So, which trend is really dangerous?

By Yvonne Buma on 11 December 2010

The big discussion in the media this weekend is: how dangerous are the groups of hackers attacking credit card sites or sites of the police. Yes, yes, you are right. It is against the law and it should not be permitted. But… I have the faint feeling that clever spin doctors are diverting our attention from something much more threatening. Something that has (or could have) much more influence on our lives and our rights as civilians. And that is: financial institutions, internet providers and social media deciding for us, without court decisions, which causes we can support. Now there you have something that, in my opinion, is much more threatening to free speech and civil rights than actions of groups of people reacting in their own way to these actions. Yes! I agree. What these hackers do is unlawful, but let’s remember it is their reaction to very questionable and unlawful actions by financial institutions and social media.

 
Remember? PayPal froze Wikileak accounts (not for the first time by the way), mastercard blocking payments to Wikileaks, Visa blocking Wikileaks accounts and Amazon cutting Wikileaks of from their surfers. Let’s remember, this happened before any actions of groups of hackers supporting Wikileaks. And isn’t it funny that hacking attacks on the Wikileaks site started before any of the hacking activities we are discussing nowadays? For some reason this was just small print news. Even applauded by the some of the same politicians who are so indignant about the current hacking activities.

Should banks, internet providers and social media be allowed to decide for us which causes we can support, which actions we can take, which opinions we can express? Shouldn’t they be neutral institutions serving everybody without political prejudice? Isn’t that what our social and economical system is built upon? Shouldn’t it be only the courts who can decide on these issues?
In these days when we are entrusting more and more of our ‘lives’ (banking, news, contact with others and even our own documents and emails) to the world wide web these actions are a very dangerous trend. They are (potentially?) threatening our right of free speech and access of knowledge and information. They are (potentially?) threatening to our right to support the causes we want to support.

Neutrality of these institutions and the internet as a whole is what, in my opinion, we and the media should be discussing. Breaking this neutrality is what we should be indignant about. Not groups reacting their actions. Let’s select our priorities with intelligence. We (and this includes journalists) should be intelligent enough not to fall for spin doctors. However clever they may be. It might otherwise very well be that we hand in some of our basic civil rights in the course.

tagged with: free speech, wikileaks, media

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