Turn It Down a Notch

Companies are ending their cooperation with WikiLeaks, and, as a result, WikiLeaks sympathizers are counterattacking in a “cyber war.” This vigilante justice must end — before courts and in parliaments.

That’s probably an overreaction. Like corporation dominoes, one company after another is ending cooperation with the Internet exposé portal WikiLeaks. Government representatives, such as U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, are expressing themselves with open satisfaction because a single citizen is turning himself in, thereby fueling a conspiracy theory that the outcome of the case is no longer open. Parts of the Internet community are fighting back by hacking. The term “cyber war” is spreading. There’s an open establishment against the hackers, and it is unclear as to which side is the dark power and which side is fighting for the cause of freedom.

The situation should never have been allowed to get this bad in the first place, even in a rhetorical sense. When it is soberly examined, the Internet is neither a legal black hole nor a worldwide “Community 2.0,” to which everyone belongs. It’s a communications and business platform, the technological foundation of which — known as a server — often belongs to private firms such as Amazon or PayPal, whose terms and conditions WikiLeaks disobeyed. There have rightly been conflicts over the fact that those firms first need public pressure in order to take any action against Nazi websites. Of all cases! To react so severely in this particular case [is incomprehensible] — and with such coarse methods at that. But are the conflicts a waste of time?

A representative of the “Chaos Computer Club” said on Wednesday evening that the attacks against MasterCard, PayPal, and others showed the growing power of the citizens in the digital age. This is nonsense. It isn’t so much the power of the citizens that is growing as it is the power of individual computer freaks, whose beliefs can, but don’t by any means have to, be in line with the interests of “[typical] citizens.” The boundary between revolutionary avant-gardists and criminals was, is and remains fluid. To hack the site of a company, a government or the district attorney’s office out of anger over the anti-WikiLeaks campaign is vigilante justice. And, for good reason, such actions are forbidden in free and democratic societies.

As it is, the question remains as to which type of society the people who are calling for “total transparency” actually want. This is yet another point of heavy debate among Internet activists. Whoever wants to keep a distance between the state and our personal connection data can’t knock down every personal and copyright barrier, which Amazon and other Internet companies are obliged to protect. It all boils down to if internal correspondence leaks onto the Internet, such as that of the U.S. State Department. Not everything that’s confidential is an antidemocratic game of intrigue. That’s what Assange will be telling his lawyer in their discussions.

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Publicity has always been the strongest weapon for the oppressed. Today, billions of people stand ready from Burma to Iran. But the U.S. is not Burma, and Sweden is not Iran. It’s not the choice of WikiLeaks as to where the freedom of information reasonably ends. That should be defined by democratically chosen bodies of representatives of the people and the free administration of justice — open and able to be influenced by everyone. Revolutionaries of the digital age have doubts as to where this path, paved with good intentions, will lead. They fear it could lead to pandemonium.

That’s why everyone — governments, firms and Internet activists — should turn it down a notch, even in a rhetorical sense. The boundaries of WikiLeaks must be dealt with before courts and parliaments — nowhere else.