WikiLeaks and the future Hydra
The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops. (@JPBarlow)
“Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place!” came the cry from the members of Hydra, a high tech criminal organisation in Marvel comics, taking its name from Greek mythology. A union, following the Second World War, between evil Nazi scientists and mystical Japanese-nationalist ninjas. While real world America was concerned with the “commie” threat, Marvel’s heroes – god bless ‘em – were still fighting WW2.
And while it has been a mainstay of comics since the 60s, it probably won’t be until July next year (when the Captain America movie opens) that it’ll have much recognition with the public. Anyone who has seen Iron Man 2 will already be familiar with “S.H.I.E.L.D” the spy agency set-up (in the comics) specifically to deal with Hydra. (Although that’s a history that’s become far more convoluted recently.)
The high profile of WikiLeaks has had me thinking a lot about Hydra recently.
Not just due to the super-villain aesthetics of their mountain hosting centre, but the references to frontman Julian Assange’s thoughts on breaking hidden lines of communications to weaken conspiracies, while at the same time being the face of a mysterious and mostly anonymous movement itself. The masked heroes of information freedom, what comic book fan could resist?
One particular Hydra storyline that came to mind was from 1993, the early days of net hype when the concept of “cyber-terrorists” seemed science-fictional, rather than some necessary policy agenda.
A shadowy group, operating on behalf of Hydra, hires computer hackers to in preparation for a series of supposed terrorists attacks on New York city. These hackers are then killed in order that the true intention of the attacks remain unknown – to gain access a secret government technical facility. The seeds of their failure are sown when, after a federal government system is compromised, an action hero from another technological age to take a suspected hacker into custody.
It’s not until I recently re-read the 1993 6-part Daredevil comic series “Tree of Knowledge” that I could recognise the parallels to 2007′s “Die Hard 4.0“. Although while, like the other pretend-terrorists of the Die Hard series, it was merely an electronic heist, Hydra’s goal was slightly different.
Rather than gain and exploit access to the world’s secrets, Von Strucker’s plan was to destroy the government’s ability to intercept communication, stop the “Clipper chip”, and promote the widespread use of strong cryptography. Rather, I imagine, like some parliamentary wing of the EFF.
Between the end of European Communism and 2001 Hollywood seemed unable to deal with political or ideologically motivated Western terrorists – lest the audience sympathise with the bad guy? Indeed the the real world the word terrorist itself has been so casually mis-applied by those in influence that’s, it’s almost taken on the status of a fnord.
We had the likes of Gruber from Die Hard, merely playing terrorist to cover a criminal heist. Sophisticated conspiracies wielding political and commercial influence abound, but not as a means to anything more. The conspiracy only exists to perpetuate itself. The movie The Net featured the shadowy “Praetorians”, straddling commerce and government, but gave little indication of their motivations. Its weak spin-off TV series merely presented them as criminal organisation, committing criminal acts to fund their criminal activities. Reminiscent of those shrill warnings prefixed to videos claiming that video piracy funded the activities of drug dealers. (Giving the impression that the actual dealing was more of a hobby, a way to meet girls?)
Many might disagree with my assessment of Michael Bay’s “The Rock” as being one of the greatest action movies of all time, but you’ve got to at least credit it for being able to present an interesting motive for a terrorist action (in that case: to have the military recognise and pay reparations to the families of servicemen that died on illegal missions).
Hydra themselves usually seem to be motivated by some nebulous idea of power and wealth. The master plan in this case was basically promote crypto-anarchism; Watch as a culture of secrecy ends up tearing society apart; PROFIT! (The irony of a fictional Nazi describing weakened governments resorting to “Gestapo techniques” passes without comment.)
But it’s not so much the culture of secret keeping, but the act of revelation that’s been dominating the real world’s news for the last couple of weeks.
Rather than distributing via networks designed for clandestine action, such as TOR or Freenet, the tools of WikiLeaks are conventional… almost mundane. Using high-profile commercial services such as Amazon, EveryDNS, Paypal and then demonstrating those services will roll over and actually, without court orders, enforce their impenetrable Terms and Services by the merest whisper from an unhappy government. Perhaps, from a network perspective, the biggest exposure has been, not of governments themselves, but the independent organisations and mechanisms that cannot be entrusted with the defence of freedoms.
Which may, partly, be the point.
WikiLeaks then requested that individuals mirror their beleaguered website, that they set up remotely updatable website mirrors that allow remote updating rsync over ssh. A class of open tools that are freely available to any website administrator. The code of the street, as it were.
Cut off one server, and perhaps two more will spring up in its place. WikiLeaks is the proto-hydra, now. I note with amusement that the Senator Joe Lieberman has suggested it be countered with a proposed “S.H.I.E.L.D Act” (or perhaps it was Senator Leiber?)
As Mark Pesce points out, we’ve been here before. Putting Napster in the dock didn’t kill Peer-to-peer filesharing, it improved it. Weak points were ironed out, attackable centralisation was finessed away. Strike it down, as the children’s fable goes, and it will become more powerful than you can imagine.
“Anyone can be the Batman” was the thesis presented in a couple of pieces on grinding.be recently. But, like Anonymous adopting the V for Vendetta mask, the opportunity now is for your electronic self to become akin to the cannonfodder henchmen of Hydra.
You can debate the ethics of, say, the cable releases all you want. Impedance to traditional mechanisms of governance are of concern, not to the public, only governments themselves. And if they’re as brittle as are being claimed, perhaps now is the time to engineer something better. You can question if the world’s governments are capable of holding themselves accountable, or whether democracy really requires an informed electorate to do so. Personally, I’m conflicted… WikiLeaks doesn’t seem like a good thing, but then a world in which many deem it necessary doesn’t seem so great either. It’s a symptom of some collective failure, so no wonder it makes so many people uncomfortable.
Ultimately, arguing about whether it should be allowed doesn’t matter. Someone, even if it’s not you or anyone you know, will be willing to share – and you probably wouldn’t choose to live in a world where it was impossible to do so. WikiLeaks, or whatever takes its place, will become an unstoppable Hydra – merely needing the wilful participation of anonymous actors.
And don’t pretend that, super-villain politics aside, the idea of joining a secret cabal of scientists and ninjas doesn’t appeal.
#ImHYDRA
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