The Internet strikes back
The Internet is retaliating as it knows best - via hacking and DDoS attacks, with Mastercard and Paypal both reportedly suffering downtime to their websites. These actions are illegal, but groups such as Anonymous seem to be saying there's a different set of rules on the Internet.
Reportedly another group - Operation Payback - has had its accounts suspended by Facebook and Twitter, but that's unlikely to prevent its supporters from communicating with each other.
It remains unclear whether the Internet can be policed, and even if it could, whether this would be desirable. Google has come under pressure to regulate its search results and favour ‘good' ones over ‘bad'. The reasons are superficially legitimate, but do we want Google to only deliver results it deems acceptable?
The cry of the totalitarian despot is that, because they are the embodiment of the state - and therefore the people - anything that damages the despot damages the people, and is thus illegal. Many of the wars we have fought over the past hundred years or so have often been sold as a battle against exactly that kind of despotism.
But every time some of our freedom is taken away ‘for our own good'; we need to form an opinion on whether that's a price we're prepared to pay. Thanks to the Internet we're more able than ever to do just that, and that's why the persecution of Wikileaks is such a grave matter. Where will the line be drawn between the interests of the state and of the individual?
UPDATE - 12:30 9 December 2010: I just saw this story describing the technical difficulties behind stopping a site like Wikileaks.
