Freedom of Speech?
http://cyborgdemocracy.net/blogger.html
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Cyber warfare and the “blogger threat”
The US Homeland Security Department recently ran a mock Internet attack to
test its preparedness in cyberspace.
Called “Cyberstorm,” it was the largest cyber wargames exercise ever
conducted. It was designed to gauge how the US and the international
community would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from not
just terrorists and enemy states, but also from anti-globalization
activists, underground hackers, and bloggers.
That’s right, bloggers.
The Cyberstorm simulation was a challenge to government officials and
industry executives to “respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and
activist calls by bloggers.” Officials from the US, Canada, Australia, and
Britain, along with executives from Microsoft, Cisco, and Verisign
simulated attacks using isolated computers and working from basement
offices at the Secret Services headquarters in downtown Washington.
According to accounts, the Internet “survived” the attacks, but the
Homeland Security Department will not be disclosing its final report until
later this summer.
It’s generally felt that, with the meteoric rise of the Internet and with
the information and communication revolutions still in full swing, the
threat of networked groups and individuals to spread disinfo and to engage
in widescale social engineering campaigns has never been greater. One
could imagine a fleet of blogs calling for people to rise up over an issue
like runaway global warming.
Consequently, that the Homeland Security Department considers bloggers a
potential threat really shouldn’t come as a complete surprise; the
military would likely shut down threatening and subversive blogs during
times of war or civil unrest.
It’s during such episodes that control of information flow becomes
tactically paramount — so much so that nations often regress to de facto
authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. As a result, the state has the
power to claim a monopoly on the memesphere, including extreme censorship
and propaganda campaigns.
Freedom of speech is a peacetime luxury.
At the same time, however, I have to think that the real impact bloggers
could conceivably have is over-stated. I don’t think memes work in such a
pervasive way, particularly not today in the age of diversified media. If
blogs could actually cause people to riot, for example, it’s not because
the blogs are telling them to do so, but because there’s a genuine reason
for doing so.
But as the Cyberstorm exercise shows, the revolution will not be
televised, nor will it posted on a blog.
Cross-posted from Sentient Developments.