A World Spinning

You would have had to have been in a coma or a deep state of denial to not be aware of the massive changes that have been taking place this year in various parts of the world.  Regimes have toppled and people everywhere have become empowered to speak their minds and express their dissatisfaction.  Few among us would see this as a bad thing.  Yet it is but one of the offshoots of last year's controversy of leaked cables and intelligence, viewed by many then as treasonous and worthy of the harshest possible penalty.

Was WikiLeaks the sole cause of all of this global mayhem?  Certainly not.  The entire region has been a tinderbox for ages, and citizens learning the truth about their government was but one spark that helped to ignite the flame.  WikiLeaks, in their actions, disseminated a good amount of this type of truth to people in countries everywhere.  The ingredients for a tumultuous reaction were already in existence, albeit dormant from so many years of inattention.  All it took was a little official confirmation.

A June 2008 cable from the United States embassy in Tunis outlined the extensive corruption within the Tunisian government.  The cable was released to the world in early December.  Massive anti-government demonstrations soon followed, leading to the toppling of the regime in January.  The winds of change continued to blow throughout the region, overthrowing the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt despite stubborn resistance from a leader who couldn't seem to grasp what was happening to his controlled environment.

  Then it was Libya's turn, where all hell broke loose.  All told, no less than a dozen countries were affected by the unrest, many making key changes in leadership and policy in reaction to the growing anger.  The rest of the world watched, waited, and reacted.

There were relatively few parts of the planet where these momentous events were not seen as a good thing overall.  Finally, people had woken up and toppled oppressive dictatorships, hopefully instilling more free and open societies.  The volatile reaction started with the revelation of that one little bit of honesty.  No doubt its release would have been branded as an unacceptable risk to national security by the powers that be, just as virtually every leak last year was.  The truth can certainly hurt.  But the truth also has a way of setting people free.  It's all about accountability, after all.  When the lies are exposed - and they most always are exposed - will the leaders and regimes have enough public support to weather the storm?  Or will these revelations be the straw that broke the camel's back?  Whichever it turns out to be, blaming the messenger - or giving him all of the credit - is ignoring the plainly visible reality.  We're familiar with this problem.

The hacker world has long been all about exposing the truth in its various flavors.  We're told to accept insecure systems, to not touch things we're told not to touch, to keep our knowledge and discoveries confined, and, above all, to just play the game and keep our mouths shut.  Clearly, that doesn't work for most of us.  If something is broken or if security is nonexistent or insufficient, we tell the world.  Learning is all about touching things that are off-limits, something many of us do for the first time as toddlers.  There is no fun or joy in any of it if we can't share our discoveries and observations with everyone who will listen.  And, as for playing the game, a lot of hackers simply prefer to make their own games.  This is the culture we have formed.

Those who don't get it, those who fear the unknown, those who find themselves in power over systems that may not be nearly as robust as previously thought... they are the ones leading the charge to clamp down hard on anyone who would dare to step outside the norm.  In far too many cases, they are the ones taken seriously in the mainstream.  Hackers are viewed as the true threat to our way of life, rather than the poor programming and lack of concern for security and privacy that dominate.

In an incredible example of this shortsightedness, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in addressing the momentous events in the world previously alluded to, managed to castigate hackers in the same breath as those who cut off Internet access and even torture opponents of oppressive regimes.  It's clearly all just wordplay and a desperate attempt to have one's cake and eat it too.  After all, if you view hackers as a positive force in getting the truth out in one situation, how can you turn around and call them a threat back home?  If leaks about corruption lead to a positive change in a distant land, how can we be so quick to assume such revelations will only cause harm within our own borders?  Somehow, those who wish to stay in control no matter what must figure out a way to profit from the reactions while condemning the actions that provoked them.  It's a tricky game, to say the least.

As always, we face the danger of falling into the traps that are set.  We're all quite familiar with the inaccurate definitions of hackers that the mass media helps to spread. We must continue to do everything possible to correct this perception and reach people on our own terms.  Lately (and as seen in the Clinton comments), the attempt to tie hacking with the cutting off of Internet access has gained steam.  It's relatively easy to disrupt the Internet connection of an organization like WikiLeaks or even a large corporation like MasterCard.

And there is no shortage of people willing to say they did this in the name of hackers, even though it doesn't take much in the way of skill to do such a thing.  Unlike legitimate forms of social protest, such as sit-ins and civil disobedience, there is no act of courage in anonymously running a script and disrupting communications somewhere.  It's simply an act of sabotage, and, in fairness, there are many who would argue that such acts are appropriate at times.

Regardless, it isn't hacking, and it's not an attempt to open dialog or get the truth out.  It's the kind of tactic we should actually be fighting, where the goal is to silence people or viewpoints.  After all, one doesn't counter "bad" speech by banning it, but rather by spreading more "good" speech.  If the truth is indeed on our side, then getting our words out along with as many facts as we can find ought to be sufficient.  And if it isn't, then we need to try harder.  But we should never become what we have been labeled as by those who fear our actions.  That's a trap that's extremely difficult to escape from.

We're living in a very different world today, one that even hackers and technological experts are probably quite surprised by.  Revolutions being organized via Twitter and Facebook, crucial footage making its way to the rest of the world through YouTube, cell phones being as vital a tool as megaphones in reaching the masses... the technology especially snuck up on the people who supposedly were in control.

Their reactions, though, were predictable and not at all unlike those of anyone who finds their little fiefdoms being challenged, whether it's an entire country, a classroom, or an office.  Frequently, access to technology was either cut, restricted, or clumsily hijacked.  But all that was accomplished was that more fuel was added to the fire.  When someone's reaction to a conflict is to cut off communications or attempt to drown it out, they have clearly run out of things to say and have already lost the argument.  We are so far quite lucky that it's individuals who have the upper hand when it comes to using technological tools and getting around the restrictions.

At some point, governments are going to learn to do a far better job at controlling technology, and we must learn to recognize the warning signs.  Every restriction we agree to, every extra bit of power and control we give away... it can all be turned into a weapon against free speech at some point.  And like any weapon, it's not likely to go away once it's put into place.

The world is a better place with more potential for positive change and the ability for justice to be served, precisely because of those with the courage to help get the truth out.  For every bit of information whose revelation causes mayhem in one circle, there is another place where it's a potentially vital part of justice.  The one fact we should all be able to agree upon is that the information that's out there is now reality.  We should honestly try to deal with that.