Tuesday 7 December 2010

We Are Free

The governments of this world are growing out of touch. They do not understand the internet and it's culture at all. This is shown by their attempts to close down Wikileaks [link for now at least].

Wikileaks as I have said before is a website that enables people from around the world to release documents detailing lies fed out by their governments, effectively allowing whistle blowing without the immediate threats encountered if they were to approach a more conventional outlet. This has allowed us to begin to level the laying field. It allows us to know if we are being lied to and the real motives behind the governments actions.

However for obvious reasons this has not gone down well with the powers that be. How can they claim to be for the people if there is a constant stream of documents being released that states otherwise? For this reason the US and European governments have been making attempts to shut down Wikileaks without taking into account how this wonderful thing known as the interenet works.

Firstly there are the relentless DDOS[?] attacks, an attempt to overcrowd the server and cause it to crash. This was successful in temporally bringing down the site [link]. This however is as said a temporary thing and after some time the site was back up and operational after all the attacks.

However the game then took a step up, international governments began applying political pressure on the companies owning the servers that Wikileaks was hosted, such as Amazon [link]. This caused the site to be taken down but alas again this was only temporary. The beautiful thing about the internet is that it is based on free speak and this means that there are a great number of able people out there that believe in this cause. This has lead to the site being "mirrored" and hosted in numerous places all over the world. As one is shut down another opens, it's like a game of cat and mouse but this time as the mouse is caught another 5 appear.
Another attempt to end Wikileaks has been made recently with the arrest of founder Assange [link]. This will not in anyway bring an end to Wikileaks as this site is not a single man, it is not a collection of men, it is an idea. An idea of freedom and liberty that cannot and will not be extinguished no matter how many arrests are made. Once something like this is out on the internet there is no way of stopping it, Wikileaks has already stated categorically that it will not stop due to Assange's arrest [link].

It is now that we see that the governments are out of touch with the internet culture and are genuinely scared. This Wikileaks battle has shown that we can make them accountable for their lies and misleadings. It shows that whilst they may try with all their might that the internet will remain free, that whilst it may not be the most direct form of action that whilst we have the ability we can remove the veil over our eyes on the internet. This is truly a wonderful time. I hope that this Wikileaks escapade will encourage others to whistle blow and not be scared, for it is now that we know we can be free.

Stay alert, Stay free.

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