What you need to know about the world’s biggest DDoS attack
At peak traffic of 300Gbps, the Spamhaus attack is probably unprecedented. But has it really had as big an effect as is suggested in some reports? Here’s what’s going on. Read more »
Why Joi Ito thinks we should eat dirt and endure hacktivism
Web snooping busybodies may be a pain in the butt, but they serve a useful purpose, according to MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito. Read more »
If Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks are guilty, then so is the New York Times
Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler says that WikiLeaks clearly qualifies as a media entity, and argues that by pursuing Bradley Manning for aiding the enemy, the government is putting journalism at risk as well as whistle-blowing. Read more at paidContent »
Bradley Manning provides more evidence of why we need a media entity like WikiLeaks
During his court-martial trial, Bradley Manning said that he tried to contact journalists at the New York Times and the Washington Post but got no interest and then decided to leak classified military documents to WikiLeaks. Read more at paidContent »
This is why WikiLeaks is important, and why the NYT should be defending it
photo: Flickr / Carolina Georgatou
The debate over whether WikiLeaks should be seen as a media entity like the New York Times took on a new urgency this week after the military prosecutor in whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial said he sees no difference between the two. Read more at paidContent »
Why WikiLeaks is worth defending, despite all of its flaws
Most of the recent attention around WikiLeaks has been focused on the legal issues surrounding its controversial founder, Julian Assange. But we shouldn’t let that blind us to what the organization has accomplished and the critical role it plays as a “stateless news organization.” Read more »
Prince Harry’s brush with radical transparency: you can’t stop the web
When the British royal family asked UK newspapers not to publish pictures of Prince Harry frolicking nude in Las Vegas, it seemed like a ludicrous request. But even though the media largely complied, the reality of internet life meant the pictures were impossible to suppress. Read more at paidContent »
The NYT’s Bill Keller on why we should defend WikiLeaks
photo: The Charlie Rose Show
In response to a GigaOM post about how attacks on WikiLeaks threaten the rights of all media entities, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said he agrees the organization should be protected by the First Amendment and media companies should come to its defence. Read more »
First they came for WikiLeaks, then the New York Times
There are signs that the U.S. government wants to target mainstream journalists and media outlets for the same kind of investigation that WikiLeaks has been subjected to for publishing classified information, which makes it even more important to defend WikiLeaks’ status as a media entity. Read more »
Behind the scenes of a Brazilian hacker space
Get a peek behind the scenes of the hacker space Casa da Cultura Digital, or the House of Digital Culture in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Read more »
Twitter: We’re still the free-speech wing of the free-speech party
photo: Flickr user Hoggarazzi
Attempts by various levels of government both in the U.S. and around the world to track dissidents through social networks has put pressure on companies like Twitter to comply with these court orders — but Twitter seems determined to uphold its users rights whenever possible. Read more »
Does WikiLeaks still matter?
WikiLeaks is trumpeting its latest release, a cache of millions of internal emails from StratFor, a security-consulting firm with ties to the U.S. government. But the nature of the emails and a partnership with the hacker collective Anonymous raise questions about WikiLeaks’ continued relevance. Read more »
Subscriber Content
SOPA, OPEN and the fight for the Internet
New antipiracy legislation recently proposed in Congress and known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) could force YouTube and other “user-generated content” sites to take content down, even if that content has not been proven to be infringing. Experts in freedom of speech and creators ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
4 ways technology will impact politics in 2012
photo: Image courtesy of Flickr user Lower Columbia College
Another election year is nearly upon us, and if the past is any lesson, new uses of technology will impact the outcome in many new and unpredictable ways. Read more »
Wikileaks’ Spy Files paints damning picture of tech surveillance
Wikileaks today released a database of tech providers that are involved in government tracking around the globe and quite a few familiar names are on the list, including Alcatel Lucent, Nokia and Cisco. Called The Spy Files, the project includes 287 records. Read more »
Would Google block payments to the New York Times?
photo: Flickr user Jennifer Moo
In testimony on new anti-piracy legislation, Google’s policy counsel argued the payment blockade against WikiLeaks was a good example of how copyright infringement could be handled. But that blockade is a disturbing attack on freedom of the press — is that really something Google wants to support? Read more »
Court makes it official: You have no privacy online
A recent U.S. court decision involving the Twitter accounts of several WikiLeaks supporters shows that when push comes to shove, users of social networks and most online services have no expectation of privacy — at least, not if the one requesting the information is the U.S. government. Read more »
If WikiLeaks is dying, then the NYT is partly to blame
A New York Times piece argues WikiLeaks is on life support, but the reality is that it and Julian Assange have been the targets of a sustained attack by the U.S. government, and that is a freedom of speech issue we should all be concerned about. Read more »
WikiLeaks Suspends Publishing To Fight Financial Blockade
Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has announced that the whistleblowing website is suspending publishing operations in order to focus… Read more at paidContent »
Unredacted U.S. Embassy Cables Available Online After WikiLeaks Breach
A security breach has led to the WikiLeaks archive of 251,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables being made available online, without redaction t… Read more at paidContent »
Who’s Filtering the Web in the Middle East?
In the wake of Egyptian protesters’ success, citizens of Bahrain, Iran, Libya and Yemen have made attempts to change their governments through protests and marches. Last night Arbor Networks posted a chart showing which countries appear to be manipulating their citizen’s web traffic and which aren’t. Read more »
Clinton: We Love Net Freedom, Unless It Involves WikiLeaks
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a rousing speech today about the need for an open Internet and freedom of speech, but she made one notable exception: Wikileaks. It’s apparently fine to persecute that organization for leaking diplomatic cables, even though it has done nothing illegal. Read more »
NYT’s Keller Almost Ready to Admit WikiLeaks Is Journalism
When WikiLeaks first appeared on the scene, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller made it clear that he did not consider leader Julian Assange a journalist, or WikiLeaks a journalistic entity. Based on some recent comments, however, Keller’s view may be changing — slowly. Read more »
New York Times, Al-Jazeera Do An End-Run Around WikiLeaks
The New York Times is working on a digital tip-line that will allow leakers of confidential documents to deal directly with the newspaper rather than having to use WikiLeaks, said executive editor Bill Keller, and Arab news service Al-Jazeera just launched a similar tip-line project. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Big Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4
Some might call this past quarter in the infrastructure space transformative. The rise of ARM-based processing suggests the days of x86 dominance might be coming to an end, while the Amazon Web Services-WikiLeaks controversy cast new light on the legal aspects of cloud computing. Big data got bigger, meanwhile, as the Hadoop ecosystem expanded, and amid all these cutting-edge technologies, two archaic topics — Novell and Java — proved they aren’t going anywhere soon. Companies mentioned in this report include Intel, AMD, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Yahoo, Appistry, VMware, Joyent and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Icelandic MP Says It’s Our Duty to Fight For WikiLeaks
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic parliament and an early supporter of WikiLeaks, said that despite having had a falling out with leader Julian Assange, she is willing to “stand up and stick my neck out for him,” and believes everyone should support the organization. Read more »
DoJ Subpoena Proves Twitter’s Value — and Its Weakness
The US government’s move to order Twitter to disclose information about users involved with WikiLeaks confirms the network’s status as a real-time information network, but also makes it obvious how much we have come to rely on it, and the implications of that dependence. Read more »
Is What WikiLeaks Does Journalism? Good Question
The fact that even journalists and media professors can’t seem to agree on whether what WikiLeaks does is journalism emphasizes just how deeply the media and journalism have been disrupted by the web, to the point where we aren’t even sure what they are any more. Read more »
OPINION: Why Wikileaks Is an Opportunity for Cleantech
Wikileaks has given the cleantech world ammunition to show how our sector offers a solution to the extremely unstable world problems, and national security issues. We are bankrolling the same enemies we proclaim to be fighting in the battle against fundamentalist Islamic terror groups. Read more »
Why Was the WikiLeaks App Pulled From App Store? [Updated]
Overnight, an unofficial WikiLeaks iOS app was pulled from the App Store after being approved only last week. Before you run out and wreak DDOS justice, note that censorship may not be behind the decision. This may be a much more straightforward guideline violation. Read more »
Amazon, WikiLeaks and the Need for an Open Cloud
At least one senior technologist thinks that Amazon removing WikiLeaks from its servers could raise red flags about the utility of cloud computing, while programmer and open-web advocate Dave Winer believes the incident reinforces the need for an open cloud host to protect our content. Read more »
Is WikiLeaks the Beginning of a New Form of Media?
As WikiLeaks fights to remain online and solvent, the organization seems to be part of what could be a new form of media emerging: not a journalistic entity specifically, but a kind of investigative middleman or clearinghouse for the traditional media to use as a resource. Read more »
WikiLeaks Gets Its Own “Axis of Evil” Defense Network
As the U.S. government and a series of corporations such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal keep up the pressure on WikiLeaks, a rough alliance of hackers and supporters have taken it upon themselves to wage an ongoing cyber-war in defense of the document-leaking organization. Read more »
Has WikiLeaks Actually Done Anything Illegal?
Visa, MasterCard and PayPal have all cut off support for payments to WikiLeaks, saying the organization has been involved in illegal acts — but is there any real justification for this? Not really. In fact, it’s not clear that what WikiLeaks is doing is even illegal. Read more »
Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity
We may not like its methods or its leader, but WikiLeaks is a publisher — a new kind of publisher, but a publisher nonetheless — and as such it deserves to be protected from government interference, just like any other member of the traditional or mainstream media. Read more »
Dec. 3: What We’re Reading About the Cloud
Further Wikileaks analysis aside, Google was all over tech headlines over the past day. It upgraded App Engine, leaked a secret new consumer storage feature, and bought a data center hotel housing some of the biggest names in data centers and business. Read more »
Does the World Need a Data Haven for WikiLeaks Info?
WikiLeaks has been kicked off Amazon’s cloud-hosting platform and had its domain-name service cancelled by a second company — all of which raises the question: Does the world need a stateless, independent data haven to protect the kind of freedom of information that WikiLeaks represents? Read more »
The Cloud Meets the Law: Where Wikileaks Went Wrong
The story of Wikileaks hosting its Cablegate data on Amazon EC2 strikes me on so many levels. As a journalist, American citizen, and soon-to-be J.D., I’ve thought about freedom of speech, and I’m flabbergasted that Wikileaks hosted the site with a U.S. provider on U.S. soil. Read more »
Amazon Unplugs WikiLeaks After Government Pressure
Amazon has removed WikiLeaks’ website from its servers, a move that appears to be a result of pressure from the U.S. government to not support the document-leaking organization. Senator Joe Lieberman said he planned to ask the company about the extent of its involvement with WikiLeaks. Read more »
Nov. 30: What We’re Reading About the Cloud
Aside from Red Hat buying Makara, the other big cloud news has to be Wikileaks using Amazon to host its Cablegate repository. The Wikileaks data aspect leads to two other interesting items today: Geostellar’s clean-energy analysis tool and Aster Data partnering to combine analytics and visualization. Read more »
