• Home
  • About
    • Straight Up
    • Jan Herman
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Re Wikileaks, Remember What Mario Savio Said

December 9, 2010 by Jan Herman

Is Operation Payback “the first great cyber war” or just a “major shitstorm?” Are the mounting cyberattacks in support of Wikileaks something like the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s? Remember Mario Savio? Remember his prescient speech on the UC Berkeley campus in 1964?

There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the levers, upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.


Here’s the speech in context and the complete text of the speech.
Savio framed the moral issue and portended the outcome of protests that came later against the Vietnam War, when New Left radicals led campus revolts, war protestors organized peace marches, Yippies “stormed” the Pentagon, urban guerrillas went underground, and armed “liberation movements” sprang up. That was the temper of the times, if not for everybody certainly for a large portion of America’s youth.
But as happy as I am to welcome today’s guerrilla geeks, I believe there’s a huge difference between then and now. I don’t see a mass movement taking shape. Maybe I’m just frozen in time. Maybe I don’t know what’s really happening.  Maybe, given the importance of cyberspace, the cyberattacks will be more than sporadic. Maybe the guerrilla geeks are fulfilling Savio’s words. Maybe they are putting their bodies upon the gears and screwing up the apparatus, even if it’s just their virtual bodies. For the moment it looks like Julian Assange‘s actual body will stand in for them and us, and — more permanently — so will Bradley Manning‘s.
Postscript: Greenwald on the crux of the WikiLeaks debate.
Dec. 11 — More essential reading from Greenwald: The media’s authoritarianism and WikiLeaks, substantiating links included.
As to whether a mass protest movement for free speech is taking shape or not … Based on information supplied by Minerva, an Internet security company, and other experts, the NYT reports that within days of Julian Assange’s arrest “tens of thousands” of Internet users — going well beyond guerilla geeks — downloaded software to attack Web sites of companies that caved to government threats against Wikileaks.
Meanwhile, according the AP, via Forbes, the guerrilla geeks known as Anonymous circulated a press release saying

the group — which it refers to as an “Internet gathering” — was acting out of a desire “to raise awareness about WikiLeaks and the underhanded methods employed by the above companies to impair WikiLeaks’ ability to function.”

Which sounds to me exactly like the cyber equivalent of a Free Speech Movement sit-in.
Dec. 16 — The Economist uses the sit-in analogy in an editorial today, but calls guerilla geeks “cowardly hooligans, not heroes,” because their distributed denial-of-service attacks are anonymous.

The closest equivalent to a DDOS attack in the offline world would be a mass sit-in or a mob milling around a building, making entry and exit impossible. …Some argue that DDOS attacks are, similarly, a legitimate expression of dissent.

But in a free society the moral footing for peaceful lawbreaking must be an individual’s readiness to take the consequences, argue in court and fight for a change in the law. Demonstrators therefore deserve protection only if they are identifiable. …The furtive, nameless nature of DDOS attacks disqualifies them from protection; their anonymous perpetrators look like cowardly hooligans, not heroes.

I disagree of course with that characterization, but have to hand it to The Economist for logical consistency:

This applies to those attacking WikiLeaks too — a point American politicians calling for reprisals against Julian Assange’s outfit should note.

Trouble is, who will hold American politicians accountable if they do not deign to take note? The U.S. Justice Department, which is seeking to decapitate Wikileaks? Please.

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Jan Herman

When not listening to Bach or Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes, or dancing to salsa, I like to play jazz piano -- but only in the privacy of my own mind.
Another strange fact... Read More…

About

My Books

Several books of poems have been published in recent years by Moloko Print, Statdlichter Presse, Phantom Outlaw Editions, and Cold Turkey … [Read More...]

Straight Up

The agenda is just what it says: news of arts, media & culture delivered with attitude. Or as Rock Hudson once said in a movie: "Man is the only … [Read More...]

Contact me

We're cutting down on spam. Please fill in this form. … [Read More...]

Archives

Blogroll

Abstract City
AC Institute
ACKER AWARDS New York
All Things Allen Ginsberg
Antiwar.com
arkivmusic.com
Artbook&
Arts & Letters Daily

Befunky
Bellaart
Blogcritics
Booknotes
Bright Lights Film Journal

C-SPAN
Noam Chomsky
Consortium News
Cost of War
Council on Foreign Relations
Crooks and Liars
Cultural Daily

The Daily Howler
Dark Roasted Blend
DCReport
Deep L
Democracy Now!

Tim Ellis: Comedy
Eschaton

Film Threat
Robert Fisk
Flixnosh (David Elliott’s movie menu)
Fluxlist Europe

Good Reads
The Guardian
GUERNICA: A Magazine of Art & Politics

Herman (Literary) Archive, Northwestern Univ. Library
The Huffington Post

Inter Press Service News Agency
The Intercept
Internet Archive (WayBackMachine)
Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
Doug Ireland
IT: International Times, The Magazine of Resistance

Jacketmagazine
Clive James

Kanopy (stream free movies, via participating library or university)
Henry Kisor
Paul Krugman

Lannan Foundation
Los Angeles Times

Metacritic
Mimeo Mimeo
Moloko Print
Movie Geeks United (MGU)
MGU: The Kubrick Series

National Security Archive
The New York Times
NO!art

Osborne & Conant
The Overgrown Path

Poets House
Political Irony
Poynter

Quanta Magazine

Rain Taxi
The Raw Story
RealityStudio.org
Bill Reed
Rhizome
Rwanda Project

Salon
Senses of Cinema
Seven Stories Press
Slate
Stadtlichter Presse
Studs Terkel
The Synergic Theater

Talking Points Memo (TPM)
TalkLeft
The 3rd Page
Third Mind Books
Times Square Cam
The Tin Man
t r u t h o u t

Ubu Web

Vox

The Wall Street Journal
Wikigate
Wikipedia
The Washington Post
The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive)
World Catalogue
World Newspapers, Magazines & News Sites

The XD Agency

Share on email
Email
Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on reddit
Reddit
This blog published under a Creative Commons license

an ArtsJournal blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in