Nothing inspires a conspiracy theory like an attack against a potential whistle blower, and that is exactly what WikiLeaks is implying with their current situation. WikiLeaks blames a security intelligence firm for inflicting a DDoS weeklong attack that has led to the company’s restricted service. WikiLeaks, which has prolifically turned out data regarding the “counterterrorism technologies and services” of security intelligence firm TrapWire, is undergoing one of their greatest efforts to not be silenced.
The sensitive information that WikiLeaks believes is the cause of their attack stems from emails that hackers retrieved after tapping into Sratfor’s system. The emails detail TrapWire’s surveillance efforts.
TrapWire began in the wake of the September 11th attacks, and according to its founder, Richard Helms, has the technology to “collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.”
The timing of this situation seems to coincide with the recently renewed interest in the government’s power in regards to surveillence. The recently proposed Cybersecurity Act of the Obama administration as well as a federal court of appeals ruling over warrantless wiretapping have sparked heated debates by both security and privacy advocates.
Just as anybody would expect of a company that holds the public’s right to information as sacred to everything else, WikiLeaks has not kept quiet. WikiLeaks has issued statements to the press and has utilized Twitter (News - Alert) as a means to pointing its finger.
According to a press statement, “Attacks on wikileaks-press.org escalated after Wikileaks retweeted links to our mirrors of leaked files from WikiLeaks ... on a newly discovered mass surveillance program known as TrapWire…With that in mind, these attacks appear at a first glance to be part of an intimidation campaign…”
WikiLeaks has also tweeted, “Yes, WikiLeaks revealed a whole bunch of documents on #Trapwire, no, you can't read them easily, because of the current DDOS attack.”
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Edited by Allison Boccamazzo
