My Twitter Account is under Subpoena by the US Government

...Along with 637,000 other accounts that subscribe to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is who I am following, but if you follow Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Rop Gongrijp or Brigitta Jonsdottir among a few others you are a part of the same subpoena. Among the information being sought is our IP addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, banking information, credit card information, etc.

This all really began with the subpoena of Jonsdottir's Twitter account. Jonsdottir is an Icelandic parliamentarian who was involved with the WikiLeaks video release of the US Apache helicopter shooting in Iraq, where two Reuters reporters were killed, and children wounded.

To quote Brigitta Jonsdottir herself: "I think I am being given a message, almost like someone breathing in a phone." I love that.

Oh what can I even say about this? Apparently it's too late to object if I haven't already. I'm not even sure if it would matter anyway as I am not a US citizen. It makes me want to laugh hysterically and go on a rant suitable for a raving lunatic all at the same time.

The only civil reaction I can think of is to point out the obvious: These are the tendencies of a paranoid and delusional person. Except that we're speaking of a governing body.

I really thought that all the wiretapping and cellphone listening would be a thing of the past once Bush was gone, but the scale has only increased to an international level.

If this was a schoolyard, I'd say that a multi-student brawl was about to be called at the sounding of the end-of-class bell.

I don't think I need to explain the analogy.

New Year Prediction: The Rebel Forces Strike Back!

Last year was was an interesting, if not alarming year concerning free speech and net neutrality. The big subject to watch of course is the ongoing controversy surrounding Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The mistake here is to assume that this doesn't affect anyone but Mr. Assange and the folks at WikiLeaks other than providing an interesting good guys vs bad guys story. This could potentially affect us all.

Keep in mind that it is the US that is calling for his head and neither Julian himself nor the website servers are in the US. And considering what happened to the Pirate Bay guys, it's a good guess either way whether he will be strong-armed into a US courtroom. (I know that they were prosecuted in Sweden, but it was backed completely by the RIAA and the MPAA and it was US law that they were prosecuted with). On the one hand, the Pirate Bay was actually breaking US law, although they were in a country where they were breaking no laws. Yet they still were brought up on US charges and sentenced to prison and ridiculous fines.

So how far can the US go? Will they be able to sentence Julian Assange in the same way even though he has not even broken a US law? Common sense would say no, but these are strange times. The alarmist side of me keeps saying "we are seeing another repeat in history: the Roman Empire is reborn!"

There are some cases where the US determines that they don't even need to go to trial. They just do as they please! Consider the 80 or so banned domains that occurred in November: No proof that those sites were breaking any laws, no trial, just the outright theft of the domain names.

Enter the Rebel Alliance and the Dot-P2P DNS system! Fittingly, the idea sprung from a tweet by TPB founder Peter Sunde. For those not in the know, the idea is to create a decentralized DNS system using existing P2P technology, and thus avoid relying on the US government-usurped ICANN servers. If it catches on, seizing domains will be an impossibility for the US or any other government.

What's interesting here is that the US is beginning to learn that their power, at least on the Internet's battlefield, is being eroded. WikiLeaks is showing the world (and US citizens) the corruption of the US government, and soon the .p2p DNS will ensure that the information remains free in the wilds. The US is being backed into a corner that has only 2 options. Option number one is not an option that the US is famous for: surrender and change their ways. The second and more characteristic option is to choose an enemy and lash out. I think it will come to no surprise that the US will pick option number 2, but who will be the chosen enemy? Likely the first step will be to outlaw most of the information found on WikiLeaks and start prosecuting those hosting mirrors. Once .p2p DNS takes off (which I think it will) that will also be outlawed and individual users of the system will be witch-hunted ala the RIAA witch-hunts.

Another possibility here is a joint effort between Microsoft and the US government to keep the .p2p DNS system from running on Windows machines.

Does this seem far-fetched to you? Maybe, but so does the US deciding that they can seize property without a trial, and prosecute those in other countries using US law. At this point I think it is a mistake to believe that the US will even abide by its own laws to accomplish a goal.

The Internet will remain in the hands of the users this year, but in doing so a lion is being threatened with declawing. Make no mistake, it will attack. At first it will make use of the most convenient target, and right now that is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The US will do everything in its power to prosecute Assange. Once that media-circus is finished however, it will focus on fresh prey.

I know that this post is alarmist to the point of being ridiculous, but with the lawless actions of the US government this year, I'm not convinced that an alarmist point of view is the incorrect point of view.

Implications of the WikiLeaks Scandals

I've been following the story of Julian Assange's arrest and of course the US government reaction to the cable leaks. I wasn't going to bother with a post about this, but the more I read, the more it seems to occupy my mind. It's going past the typical "amusing antics of the US government" and delving into Orwellian territory.

Now this goes beyond the concept of respectable or responsible journalism. Whether or not WikiLeaks falls into the above categories or is simply out to embarrass governments in the same way that tabloids seek to embarrass celebrities and other public figures is not the issue. What is at issue is the freedom to distribute information. In Western culture are we not free to discuss and inform anything we feel has importance, or might be important to other individuals? It's becoming apparent that this is not so.

We have high profile public figures calling for Assange's assassination. Large media outlets such as the New York Times are being blocked for publishing a few of the the leaked cables. The "rape" charges against Assange seem more and more like an attack on his character in hopes to discredit him rather than any kind of serious allegation. (Here is a detailed account of his crime and arrest. This is a very interesting assessment of the charges by acclaimed author and feminist Naomi Wolf.)

This whole situation is getting out of hand. Is this the death of real journalism? Depending on what is being reported, it seems that journalists soon may find themselves in a situation where their profession necessitates operating outside the law. I'm sure that Julian Assange would say that this situation is already here. It's exasperating.

I find myself wondering how Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who uncovered the Nixon-era Watergate scandal) would have fared in today's political climate.

UPDATE:
This is a video from October 22 discussing the (then upcoming) Iraq War Docs leak that brings some perspective. Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistle-blower of the Vietnam War in 1971, speaks. Part one of two.