(www.RemnantNewspaper.com)
In the 2007
action thriller Live Free or Die Hard, fourth in
the series of vulgar but popular films beginning with
Die Hard, the premise is that a group of
cyber-terrorists are conducting a “fire sale,”
cyber-hacker-slang for a total takedown of the
cyber-infrastructure of the nation; in other words,
electronic warfare.
The WikiLeaks
affair has now brought about what appears to be a
credible threat of such a campaign being initiated.
Earlier this month, a hacker coalition known as
“Anonymous” “launched a slew of cyber assaults against
what it perceives to be enemies of WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange, including a
DDoS attack
on PayPal, which recently stopped processing donations
to WikiLeaks in the wake of the release of U.S. embassy
cables,” according to a Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7th)
post on finance blog Zero Hedge.
And as the
post correctly points out, “if there is one thing worse
than a (now arrested) Australian [WikiLeaks’ Julian
Assange] with a lot of deep throat sources, it is the
global hacker community which has just made the
international banking system its number one enemy.”
The
international banking system might be said to be
society-in-general’s “Public Enemy Number One,” but up
to this point the regulators and governmental entities
sworn to protect society from them have shown little
enthusiasm for doing so. The clarion call “Stop the
Looting and Start Prosecuting” has not been heeded by
those employed to be the thieves’ adversaries. Perhaps
they had best step up to the plate before the hackers
start swinging, because a collapse of the electronic
infrastructure would cause serious problems if not
outright chaos.
One must ask
oneself if all this is not some sort of “setup” to make
possible much greater regulation of the internet, which
is now one of the few reliable sources of truthful news
outside of struggling traditional publications such as
The Remnant. It now goes nearly without saying that all
mainstream media publications and other outlets are
seriously compromised if not outright dishonest, so the
internet presents an ever-greater threat to those who by
any means necessary wish to prevent transparency in
information.
Whatever the
case, however, a cyber-attack could have serious
consequences for those who are unprepared for any sort
of societal disruption. It behooves the prudent to
prepare for a period of at least a week without
essential services, and additional preparations would be
neither out of order nor excessive.
The hacker
threat seems tailor-made for those who would place
greater and greater restrictions on freedom of
information, freedom of movement, freedom of expression…
freedom in general; freedom, once the defining
characteristic of the West, now in the eyes of the
financio-political oligarchs and their minions a quaint
relic unsuited for “dangerous” times.
Who is
actually behind the WikiLeaks data dump? Who is behind
this apparent “cyber-terrorist” threat? Important
questions needing answers; but whose answers can be
trusted: government agencies contesting to see which can
become the Grinch That Stole Christmas and Everything
Else; the fearless mainstream press that kow-tows to the
financial community and their thievery? One doubts their
good intentions nearly as much as one doubts their
competence and honesty.
The hacker
threat is real, as is the threat to undersea
communications cables, a vitally important strategic
resource far more in need of attention than grannies at
the airport. Curiously, the “terrorists” who want to
place a bomb in every Christmas stocking seem to have
overlooked the easily attacked communications cables and
have yet to launch an all-out attack in cyberspace.
It may soon be
difficult to tell terrorists from freedom fighters
unless some degree of honesty and transparency is
restored to government. Meanwhile, the vulnerability of
societies’ infrastructures grows greater by the day.
The “Fire
Sale”—when “everything goes”—may not be long in coming. |