Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Wikileaks All Over Me


Does anyone else feel that this whole 'Wikileaks' thing is just an excuse for the US Congress to pass legislation that allows them to censor or outright shut down access to websites that publish stuff that is not to their liking?

Everything released does seem to be critical towards the 'pro-war and war profiteering' agenda - something that WOULD prompt the Republicans to call for such a shut-down - to appease their masters.

Not that I am fearful that the octopus will get to Obama somehow (though clearly they have Big Pharma and the defence contractors in their tentacled pockets) and shut me down but governments should not be able to shut down access to anything on the Internet. Isn't that the point OF the Internet?

But this comes from a person who often can't watch or post video clips from a neighboring country because somehow that destroy the world. So what do I know? Gah!

3 comments:

csmith2884 said...

"You can't stop the signal,Mal."

M. D. Jackson said...

The leak of documents was made possible by the greater access to intelligence information by all intelligence agencies, something that was mandated after 9:11. The information was hacked by a single private in an audaceous manner using a Lady Gaga CD of all things. The motivation appears to be money.

WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange seems to be motivated by the notoriety. Unfortunately the leak of sensitive intelligence documents like these have a real result beyond just embarassing the countries and the diplomats who wrote them.

The very real and very dire consequences are spelled out by a former diplomat in an opinion piece at the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/wikileaks-just-made-the-world-more-repressive/article1818157/

It's is very grim stuff indeed.

Kal said...

So this is a case where it's better that we don't know. I know very little surprised any of us who have lived the past 40 years but I like to hope that a good cleaning does the world a lot of good every few decades or so. I want to see how the bank stuff yet to be released plays out. I hope that generates some outrage at least.