log

December 6, 2010

A Quick Guide to Ineffectively Downplaying Wikileaks

Robert Gibbs, US Pres­i­den­tial Press Secretary:

We should nev­er be afraid of one guy who plopped down $35 and bought a web address. … Let’s not be scared of one guy with a laptop. 

Julian Assange, in the Guardian Q&A:

The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with sig­nif­i­cant mate­r­i­al from the US and oth­er coun­tries to over 100,000 peo­ple in encrypt­ed form. If some­thing hap­pens to us, the key parts will be released auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Fur­ther, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of mul­ti­ple news organisations. […] 

The basic prob­lem with Gib­b’s assess­ment, along with Lieber­man’s, is that they don’t under­stand the tech­nol­o­gy or the infra­struc­ture involved in the Wik­ileaks effort. These are not dumb peo­ple eas­i­ly swat­ted with a sin­gle favour from a US host­ing ser­vice or polit­i­cal con­nec­tion at ICANN. Any gov­ern­ment brava­do in this sit­u­a­tion is at best pre­tence. And as for under­ly­ing mes­sage in Gib­b’s state­ment — that we have noth­ing to fear — who said we do in the first place?