[Bradford] Fwd: [Fwd: Kettling Wikileaks]
David
david at davidparkin.com
Sun Dec 19 19:46:36 UTC 2010
Well worth reading for some of the online comments.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Bradford] [Fwd: Kettling Wikileaks]
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 13:49:17 +0000
From: David Carpenter <david.carpenter at nornir.co.uk>
To: bradford <bradford at mailman.lug.org.uk>
I received this from the Defective by design campaign, and thought
others might be interested. Discuss!
Cheers
David
-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Defective by Design <info at defectivebydesign.org>
Reply-to:
reply-1-409-1015972-b3cc4842213ac881a7338d7476a8841dde57baaa-d.carpenter=virgin.net at defectivebydesign.org
To: David Carpenter <d.carpenter at virgin.net>
Subject: Kettling Wikileaks
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:05:37 -0500
This article is available from DefectiveByDesign at:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/wikileaks
Or from the Guardian Newspaper at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/17/anonymous-wikileaks-protest-amazon-mastercard
Kettling: also known as containment or corralling - a police tactic for
the management of large crowds during demonstrations or protests.
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. The protesters have
not tried to take control of Amazon's website, or extract any data from
MasterCard. They enter through the site's front door, and it just can't
cope with the volume.
Calling these protests DDoS, or distributed denial of service, attacks
is misleading, too. A DDoS attack is done with thousands of "zombie"
computers. Typically, somebody breaks the security of those computers
(often with a virus) and takes remote control of them, then rigs them up
as a "botnet" to do in unison whatever he directs (in this case, to
overload a server). The Anonymous protesters' computers are not zombies;
presumably they are being individually operated.
No – the proper comparison is with the crowds that descended last week
on Topshop stores. They didn't break into the stores or take any goods
from them, but they sure caused a nuisance for the owner, Philip Green.
I wouldn't like it one bit if my store (supposing I had one) were the
target of a large protest. Amazon and MasterCard don't like it either,
and their clients were probably annoyed. Those who hoped to buy at
Topshop on the day of the protest may have been annoyed too.
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. But before you advocate a crackdown on internet
protests, consider what they are protesting: on the internet, users have
no rights. As the WikiLeaks case has demonstrated, what we do online, we
do on sufferance.
In the physical world, we have the right to print and sell books.
Anyone trying to stop us would need to go to court. That right is weak
in the UK (consider superinjunctions), but at least it exists. However,
to set up a website we need the co-operation of a domain name company,
an ISP, and often a hosting company, any of which can be pressured to
cut us off. In the US, no law explicitly establishes this precarity.
Rather, it is embodied in contracts that we have allowed those companies
to establish as normal. It is as if we all lived in rented rooms and
landlords could evict anyone at a moment's notice.
Reading, too, is done on sufferance. In the physical world, you can buy
a book with cash, and you own it. You are free to give, lend or sell it
to someone else. You are also free to keep it. However, in the virtual
world, e-readers have digital handcuffs to stop you from giving, lending
or selling a book, as well as licences forbidding that. Last year,
Amazon used a back door in its e-reader to remotely delete thousands of
copies of 1984, by George Orwell. The Ministry of Truth has been
privatised.
In the physical world, we have the right to pay money and to receive
money – even anonymously. On the internet, we can receive money only
with the approval of organisations such as PayPal and MasterCard, and
the "security state" tracks payments moment by moment.
Punishment-on-accusation laws such as the Digital Economy Act extend
this pattern of precarity to internet connectivity. What you do on your
own computer is also controlled by others, with non-free software.
Microsoft and Apple systems implement digital handcuffs – features
specifically designed to restrict users. Continued use of a program or
feature is precarious too: Apple put a back door in the iPhone to
remotely delete installed applications and another in Windows enabled
Microsoft to install software changes without asking permission.
I started the free software movement to replace user-controlling
non-free software with freedom-respecting free software. With free
software, we can at least control what software does in our own
computers.
The US state today is a nexus of power for corporate interests. Since
it must pretend to serve the people, it fears the truth may leak. Hence
its parallel campaigns against WikiLeaks: to crush it through the
precarity of the internet and to formally limit freedom of the press.
States seek to imprison the Anonymous protesters rather than official
torturers and murderers. The day when our governments prosecute war
criminals and tell us the truth, internet crowd control may be our most
pressing remaining problem. I will rejoice if I see that day.
• Copyright 2010 Richard Stallman – released under the Creative Commons
Attribution Noderivs Licence
Support the Free Software Foundation's year end appeal:
http://www.fsf.org/appeal/2010/an-appeal-from-peter-brown
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