Friday, December 03, 2010

Interesting week


So, this week we've seen a blow struck against openness in society, the founder of Wikileaks (Julian Assange) has been in trouble. Having published thousands of US diplomatic cables on his whistle-blowing site he now seems to be wrapped up in a bunch of legal wrangles involving an alleged sex crime in Sweden.

I must say it seems hard not to believe that Mr Assange is being "taken down" by a US administration hell bent on seeking revenge for embarrassing them. It will be interesting how this pans out under the spotlight of the media frenzy around the contents of the leak; the web-site itself has been attacked using a DoS (denial of service) tactic (suspicious) and the Swedish government has issued an arrest warrant for Mr Assange who is believed to be residing in the UK at the moment. Personally I don't see why Mr Assange should be prosecuted for what he's done, he's no different from the various newspapers and television channels that have re-cycled these articles, and I have to assume the editors of those papers are sleeping easy at nights and not expecting black clad ninjas attached to black-hawk helicopters to burst through their bedroom windows at any moment?

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Goldman has probably orchestrated this since he has already said in an interview that he has inside emails revealing unethical practices from a major US investment bank that he thinks will cause major finance reform. :-)

Steve Borthwick said...

Hi Lisa, you are probably right, it's hard not to get all "conspiracy theory" about this; most of the so called "revelation" seem to just confirm what everyone thought anyway.