[hackerspaces] revspace and randomdata in the news re wikileaks ddos story

[Koen Martens]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:59:42PM +0100, Yves Quemener wrote:
> On 12/10/2010 10:20 PM, Koen Martens wrote:
> > I would not like it when people block the streets in support to Assange,
> 
> Well, maybe protests are more of a French habit then :)

oh yes, france is a totally disfunct country, because on every occassion
it runs out on the streets and bring the country to a standstill, that is
why no-one takes french seriously :))

> > There are way better actions one could take. I liken ddos to slapping
> > someone in the face because you've run out of arguments. Sure, you'll
> > make the news, but will it help your cause?
> 
> I actually think that it will make companies think twice before obeying US
> orders. It says that following this kind of orders has a price. Big
> companies like Amazon or Visa can easily sustain the charge, but a small
> company will think twice and balance the cost of disobeying an illegal
> order from US and having a 5-days downtime. So yes, definitely helping.

I don't think so. It demonstrates the weakness in the internet, and now that
it is so clearly and prominently exposed, calls will be made to ask for 
measures against it. And since the internet isn't something easily changed,
I fear it will be ridicoulous litigation and agreements. Such as ACTA. The
most likely answer to the ddos attacks is more monitoring on internet connections,
wider criteria to define 'cybercrime' and harsher response when someone
is suspected of it.

> Also, paypal decided to unfreeze Wikileaks' accounts. It may be a
> coincidence, but it could due to the DDoS, or more probably, to the media
> backlash that the DDoS helped building.

As I understand it, payments have never been suspended because of the ddos,
and i doubt paypal would unfreeze the account on the basis of these
attacks. Perhaps the boycot is a more likely explanation, many of my friends
have discontinued their accounts but I don't know if that is representative
and whether the boycot actually made a dent in their turn-over.

> > I see that sometimes civil disobedience is needed to change
> > things or make a point. But it should always be a last resort. We
> > are far from having to fall into last resort lashing out imho.
> 
> They are trying to illegally censor a journalism website. If they manage to
> do that, to get the kind of power necessary to censor globally a journalist
> on internet, how do you expect to know when the "last resort point" will be
> there ?

There are so many things we can do against that 'censorship', and we are
doing. Think of the mirrors. Think of more intelligent measures: try 
to circumvent the hold on DNS that the US has. Think of a new, better
matter of connecting people in the digital world that doesn't involve
the broken and old internet. There is so much more we can do other than
just breaking things.

> Maybe I am reading only leftist news source but it is hard to find a source
> that is hostile to these attacks and almost impossible to find one that
> consider these attacks made wikileaks more questionable.

I'm not talking about news sources, they're all lying anyway. I'm talking
about what people on the street think.

> It might seem like a childish justification but "they did it first" is
> actually a good argument.

No, it's not :)

> > Breaking stuff is just not
> > a good way to make your case in general.
> 
> Actually it is an incredibly effective method.

It's not, it deflects attention from the actual cause. The ddos has had the
result, in nl at least, that the media are primarily talking about how you
can ddos a site, what these teens are thinking, etc.. It has deflected 
attention from the actual content of the cables, which is probably just how
the US govmt would want to see it. So actually these script-kiddies are 
helping the US to confuse the message that is being sent out.

> > Mind you, his arrest has been extended with 13 days. I don't think
> > that is reasonable at all.
> 
> Which I agree. But tell me, How do we get the media to say that ? I think
> like you do that DDoS are not really worth mentioning

Yet DDoS is all the media are talking about.

Gr,

Koen