In a series of blogposts I would like to have a look on the possible consequences of Cablegate considering several topics, such as the Internet, Diplomacy or Democracy. It is a highly subjective view, but hopefully my opinion and the links offer you enough material to create your own opinion.
The releasing of diplomatic cables could be a turning point for the internet how we know it. Till now it seems like it is a highly unregulated area with a lack of opportunities for governments to intervene. But states realised meanwhile that the way the Internet is governed could harm them and react.
A first step was that the US gouverment simply pressured companies like Mastercard, Paypal and Amazon to not provide their services to Wikileaks any more. Something similar happened in Egypt a few days ago when president Mubarak told the biggest webhosts to switch of their “Border Gateway Protocol”, simplified: he switched off the Internet (for more information click here). Only a cable from Italy connected Egypt with the rest of the world. Even we learned that the Internet is a network of networks, which reacts to disruption by leading our requested data through a different network to the target point, the last few months showed that the Internet is not “governed” by the people or by the network itself, its governed by companies. All services are provided by companies who can stop servicing and impede the free flow of information. Yes, there are Mirror sites of Wikileaks. And yes, the cables were published by magazines and newspapers. But in my opinion governments are flexible enough by introducing laws or connect with each other to stop newspapers to publish stolen material or companies to host Wikileaks mirror sites on their servers. In the short run Wikileaks could have provided interesting informations how the US is dealing with each other, but in the long run the free float of information could be much more censored.
Written by Leaker3
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