There are many people in the world are lobbying for freedom of speech & another part of the world are screaming that wikileaks is simply an espionage job & by releasing the confidential data may potentially affect many lives in the field and change the political landscape of the world.
I’m on both side of the fence as as a blogger which is now considered as an independent journalist in the internet and it’s a violation of freedom of speech if the government can potentially get the web host to shut down “objectionable” websites & able to convinced payment service to eliminate your donation or sales transactions.
However on the other hand, if the success of this website may springs many copycat websites that have an agenda to disrupt the world by releasing secret information without prior consent probably within a subscription service or a website independent torrent seed.
This may means people within the circle of information may one day use what they know to hold their company, their bosses, their country, or the world hostage by using the internet as an means to release critical information that may affect the respective people or country.
When the internet speed increases & information are spread within few seconds upon publishing online it’s almost like an information war by releasing secrets or scandals details out in the open causing disruption & maybe push countries into war.
However, in the perfect world…this kind of new era of freedom of information may means a less corrupted world & people in power will fear for their lives if they had done something EVIL & corrupted.
In another hand, there maybe the side effects of vigilantism on information that may not be accurate enough and cause grievances or resulted in the bullying of the innocent party online till they commit suicide to prove their innocence.
Just imagine someone releases false “secret” information about certain countries having “weapon of mass destruction” and lure certain countries to invade voluntarily without confirmation if the information is real!
It’s very dangerous how propaganda can work for or against the people involved, imagine if Wikileaks is not about freedom of speech but paid by the government to release useless “secret” information & use the government power to shut wikileaks down to purposefully spike the public outrage & invoke global cyber war.
This global cyber war may give more government of the world a REASON for stronger Internet laws to CURB THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
This may means that the world had just fallen into a trap by fighting against this “FREEDOM of Speech” by hackers.
We have no problems on freedom of speech and nobody have problem with their blogs or forums until wikileaks surfaced, just imagine after this fiasco we might have ISP level firewall to filter content not just for porn but also “objectionable” blogs/forums against various political parties or countries.
It may be a game forum but just because of a single forum post that goes against the government, the possible “new laws” may block that site from millions of users curbing possible incomes from advertising & sales.
This may concern the global Internet commerce if the government of the world uses this event to curb information freedom on the internet.
We the user must fight against this however instead of fighting using DDOS against wikileaks “enemies” we should analyze the leaks & verify them if possible via legal means.
This means only the truth can be reported & not some random leaks that may or may not be real.
In the past, any websites that discuss conspiracies and secrets nobody pay attention to them as they are simply conspiracies and government don’t act upon such websites as by acting against them may give them more credibility.
This time round, government(s) acted swiftly to condemn wikileaks giving them the maximum credibility….we must ASK WHY? What is their intention(s) by doing so?
By maximum media coverage due to governmental response to wikileaks, MORE PEOPLE paid attention to wikileaks information as they get more coverage by the media.
This will ultimately explode into a massive retaliation by defender of “freedom of speech” activist & individuals who pledge to help hackers to DDOS “enemies” of wikileaks.
If wikileaks became public enemies no.1, will that means everyone get attacked? Will it spiral into a full fledged war?
Just imagine a few hackers managed to convinced millions of ordinary folks to infect their computer voluntarily by running certain software & use their computer & bandwidth to DDOS attack various “enemies” of wikileaks or freedom of speech.
The same hackers will suddenly gain enormous power of millions of computers at their “disposal” and can easily use it to do various things that may be illegal.
List of things the hackers can do.
- Crack the wikileaks insurance.aes256 file & release the doomsday information to the world
- Crack the global payment gateway & siphon few cents per customers into their own accounts
- Hold various government hostage by cracking military installation code & accessing more sensitive data
- DDOS ANY WEBSITES they choose to attack including normal websites that pissed them off
- Launching nuclear missile if they choose to by getting someone to put a usb modem to nuclear installation
- End the world we live in
Of course all the above may not be the hacker’s current objective but given the power they have later or their power passed to someone without control of their greed & power…the world will soon be a very dangerous place to be.
The last straw of this cyber war maybe a internet lock down issued by the president of the United States of America to protect vital governmental agencies, military installation including nuclear missile silos & emergencies installations.
However, if the hackers uses viruses to infect all the computers wreaking havoc in all these installations…the result will be disastrous!
- Nuclear power plant may suddenly lose coolant to their nuclear reactor causing meltdown & cause a catastrophic radiation accident in the surrounding area
- Hydro dams may closed their dams causing overflowing flash flood & cause power outtage
- Automated medicine factories may get false quality assurance reading in production of pills.
- Traffic lights may be giving the wrong signals
- Automated trains may get derailed
- Global banks data may get wiped out
Many of these hacks are impossible with a few hundred of computers but with MILLIONS of computers voluntarily downloading hacker’s software & self infecting themselves to become part of the bot net system…any kind of passwords & encryption can be cracked faster then the biggest super computer can.
Imagine if the biggest super computer got infected too…what will be the consequences?
The worst case scenario is a global shut down of internet by force using a powerful Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) bomb, it may be non-nuclear version hence not causing severe property damage but sufficient enough to shut down most unshielded electrical devices.
The only way to shield from EMP attack is by using a Faraday cages which many consumers don’t bother to protect themselves with, this may means a sudden lost of communication via malfunctioned of mobile phones, computers and transportation will crawl to a standstill.
Well, I can be exaggerating the final outcome of this Wikileaks fiasco but if the world fall into the trap.
The best option now is stand back & watch and don’t participate in any kind of action unless there are no options.
However, for copyright supporters…wake up to the new era of Internet marketing or be crushed by failure in selling your music, movies and information.
Free information with advertising is the future of Internet entertainment, the more eyeballs you get the more exposure of advertising the more income your content will yield.
I shall stop here before I write my finger away…until next time.
