2600 Magazine_ The Hacker Quarterly - Digital Edition - Summer 2011 - 2600 Magazine [50]
The actual triggers were twofold. First, the price of food rose (and has kept rising) to the point where subsidized food distribution programs ran out of money, creating widespread discontentment. Far from being helpful and sympathetic, petty officials actually added to the pressure by obstructing small businesses and requiring bribes to do their job.
On Dec. 17, 2010, a few local Tunisian policemen raided a produce seller called Mohamed Bouazizi and confiscated his fruits and his scale. Moreover, a female inspector had slapped him publicly while he was resisting the confiscation. He pleaded to get his property back, from the local police, then from the governor, to no avail. Overcome with humiliation and deprived of a livelihood, Bouazizi walked to the governor's building, doused himself with paint thinner, and set himself on fire.
This highly symbolic suicide was the watershed event that led to the expression of accumulated frustration and anger, and finally toppled the regime. WikiLeaks? Not so much.
High tech served the rioters by providing fast, uncensored communication through cell phones. But this was the work of mainstream corporations, not hackers. You are absolutely right when you say that governments will now try to turn off cellular and Internet communications at the first sign of unrest. That's exactly what Gaddafi did in Libya.
Note a constant trend: Engineers (that is to say, hackers) create technology companies to bring information to people. Governments "regulate" the amount of freedom that these companies can provide. This should give pause to activists that see government regulation over tech firms as a silver bullet for all the world's troubles.
SysKoll
Regulation is definitely not a silver bullet, nor is it always a bad thing. In the end, it’s about people power and how much they’re willing to let the governments or corporations get away with. We’re pretty sure that mainstream corporations didn’t sell their products as tools to use in popular uprisings. The people figured out how to do that on their own, just as they figure out how to bypass restrictions placed on them by their rules or by the software itself. The mood that’s established by such empowerment, as well as by the existence of sites that are dedicated to leaking important information, is what tends to change the game.
Dear 2600:
Four days before the 2011 Canadian federal election, Wikileaks released 9731 cables relating to Canada that all seem to incriminate one single party, and no one else. While I'm not a fan of that party, this seems all kinds of wrong, and hardly in the true hacker spirit of freedom of information. After reviewing more of these cables than I can count, I really feel like someone is trying to push an opinion on me here.
Any chance they also publish statistics about the number of cables they decided not to release? I'm guessing no.
Polaris75
Without knowing the specifics as to how these cables were obtained, it’s impossible to judge the intent of their release. It could be that the person(s) who submitted them did indeed have a political agenda and only leaked the ones they thought would further that end. It could also be that, for whatever reason, one party had more damning documents than another. If Wikileaks themselves held back on the release of certain cables because of a political agenda, it would indeed be an interesting story, but we see no evidence of this having happened here or in the past. Of course, it’s impossible to see any evidence without knowing what was leaked, which was done anonymously and we all know Wikileaks isn’t going to reveal their sources. We heard similar accusations last year regarding the large amounts of leaked documents that involved the United States as opposed to other countries. We agree with all of the critics who are clearly clamoring for more leaked documents. But somebody has to leak them from a variety of sources in order for a variety