Let me say up front that I am not a massive fan of WikiLeaks. It seems to me that taking stolen correspondence and publishing it for everyone to read is a fundamentally sociopathic act, whether it is a rival’s love-letters or a government’s diplomatic cables. There’s no doubt that there’s a role for whistle-blowing journalism, but each betrayal of trust and privacy needs to be justified by the greater good it delivers, and I remain unconvinced that the cloud of hacktivists at WikiLeaks has taken on board that the demand for great responsibility to accompany great power also applies to them.
For me, it falls into the same category as The Pirate Bay; there’s plenty to disagree with in what they are doing, but the crisis they provoke is fundamental to the operation of the Internet. In reacting to WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay, both business and government have shown their true colours when it comes to citizen liberty and software freedoms. What’s disclosed is not pretty.
Read on over at ComputerWorldUK…
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK, Issues | Tagged: Hacktivism, WikiLeaks | 5 Comments »