WikiLeaks Is Winning the Info War So Far

Last Updated: 2:00 PM ET

The U.S. government has declared war on WikiLeaks.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Fox News last week, "We are stronger than one guy with one website. We should never be afraid of one guy that plopped down $35 and bought a Web address. ... We're not scared of one guy with one keyboard and a laptop."

So far the "one guy,"  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has been arrested and denied bail in the U.K. His website has been pummeled by a series of covert and overt attempts by governments and businesses around the world to cut off its oxygen supply, but the efforts have not stopped the information flow.  

Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow tweeted that the "first serious infowar is now engaged, and the "field of battle is WikiLeaks." 

WikiLeaks appears to be holding its ground for now.

Assange and WikiLeaks are being treated as outlaws without formal legal charges, although U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said, "We have a very serious criminal investigation that's underway, and we're looking at all of the things that we can do to try to stem the flow of this information."   

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called WikiLeaks "an outrageous, reckless, and despicable action that will undermine the ability of our government and our partners to keep our people safe and to work together to defend our vital interests. Let there be no doubt: the individuals responsible are going to have blood on their hands."

House Homeland Security Committee member Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., called WikiLeaks a terrorist organization. "It is time that the Obama administration treats WikiLeaks for what it is -- a terrorist organization whose continued operation threatens our security," she said.  

CBSNews.com Special Report: WikiLeaks

On the electronic battlefield, a series of denial of service cyberattacks and denial of service by hosting companies, including Amazon, have attempted to disrupt the flow from the trove of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables extracted from a U.S. government server, allegedly by Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst. Currently, WikiLeaks is hosted on Swedish servers, which have been under cyberattack this week. 

Sen. Lieberman, who advised Amazon to deny WikiLeaks service, called for other companies to follow the example set by the company's web service division. "The company's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material," he said.

PayPal and MasterCard cut off financial support mechanisms. On Tuesday, Visa said it has suspended all payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of the organization's business. A Swiss bank, PostFinance, has frozen WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal defense fund. U.S. government scientists have been blocked from accessing WikiLeaks' websites for fear the data will "contaminate" their computers.

The cyber-battle is not one-sided. WikiLeaks also has exploited the decentralized nature of the Internet to remain functional. Assange and his WikiLeaks cohorts also have an insurance policy. About 100,000  WikiLeaks supporters have been given an encrypted file of WikiLeaks data, some potentially damaging to the U.S., that would be unleashed in the event of aggression that compromises its operations. "If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically,"  Assange has said. Hundreds of "mirror sites,"  which copy the data of the WikiLeaks site, have also been set up.

In  addition, an anonymous hacking group has started to attack organizations, including PayPal, who denied services to WikiLeaks, Computerworld reported. 

Twitter and Facebook have not closed the WikiLeaks accounts on their social networking sites.

The elephant in the room is whether the U.S. Department of Justice will file charges against Assange and WikiLeaks. U.S. government officials are considering what laws might apply to prosecuting Assange, outside of the outdated Espionage Act of 1917. Holder has been mostly silent on the subject since his initial statement about a "very serious criminal investigation."

Pfc. Manning was charged in July with violations of the Espionage Act. The government would need to prove that Assange, an Australian national, and WikiLeaks conspired with Manning to procure and release the documents to bring serious charges.

The secret State Department cable exposed by WikiLeaks and subsequently covered extensively in the press listing sites vital to U.S. national security and public health has created greater security concerns that details about the personality quirks of world leaders.

"Leaking a list that purports to lay out critical infrastructure is like painting a target on the companies or the entities which are listed," said Michael Chertoff,  former Secretary of Homeland Security.  

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions. But he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt."

Sen. Lieberman believes the press, specifically the New York Times, should be scrutinized by the Department of Justice for publishing documents from WikiLeaks.

"I certainly believe WikiLeaks has violated the espionage act. But then what about the news organizations, including the NYT, that accepted it and distributed it. I'm not here to make a final judgment on that. But to me the New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they have committed a crime I think that bears very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department," he told Fox News. "And, again, why do you prosecute crimes? Because if you don't, well, first you do because that's what our system of justice requires. Second, if you don't prosecute people who commit crimes, others are going to do it soon and again. And I'm afraid that's what's going to happen here."

Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, maintained that the government is leery of shutting down WikiLeaks. "The reason the government hasn't acted to take down WikiLeaks is it knows, as does every First Amendment scholar, that would run afoul of the Supreme Court's decision in the Pentagon Papers case," Bankston told Politico. "Under the First Amendment, the legal presumption is strongly in favor of free speech and against prior restraint. The government would have the burden of demonstrating serious, really imminent harm and would have to do so for each document it wants to enjoin."

Assange is now behind bars in London for alleged sexual crime charges committed in Sweden, and fighting extradition, but WikiLeaks isn't deterred on its mission, as in this tweet from the elusive organization:  "Let down by the UK justice system's bizarre decision to refuse bail to Julian Assange. But #cablegate releases continue as planned." In other words, check your favorite news website for the latest redacted CableGate revelations. 

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Daniel Farber is editor-in-chief of CBSNews.com. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow him on Twitter.

  

[seedeevee]

Dan Farber,

Great job of stenography! I hope there is an award for that.

Anyways, "The U.S. government has declared war on WikiLeaks", is a pretty strong statement. Shouldn't it be, like, the headline on the CBS News website?

Some background on Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and how she has been at the forefront of covering up US Government illegality in wiretapping, torture, etc.? That could be helpful in putting these accusations by these officials in context. You remember "context", don't you?

Thanks for all of your great work!
Perhaps you could mention some facts about the people you are quoting?

[dronemonk]

How screwy has the USA become when the same Attorney General that took an imperial flier on prosecuting the torturers and frauds in the Bush administration now says "we're looking at all of the things that we can do to try to stem the flow of this information." That's right. The USA, supposed bastion of freedom and liberty, is now trying to stop the flow of information, not because it's false, but because its true...and embarrassing to the elitist scum (from both parties) that we've been passing off as leadership. This is the beginning of a new paradigm. One where Democrat and Republican labels don't matter. It's fascists vs libertarians. Those in government who fancy themselves your masters vs those few who still view themselves as your servants. It's a damned shame that so many citizens now behave as serfs, and will bow and scrape to the notion and sanctity of state secrets, if only to cling to a sense of ignorance about what the brigands in our federal government are doing in our names.

[Void-Master]

To know the true measure of a warrior, observe who are his enemies.

[lucifersshadow]

Reality is not always pretty, but the truth is magnificent. Just imagine . . . nations having to be truthful to each other . . .

[commenter777]

It is ridiculous to blame a news website for a lack of security of the whole US government/military. We need to secure our critical national security sensitive information, if there is anything that is still secret due to such a criminal lack of security by our govt/military. I vote to fire everybody from the top down that is responsible for the security of the data that was breached. All I've heard about on the news is that wikileaks is responsible??? Who is responsible for the security of the sensitive data that was breached here? If I do not hear soon of who is responsible in our country for this lack of security, and they are not held responsible instead of this news website, I'm moving to another country whenever I get ready because I'll be ashamed that my government is so ridiculous as to not place the blame where it lies and I'm tired of paying taxes for this kind of absurdity. Any website would have released the info. The problem is the lack of security of the data.

[commenter777]

Wikileaks is a provider of news information. Is the recession so bad that they are in charge of the US national security of the US government computer servers? Can we not afford computer security personnel? Who in our govt/military is in charge of securing the data? Wikileaks is not even close to being the major problem. The data being that unsecure is the actual problem because wikileaks is only 1 of many that would have published the data. The focus needs to be on correcting the problem. We only found out about the breach of security because of wikileaks. Do they terrorists and enemies of the US have other resources than just wikileaks? Do the enemies of the US rely on wikileaks for their info? Do they have much more info than they got from wikileaks recently? Enemies of the US would not even let us know they had obtained info that we in the US had not secured properly. Wikileaks should not be responsible for the data security of the US government/military computer servers and national security. I think the ultimate responsibility is the state dept of the US. Are our sensitive national security documents/data secure now, if there is anything the terrorists don't already have. If our security was that lax, is there anything the terrorists didn't already have?

[berlinfoto-2009]

"Enemies of the US would not even let us know they had obtained info that we in the US had not secured properly."
Good point commenter777, not only that, WiKiLeaks does not pay for leaked information, but foreign intelligence services do, and quite well at that, from what history tell us.
The motivation of the Leaker seems to be that he is disgusted, with our government, that is becoming more and more oppressive day by day, not only in bullying foreign nations but oppressing Americans, and usurping our freedoms and rights.
Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize should go to WiKiLeaks founder, and a United States Congressional Metal of Honer should go to the Leaker.

[PageWriter]

WIKI LEAKS' CAUSE CELEBRE IS WICKY-WACKY!

So, which is it--we all believe in the First-Amendment and practice it daily, or we don't?

The hypocrisy of politicians--both left and right-- amaze me. Hillary Clinton, et al, says none of the 'Wiki-leaks' are dangerous to national security. The likes of Christine O'Donnell doesn't even know what the First Amendment is; and,

Wiki Leaks is, well, --just embarrassing!

I agree with the NYT Editor in Chief who is quoted as saying that 99% of most of the news that we're fed daily is of absolutely no value. We haven't even seen a real war on tv since Viet Nam. (and see where that got us)....every war since then has been censored and then censored again, stepped on too many times to ever be real news.

But, Assange is now an international enemy of the state! He dares to embarrass the political leaders who, up until now, have never had to account for all the censored information kept from us. Maybe now we can finally decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. That's a sage idea.

[PageWriter]

WIKI LEAKS' CAUSE CELEBRE IS WICKY-WACKY!

So, which is it--we all believe in the First-Amendment and practice it daily, or we don't?

The hypocrisy of politicians--both left and right-- amaze me. Hillary Clinton, et al, says none of the 'Wiki-leaks' are dangerous to national security. The likes of Christine O'Donnell doesn't even know what the First Amendment is; and,

Wiki Leaks is, well, --just embarrassing!

I agree with the NYT Editor in Chief who is quoted as saying that 99% of most of the news that we're fed daily is of absolutely no value. We haven't even seen a real war on tv since Viet Nam. (and see where that got us)....every war since then has been censored and then censored again, stepped on too many times to ever be real news.

But, Assange is now an international enemy of the state! He dares to embarrass the political leaders who, up until now, have never had to account for all the censored information kept from us. Maybe now we can finally decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. That's a sage idea.

[berlinfoto-2009]

I truly hope that Wikikeaks is able to continue. It is my belief that the charges against him are bogus, at least from what I have read in various articles from this sight CBS. Most any woman wants to charge a man with rape if he is not sweet to her, in the morning, and fails to call her and pursue her, after what was clearly a consensual one night stand.
Wikileaks has made a great inroad into keeping dishonest governments honest. The leaking of data to Wikileaks represents a breakdown in authority, but this will probably, keep happing no matter what the punishment is for the individual who leaks information or data.
People all over the world are sick of overstepping governments continuing to usurp rights and freedoms.
Are humans going to allow computers and new technology to continue to enslave us or will we use the technology to free ourselves.

[sumed-dali]

I think the author should have quoted the entire tweet:

"The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

http://twitter.com/#!/JPBarlow/statuses/10627544017534976

Notice how the author leaves off a very critical part of the quote:

"You are the troops."

This seems to imply a level of censorship in itself.