[Peace-discuss] US liberals into the tank once more

[C. G. Estabrook]

     ABC Melbourne
     9 December, 2010 1:13PM AEDT
     Few American friends for Wikileaks
     By Simon Leo Brown

Academic Noam Chomsky and activist John Perry Barlow are among the few public 
supporters of Julian Assange in the USA.

The debate in Australia over Wikileaks has largely been in support of Julian 
Assange, with an open letter to the Prime Minister in his support signed by 
dozens of high profile Australians.

USA academic Noam Chomsky says that in his country, however, 'articulate public 
opinion is basically calling for blood'.

"If they could get their hands on Assange they'd probably want him drawn and 
quartered," he says.

It should surprise no-one that Prof Chomsky does not share that view.

The left-wing academic says he has spent a lot of time a lot of time reading 
declassified documents and that secrecy is usually aimed at 'protecting the 
government against their own population'.

While accepting that there are cases where secrecy is in the public interest, he 
says 'I think the burden of proof is always on the power systems that want to 
keep their citizens in the dark'.

"What's at stake is whether citizens of a country have a right to know what 
their government is doing," he says.

John Perry Barlow is among those in the USA who are supportive of Wikileaks.

He is a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organisation 
dedicated to 'trying to keep the internet open to the free-flow of ideas, even 
when they're unpopular'.

"We believe the internet is one day going to convey to everyone the right to 
know," he says.

The EFF are assisting Wikileaks by 'trying to make sure they have plenty of 
mirror sites, back-ups, we're organising donations for them and generally doing 
everything we can to see that wikileaks is not assailable by the methods that 
have been used against it so far'.

John Perry Barlow makes it clear that the EFF are not part of the backlash 
against companies such as Mastercard, Visa and Paypal who suspended services to 
wikileaks.

'Hacktivist' group Anonymous have launched cyber attacks aimed at bringing down 
the websites of finance companies that are refusing to forward public donations 
to Wikileaks.

Coldblood, a representative of Anonymous who spoke to the ABC's AM program, says 
companies such as Mastercard have been targeted in order to show corporations 
that 'it's not just governments they need to keep happy - it's the users as well 
they need to keep happy'.

"Operation Payback is a way to highlight to these companies that if they bow 
down to government pressure that they will face repercussions from their users 
of their services," says Coldblood.

Anonymous have launched barrages of data at the companies' websites to bring 
them down, a technique known as Distributed Denial of Service and one that that 
EFF doesn't support.

"I wish I could support that," says John Perry Barlow, "because I'm pleased to 
see the zeal of a cyberspace rebel army so easily organised without leadership."

"I would be advising them [Anonymous] against shutting anything down," he says. 
"The net is about being open."

While for cyber activists the battle over Wikileaks is a battle for the freedom 
of the internet, for Noam Chomsky it is not about the technology.

"The internet certainly offers many opportunities for disseminating 
information," says Prof Chomsky, "but if the press was doing its job most of 
these things would be known."

Noam Chomsky and John Perry Barlow spoke to Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne Mornings.