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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWikiLeaks 2.0 - Assange & Anonymous could change the landscape of hacktivism
WikiLeaks new phase beginsToday has been a very big day for WikiLeaks. It just released 500 million internal documents stolen from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, allegedly obtained by hacktivist collective Anonymous in December. This is huge; its the first time Anonymous has ever cooperated with an aboveground entity, lending an unprecedented amount of political legitimacy to the often inscrutable group. But why? What do these strange bedfellows have to gain from collaboration? With this new collaboration, Anonymous has obtained new credibility, and WikiLeaks has obtained a hugely valuable new source. This potentially powerful alliance could point to the future of the leak economy, and this awkward symbiosis provides each party with exactly what they need to move forward. A new age of transparency activism may have just begun.
In the past, Julian Assange and other spokespeople at WikiLeaks have subtly distanced themselves from Anonymous as though it were an annoying little brother. WikiLeaks at least tries to operate within various global laws and seems to want nothing to do with a brand of hacktivism thats also responsible for flooding Facebook with violent hardcore pornography, among other unsavory activities.
But this move comes at a good time for WikiLeaks. The organization has been brought to the brink of collapse over the last year due to internal strife and ever-rising legal bills. More broadly, WikiLeaks is a problematic system for acquiring and publishing leaks. Its vulnerable to attacks from many sides: patriotic rival hackers and terrorists, legal attacks from governments, militaries and corporations. Perhaps worst of all, it has promoted the celebrity of its leader, Julian Assange, to the point where the focus of the media is no longer on the leaks themselves, but on the dramatic narrative of the organizations most famous face.
WikiLeaks early success relied not on its ability to disseminate sensitive information, but from the lucky break it got in Bradley Manning, a U.S. military insider who could just as easily have directly leaked his info anonymously from a random Internet cafe. The ostensible value WikiLeaks provided to Manning was legal defense. And has it failed epically on that front. To put it bluntly, WikiLeaks is in crisis, and perhaps the only thing that can save it is a fresh, steady source of new leaks.
More: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/27/wikileaks_new_phase_begins/
napoleon_in_rags
(3,991 posts)Some time ago, my uncle decided he wanted to buy stock in the company my cousin works for. He does this technical analysis deal, and decided it was over valued, so he did one of those options (I don't understand trading) where he said "buy if the price gets down to here". It was an arbitrary price based on his calculations.
Sure enough the stock dipped, but a fraction before it got to his price a bunch of people bought, and it went up again.
He reanalyzed, and then put forth a higher price based on his calculations. But when the stock got down to his new point, it shot up again a fraction above his price.
At that point, he realized something was going on: He figured that some people were getting tipped off about his moves, and knowing his daughter's position in the company, and the fact that he was her father, figured there must be some kind of insider trading deal between the two they wanted to get on top of. But the thing is, there wasn't: he was just doing technical analysis, and his prices were arbitrary.
The idea of criminals tapping web traffic to do this is scary, but the recently released information shows that America's private intelligence wing uses their intelligence for just this kind of thing, so the strong and clear possibility exists that this was coming from the top: US private intelligence considers spying on Americans to make a profit par for the course, not corruption at all.
This is mind blowing. We live under constant surveillance so rich people can make a profit off of everything we say? So they can steal every idea? Insane!!!