assange-saturated months of 2011, the U.S. media have largely moved on to Arab revolutions and other sex scandals. But WikiLeaks has continued releasing embassy cables -- fewer than 16,000 of the more than 250,000 have been published so far. In contrast to its early, now-frayed partnerships with the Guardian and the New York Times, WikiLeaks is now working with local papers in countries like Peru, Haiti, and Ireland to release cables of national interest. Here are a few of the highlights: With highly anticipated national elections approaching this weekend, the government certainly can't be thrilled with the State Department's candid assessments of the country's political turmoil and the health of its aging king. The cables were viewed and analyzed by Andrew MacGregor Marshall, a British journalist working in Bangkok for Reuters. But that's not nearly the best of it. Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images In 2009, for instance, the U.S. NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images
Obama's war on whistleblowers suffers setback Rail commuters are the latest victims of the Anna Bligh state Labor government's asset sale madness. On January 4, passenger ticket fares rose 40% and Go Card fares rose 20%. The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) said on January 7 the increases were to make up for revenue lost because of the sale of Queensland Rail's profitable divisions. ETU secretary, Peter Simpson, said price increases would continue over the next few years as the state government scrambles to fund passenger services that are traditionally supported by profits from the freight divisions. "It is exactly the same as what occurred in the retail electricity market. Tensions have continued to increase between the union and the state Labor government over Bligh's plan to privatise several government assets. The ETU's campaign against privatisation has led to two state Labor MPs —Townsville member Mandy Johnstone and Steve Wettenhall from the far north seat of Barron River — resigning from the union.
‘Tis the Season of DDoS – WikiLeaks Edition DDoS attacks are flying across the Internet like there is no tomorrow. Just a few days ago, a hacktivist operating under the handle “th3j35t3r” decided to single-handedly take down the Wikileaks website with a DoS tool of his (or their) own creation. He issued a statement on Twitter shortly after explaining that the attacks against the WikiLeaks website were made for “attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, ‘other assets’ & foreign relations.” According to our statistics, his attacks resulted in 1 day 3 hours and 50 minutes of downtime for WikiLeaks before the site was completely yanked offline by Amazon and EveryDNS. Note: Initiating a DDoS attack is illegal in many countries and we do not recommend that you participate in this or future campaigns. On the other side of the attack spectrum, the anonymous attackers involved in Operation:Payback have vowed to take a temporary break from their mega-assault on the entertainment industry in order to spend some time helping WikiLeaks.