Excuses, excuses

The actual, and threatened, attacks upon various and sundry sites, compounded with a somewhat unrelated attack on Gawker, have one good effect. They bring the noble and principled defences of Wikileaks back into the cyber gutter where they belong.

Whatever Wikileaks' original motives, the attacks make clear that Assange's defenders are chiefly commonplace hackers, reckless troublemakers who don't really care what sort of trouble they make or who gets hurt, as long as they get to make trouble and hurt someone. Their claim of hacktivism is spoilt by their recklessness. With friends like that, Assange hardly needs his enemies.

The Gawker attack, evidently made for entirely puerile motives, shows characteristic hacker ineptitude. "I want my revenge and I want it NOW!", they scream, oblivious to the the fact that their message crossed wires with that of Wikileaks' hacker "friends," leaving many people unclear about who was responsible for what: even hacktivist supporters. This is not exactly the way to make a statement.

As with the sort of terrorism that actually kills and maims innocent people, the world goes on, perhaps annoyed, possibly inconvenienced, but not paralysed. Nothing could better illustrate the impotence of both activities.