As a faceless community of cyber protesters takes to the net in support of WikiLeaks and its founder, questions arise about the role of the Internet and the right to information, writes Yassin Gaber On 16 December Julian Assange, founder of whistle- blower website WikiLeaks, was granted bail by London's High Court and freed after his supporters paid over $300,000 in cash and sureties. The allegations laid against Assange by Swedish prosecutors and the ostensible "smear" campaign waged in opposition to WikiLeaks by the US government have sparked what many are referring to as the "world's first information war" -- a cyber war -- spearheaded by an international community of "hacktivists". While there has been minimal physical manifestations of protest worldwide, a group of Internet hackers, using the Internet as their own virtual battlefield, have begun firing the first shots in a war that, as The Guardian asserted, could be the "first sustained clash between the established order and the organic, grassroots culture of the net". The notion of "hacktivist" is not wholly new. Before WikiLeaks, Operation Payback launched attacks on America's recording industry as retribution for its prosecution of music file downloaders. Now Payback has joined forces with Operation Avenge Assange. Under the new umbrella group, recent attacks have targeted the corporate world singling out credit card firms and some of the web's largest companies. Cyber guerrillas, attacking from the shadows with little fear of retaliation, have launched numerous distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), whereby thousands of "zombie" computers are harnessed to jam a target site by bombarding it with requests for data. Efforts thus far have been designed to register protest rather than financially destabilise organisations or companies. The next attack could target any number of governmental or non- governmental sites from networks in London's Whitehall, to those in Washington, to the latest financial institution to stop handling WikiLeaks payments, Bank of America. These establishments have demonstrated their own willingness to be drawn into this cyber war with their drive to disrupt the WikiLeaks agenda and its protracted attempt at breaking their monopoly on information. Their avowed opposition to a free and ethical society shows which side they have opted for in the war. As pro-WikiLeaks activists start aligning themselves against the established order, evoking the spirit of free speech and taking a firm anti-censorship and anti- copyright stand, one is left to pose profound questions over the role of cyberspace and a populace's right to information. The latest series of cyber attacks, which has seen Amazon.com, the Swiss post, PayPal and numerous other assertedly anti-WikiLeaks sites targeted, also forces us to rethink just what constitutes "secrets", who has the right to keep them, and what responsibility does retaining secrets entail? The subject of the next trove of leaks will be the private sector. Assange has indicated that some US banks will be at the heart of the new documents' revelations. When prodded by Forbes magazine on his endgame regarding corporate targets, Assange replied, "I'm not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can't be. But there are some abuses that should be regulated." He went on to indicate that he hoped WikiLeaks' next document release would lead to "a chain of regulatory investigations, possibly resulting in some changes". It seems a new age is being ushered in where individuals are becoming more empowered and institutions are becoming more vulnerable; an age is arising wherein fear of exposure could lead to a weaker hierarchical structure -- veering corporate cadres from their vertically oriented order into a planar system. In his interview with Forbes, the Australian whistle-blower proceeded to highlight his desire to see enterprises which are run ethically operate more easily and transparently without the threat of unethical competitors who make it difficult for them to survive the market's forces and pressures. A self-avowed, market libertarian, Assange avoids the word anarchist but those who have flocked to support him do not fear the term. The structure of these hacker communities, notably the Anonymous group which has been behind many of the recent attacks, is quite anarchistic, characterised by a lack of hierarchy and operating as a sort of collective in which potential targets are chosen after members of chat forums, often with up to 3,000 contributors, reach, as the Guardian phrased it, a "democratic tipping point" which then leads to action. At times, however, the lack of hierarchy can be a point of weakness; these chat rooms, full of shadowy, faceless characters, could be infiltrated by so called "Feds" -- thereby creating an atmosphere of distrust. Nevertheless, it is the desire, the push to achieve an information libertarianism that makes these cyber communities progressive. In this sense, these hackers share quite a lot ideologically with the organisation they are trying to defend -- WikiLeaks. Interestingly enough, both have stirred fear and apprehension in the institutions they have targeted. They've also heightened societal distrust. WikiLeaks has succeeded in chipping away at the public's confidence in its institutions -- whether governmental or non-governmental. What is the end result of this spreading culture of distrust? Is it a more open society, a purer, more ethical capitalism or a crippled and impotent system in which officials and employees must censure themselves, for fear of thunderous repercussions? What is known and has been known is that information is power and that the growing accessibility of information, via the Internet, is empowering and can constructively challenge the established system and its organisations. Reform is in order and these "hacktivists" appear to be taking to the front lines to wage a war in which they hope to liberate knowledge.
