[Air-L] Wikileaks- possible without the internet?

[Aziz Douai]

Hi everyone,

I agree that the Internet is what makes these leaked cables unprecedented,
surpassing in reach the well-known Pentagon Papers (leaked by Daniel
Ellsberg) during the Vietnam War. What is anachronistic is that in this
information age, the US government has ordered its employees not to read the
leaked cables (as Thomas Jones usefully clarified in an earlier post). See
the NYT's article reporting on the US government's ban:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?_r=1&hp

Also, Glenn Greenwald has a very good take on the recent government reaction
to the leaked cables:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/lieberman/index.html

>From Amazon to PayPal, the Internet has become a battleground for this
information war.


Cheers,

Aziz

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Monica Murero <murero.monica at gmail.com>wrote:

> In our community of Internet Researchers it makes sense that academics and
> scholars are interested in WikiLeaks from an interdisciplinary perspective.
> Regardless our personal view about the controversial phenomenon of
> publishing secret documents, and its implications, the event raises a
> question: would this have been possible without the internet?
>
> WikiLeaks gathers, verifies, releases information to the general public via
> the internet. The "cables" released to the public  come from the Secret
> Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, the worldwide US military
> internet system. Millions of people as we speak read the cables on the web,
> share them via social media all over the world, read blogs, twitt about it,
> upload vlogs on uTube, join WikiLeaks groups on Facebook  at an
> unprecedented rapid diffusion rate , and without any possibility of control
> or arrest. Even the next super-secret tranche of documents is ready to be
> released from a popular online file sharing service:
>
> http://www.torrentz.com/76a36f1d11c72eb5663eeb4cf31e351321efa3a3
>
> I think this case is already internet history and it will be studied in
> future textbooks.
>
> Anyone interested in collaborating on a WikiLeaks interdisciplinary panel
> submission to the Seattle conference?
>
>
> Monica
>
> --------------------------
> Monica Murero , Ph.D.
> AoIR Exec, 2003-2009; AoIR Treasurer, 2005-2009
> AoIR Lifetime Member
>
> Director E-Life International Institute
> Associate Professor in Politics of e-Government
> and in Sociology of New Technology
> University Federico II, Italy
> Consultant, World Health Organization
> LinkedIN: http://it.linkedin.com/pub/monica-murero-ph-d/16/52/606
> Twitter: monica_murero
> Facebook: murero monica
>
>
>
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-- 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aziz Douai, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
55 Bond Street East
Oshawa, ON   L1G 0A5

Tel: 905.721.8668, ext. 3790
Fax:    905.721.3372
E-mail: aziz.douai at uoit.ca
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"A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring
it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both."  James
Madison, 1822

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