Week_11+-+Benkler

__**Week 11 - Benkler.**__ On page three Benkler outlines the corporate freeze-out of Wikileaks by certain companies like Apple, Amazon, PayPal and others. He acknowledges the lack of any explicit governmental direction or coercion but points out the hole allowing for extralegal action (through corporate/governmental ties and influences) to put a stranglehold on Wikileaks’ first amendment rights or free press (or at least its ability to function as a free press). “There is no clear evidence that these acts were done at the direction of a government official with authority to coerce it…these actsrepresent a direct vulnerability in the private infrastructure system and a potential pathway of publiccensorship. It is impossible to ignore the role that a diffuse, even if uncoordinated set of acts bygovernment officials [by]…various public statements andorganizational actions, played in triggering the commercial services denial of service attack. 9 Incombination, the feedback from public to private action presents the risk of a government able tocircumvent normal constitutional protections to crack down on critics who use the networked publicsphere. This occurs through informal systems of pressure and approval on market actors who are notthemselves subject to the constitutional constraints. This extralegal public-private partnership allows anadministration to achieve through a multi-system attack on critics results that would have beenpractically impossible to achieve within the bounds of the constitution and the requirements of legality.”
 * Cody Witko:**

Sorry that is such a long quote. Naturally we sense the imminent danger to our first amendment rights here. Clearly this stranglehold technique is but one course of action the government is able to take. Another promoted course of action found in the Pentagon report was the harsher punishment of whistleblowers, “The report concludes with a recommendation for attacking the site: cracking down very heavily on whistleblowers so as to make Wikileaks seem less safe as a point of distribution: “Wikileaks.org uses trust as a center of gravity by assuring insiders, leakers, and whistleblowers whopass information to Wikileaks.org personnel or who post information to the Web site that they willremain anonymous. The identification, exposure, or termination of employment of or legal actions against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others from using Wikileaks.org to make such information public.” 38 “(8).

Assuming those involved in leaking information are contractually bound, and this course of action outlined above is not illegal, I do not necessarily see these course of actions by the government existing as the “formation of laws abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”, to use first amendment language. So my question is, if Wikileaks can use whatever acceptable methods available (I say acceptable because I assume the information the do get is via legal pathways)to it in order to gather and publish its findings, as any free-press would do, can the government not use any/every legal channel it can find to try to suppress classified type information? Remembering the discussion we had in class weeks ago about how the responsibility lies with the government to hide its secrets better, or have less secrets, these methods (at least the punishment of whistle-blowing) seems to stress their attention to that responsibility. Now, assuring all that I am in no way condoning these sorts of actions, or the actions that necessitate these secrets, I would just like to express that in the model where the free press acts as the fourth branch of government and aims to expose secrets and encourage transparency, as a branch itself, there must be certain checks and balances going back and forth between each branch in order to ensure one does not over power the other. Perhaps these methods I have mentioned above are the checks and balances from the governmental side ensuring that the free press cannot eventually have access to the seriously dangerous information that may amount to actual citizen harm. This seems to be getting at one of those slippery slope arguments that we have been seeing quite often. Lastly another question I had was even though this sort of stranglehold technique might be legal (and again I am not certain on the legalities of these sorts of actions), if it becomes effective enough to restrain a free press, might it at that point be deemed unconstitutional? As I think it rightfully should.

There are many possibilities as to what to write on for this week, a bit tough to focus on one specific concept. Taking an insight from Graham’s paper presentation from a few weeks ago--that it is the governments responsibility to secure secretes they deem worthy of being secret and worthy of hiding from the ‘general will’—and applying it today’s reading seems inextricably connected. I was continually struck with how the response to Wikileaks was not that of actual, well-founded critique and criticism, but rather that of covering up embarrassment that was faced along with ‘damage control’ of the releases of Wikileaks. I was appalled by the //framing// that collectively occurred as painting Assange as a threat to global peace, and Manning as a less-than-human traitor who aided and ebbeded terrorists. The response of the news media, and the framing that occurred to //cover// the exposed documents was, at best, a cowardice response. Even, as Benkler notes, “Of this release {the diplomatic cables} Secretary Gates stated: Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S foreign policy? I think fairly modest” (2). Despite the //fairly modest// threat that the U.S faced on the basis of the cable release, Assange and Manning were still vilified, and condemned to be the scum of the earth. I found the comparisons to what Wikileaks did/ is doing and the reports and videos released during the Arab Spring was quite telling. It seems like a worthy comparison. Also, the brief releases, and Youtube clips, of what is occurring in Syria as of recent as an easy parallel with some of Wikileak’s releases. Similar to those in the streets that are shooting amateur video to capture the //truth// of the atrocities occuring, Wikileaks helps expose the //truth// of certain war acts, cables, and diplomatic policy. Asking a philosophical engaged question is now in order. After reading this quite informative and provocative paper, I was left wondering a few different things. 1) How much of the critique of Wikileaks is born out of ‘saving-face’ and ‘damage control’? If the answer is a decent amount (which I take ‘decent’ to be an understatement) then what does that point to with regards to the framing of the //fair// and //balanced// news? 2) If we allow for the personal feelings of those in the news media and those in positions of power to frame how we, the public, digest and are subjected to what the //news// presents, then is the //news// actually unbiased in its presentation of mere facts? And lastly, if the scapegoats—for our purposes Assange and Manning— are charged, convicted, or even murdered (which some have called for) due to the ‘defamation’ that Wikileaks //“caused,”// is the information they helped present simply thrown out and forgotten about because the framed figured-heads have been disposed of? If the answer is yes, then what does that say about human nature with regards to hearing and seeing things we disagree with and the assessment the blame? Ironically, as noted at the beginning of this little response, the blame is not on Assange or Manning at all—the blame is on those driving the car that is now swerving down Damage Control Lane. **Travis Dawson:** On page 38 Benkler writes, “If Manning had walked off a military base in Oklahoma and handled the disc with the files to the editor of a tiny local newspaper of a small town 100 miles away, and that newspaper had published the materials, we would not conceivably have treated that local newspaper, even if it were a two person operation, as categorically different from the //New York Times//. Indeed, we lionize the local newspaperman as a bulwark against local corruption. //The Progressive// does not have the organizational heft of the //New York Times//, but this lack does not affect its constitutional protections. As the Supreme Court put it, “Liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods.” Organizationally, the tiny local newspaper cannot possibly institute the kinds of institutional-procedural “checks and balances” that Klein spoke of. Their presence of absence cannot sustain a distinction that makes a constitutional difference if we are not willing to leave the small local newspaper out of the protective umbrella of freedom of the press. I am not against the spirit of Benkler’s overarching argument, but this small point concerns me. First off, just because of how newspapers work and how interconnected everything is a small newspaper would not have rashly published the materials. Due to limited resources and ethical procedures it is likely that the small town paper would have turned to the associated press before publishing, an organization with plenty of institutional-procedural ability for “checks and balances”. Secondly, it is not a level assumption to group a small-town paper with a lone internet blogger. Though the paper may be small, the lion share of employees have received foundational journalistic ethical training either through a university or from years of on the job experience. In this country we recognize the value of institutional training for many professions, why shouldn’t sensitive information only be handled and published by trained professionals? Finally I don’t think the comparison is far because I don’t think Wikileaks fits into the traditional journalistic mold, or even that of a blogger. Wikileaks seems like an entirely new breed, one that has yet to be defined but recognizes the need for professional, ethical, journalists.
 * Bryce Blankenship:**

Benkler's piece is, for me, problematic for a number of different reasons, not least of which is my own admitted suspicion of the perceived mission of Wikileaks as it currently acts in the world. Doing my best to overcome that particular prejudice, however, I remain forced to consider a particular question raised by my own reading of Benkler's article; is Wikileaks //actually// a member of the press? Benkler clearly understands it as such, saying on page 37 (for example) "the most obvious difference between Wikileaks and the more traditional media outlets..." thus accepting without reservation the characterization of Wikileaks as a journalistic entity. For obvious reasons, Wikileaks could not have been what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when, in the Bill of Rights, they wrote that Congress should make no law abridging the freedom of the press; given the realities of modern technology, the framers couldn't have understood Fox News as a member of the press either, though we still credit it (albeit reluctantly, in some cases) as a part of that class. I am unaware of exactly how constitutional law defines "the press" for the purpose of First Amendment protection; my own definition tends to center on the journalist as a //secondary// source rather than a primary source. In other words, in order to be a member of the 'fourth estate,' one must //report// on events or documents, rather than simply publishing them outright. It seems that, had the New York Times published the exact plans of the Minuteman III missile system in '71, there would be a clear case to be made for prosecuting whoever was responsible for publishing those plans for treason, if nothing else, while a //discussion// of the Minuteman system, its costs, objectives, and other relevant //secondary material// seems to me as though it ought to be classified as 'journalism. To summarize, then, I feel that Benkler has done his reader a disservice by failing to make clear both his definition of 'the press' that is meant to be protected by the First Amendment and how Wikileaks fits that definition.
 * Tim Johnson**

Benkler pg 31 “In the days following the denial of service attacks by the payment systems companies, a network of online activists called Anonymous launched a series of DDoS attacks against PayPal. The group knew that its combined power was insufficient to cause substantial damage, and its members responded in an interview that they were mounting the attacks: “to raise awareness”, “to show the prosecutor that we have the ability to act.” The attacks were investigated by the FBI, and lead to a backlash concerned with anarchic protests aimed at major components of the market system. Rather than providing support to Wikileaks, as they clearly were intended to do, these attacks helped to underscore and legitimate the framing of Wikileaks as a dangerous and anarchic actor. Participants rapidly abandoned this strategy.” The response by Anonymous and Lulzsec I find is rather marginalized in this piece. They undertook a much widespread approach of protest and DoS attacks on most of the companies, if not all of them that were critical of Assange and Wikileaks; they even took down the PBS website for posing a question. In a way, the whole episode is being handled poorly on all sides; governments, Western governments are fighting to crack down on a journalistic activist group, supporters of said group fight back using the same types of methods. I question the reason behind the author downplaying the public response. In most political news and development, finding a group of people willing do speak up and act on the behalf of an idea or organization is awfully difficult; it would usually take a large media outpouring to persuade action from any section of the population. With Wikileaks, however, a group was willing to stand up and fight back, undertaking what would be the spirit of political upheaval or change; in a Democratic society I find these invaluable. I wonder if the question of right vs. legality is ever able to be answered on the frontier, but I would say that the response by Wikileaks active supporters was more a benefit and deserving of more applause than Benkler gave them. Am I grossly misunderstanding, or is there a reason Benkler tries to spin the image of Wikileaks? **Tyler Morrison** Justice Stewart states that: “We are asked, quite simply, to prevent the publication by two newspapers of material that the Executive Branch insists should not, in the national interest, be published. I am convinced that the Executive is correct with respect to some of the documents involved. But I cannot say that disclosure of any of them will //surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people//.” It seems to me as though Justice Stewart is appealing to the idea that information should only be repressed if it results in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage. He seems to agree that some of the cable papers published do fall under this category, thus they are liable for repression. However, because he ruled that these cable papers should indeed be able to be published, is he saying that there is a particular proportion of danger within material that allows for its repression? If so, how is such a proportion quantified and who is responsible for deciding what is dangerous and what is not. It seems as though if the government that decides this, then they could repress information that isn’t dangerous, but if a body external to the government decides what is dangerous, they might be too lenient and allow for dangerous material to be published—I would think that the government would potentially be too restricting and the non-governmental agency would potentially be too lenient. Maybe something in the middle…what that would look like I don’t know. Benkler on p. 3 says “… the feedback from public to private action presents the risk of a government able to circumvent normal constitutional protections to crack down on critics who use the networked public sphere.” Is it //just// for the government to effectively circumvent constitutionally intended protections like that of the 1st amendment through inciting private companies to wield their power?
 * Randall Gunn**:
 * Ben Gearheard**

What exactly is the //fourth estate//? After reading at [], I take it to mean generally the institution of a press distinct from the rest of government. But when the fourth estate evolves/develops into the //networked// fourth estate, who is it that really holds the power to censor it? On page 24 Benkler writes, “Given what we know of the materials as they have come out to this point, there is little likelihood that an official order to remove the materials would have succeeded in surmounting the high barriers erected by first amendment doctrine in cases of prior restraint. The fact that the same effect was sought to be achieved through a public statement by an official, executed by voluntary action of a private company, suggests a //deep vulnerability of the checks imposed by the first amendment in the context of a public sphere built entirely of privately- owned infrastructure.// 141 .” (italics mine). It seems that Benkler would point to private companies with the ability to gang up on Wikileaks as holding the power to censor. Now, is this a just practice? Is it an unavoidable byproduct of a free competitive market, or can it be made illegal? Should it be made illegal? Would making the practice illegal adequately protect the self-governing public’s right to access information pertinent to informed self-rule?

It may be that I am naive when it comes to the Constitution, but Benkler's treatment of traditional media sources as compared to blogs or Wikileaks doesn't sit well with me. On 37 Benkler discusses that what seperates the two are that traditional media sources are //culturally// understood to be concerned with finding the facts. I find this patently false, I have never understood any of the media sources to be unbiased. Fox News is the obvious one, but MSNBC, New York Times, etc they all seem to lean one way or another. It actually seems more in the spirit of this class and the things we have discussed so far to suggest that bloggers are more apt to serve our need to have news dissemniated to us given two things: A)Technology allows us unparalled access to each others' thoughts and the general spread of information and B) just like the free market of ideas, by not creating news conglomerates we increase the checks and balances on the news by allowing for more peer review. Regardless if this is true, it seems that our current news sources are much less useful as they are biased and are in bed with the government many times. It is interesting to look at the history of Wikileaks and how it has been both reviled and revered by the same people. In this essay, Benkler gives a detailed history of the site itself and an interesting verbal portrait of its founder Julian Assange. On page 5 he says that Wikileaks won many awards and was looked at as a future of journalism that was pure and wanted to be a truly unbiased news source. Benkler goes on to say that it is only after the site reports on the //Collateral Murder//video that showed us solders mowing down innocent civilians and enemy combatants alike, as well as the release of the pentagon papers quoted here,"Things changed in 2010. In March 2010, Wikileaks released a 2008 Pentagon report arguing that Wikileaks is a threat, while recognizing the site as a source of investigative journalism critical of U.S. military procurement and its conduct in war" that discuss the procedures and conduct of the war in Iraq, that we see the US government agencies wanting to crackdown on Wikileaks. As I look at the case of Wikileaks I don’t think that Wikileaks should be able to be prosecuted or even pressured by the US because a.) their founder and spokesman is not a citizen of the US and therefore should not be subjected to the laws of the US, and b.) since the company is protected under the first amendment in the united states until that amendment is changed the company should not be attacked by the United States. **Matthew Baughman** //"If Manning had walked off a military base in Oklahoma and handed the disc with the files to the editor of a tiny local newspaper of a small town 100 miles away, and that newspaper had published the materials, we would not conceivably have treated that local newspaper, even if it were a two person operation, as categorically different from the New York Times. Indeed, we lionize the local newspaperman as a bulwark against local corruption.226The Progressive does not have the organizational heft of the New York Times, but this lack does not affect its constitutional protections. As the Supreme Court put it, “Liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods.”227 Organizationally, the tiny local newspaper cannot possibly institute the kinds of institutional-procedural “checks and balances” that Klein spoke of. Their presence or absence cannot sustain a distinction that makes a constitutional difference if we are not willing to leave the small local newspaper out of the protective umbrella of freedom of the press."// What kind of protections would be entailed by a policy that protects the weak economic media outlets from those of the powerful? Would we need to implement an entirely new agency to do this? What about the community and independent media that do not rely of profits but donations in order to report the news? Could we not foresee the FCC or the Justice Department charging these small outlets for treason? What are the factors in our current plutocracy that warrant protection from the modest media from the elite media in dodging regulation? Isn't there already inequality with satellite radio and free public radio in the content that the FCC is willing to regulate during daytime hours? Beth Ropski- "Responding to a call from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, several commercial organizations tried to shut down Wikileaks by denial of service of the basic systems under their respective control. Wikileaks' domain name server provider, EveryDNS, stopped pointing at the domain “wikileaks.org,” trying to make it unreachable. Amazon, whose cloud computing platform was hosting Wikileaks data, cut off hosting services for the site, and Apple pulled a Wikileaks App from its App Store. Banks and payment companies, like Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, and Bank of America, as well as the Swiss postal bank, cut off payment service to Wikileaks in an effort to put pressure on the site's ability to raise money from supporters around the world. These private company actions likely responded to concerns about being associated publicly with “undesirables.” There is no clear evidence that these acts were done at the direction of a government official with authority to coerce it." (Page 3)
 * Jordan Howser**
 * Brian Malone **

This part of the essay really stood out to me as an interesting point, especially the last line. While there was 'no clear evidence' the the government coerced the companies to help with the shutting down of Wikileaks, the idea that they could have still influenced is disturbing to me. If I were a company and the government was against another company, I would probably make the decision to side with the government, given their sway in the entirety of the US. I don't think that they would have to really coerce any company into doing what they think is 'best' because the companies would most likely side with them based on issues of power. What kind of laws protect a company from being black-listed by the government? Should there be a law for that? The government is obviously going to be against anything that shines an unflattering light on it and therefore businesses could (most likely) easily be swayed by that powerful of an opinion. I feel like Lieberman abused his power as a Senate Chairman to call for the abolition of Wikileaks. He misused his influence to sway private businesses into cutting off an organization that should have the right to publish the documents that they find (excluding those that threaten national security, which, to my knowledge, none of them have done). **Brendan O'Donnell:** There’s so much in this article to think about. I want to focus on a quote found of page 18; Benkler says: “It is very difficult to understand the political and market dynamics that could have led to the decision by Mastercard and Visa to cut payments off to Wikileaks except on the background of the framing efforts that located Wikileaks in the same rubric as the Taliban, rather than the same rubric as the //New York Times// or //The Progressive//.”

Benkler spends a great deal of text talking about how pressure put on private companies to deny service is a kind of extra-legal prior restraint. The quote above explains that without the widespread and absurd framing methods vilifying Assange and Manning as terrorists, these extra-legal restraints seem hard to arrive at. Of course, the airing of these frames was done by the established press. I wonder if there is a fundamental problem with this extra-legal power of pressure, especially when it enlists the fourth estate for its purposes. In other words, if the press is the fourth estate, which counters the power of the government, and in this case, the press helped create another power of the government (namely, to pressure private companies to deny their services to specific organizations and individuals), what must be in place to prevent this abuse? With a Rousseauian framework, is there some other body that needs to prevent this? Is it just the case that the established press is too close to the government now, being that they rely on “access” to government figures for the continuation of their news business?

**Emily McCormick** This was an incredibly dense article with a lot of different things you could pick on, but I want to talk about what a Fox News commentator said about Julian. On page 17, "Bob Beckel, Fox News commentator who had been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter Administration and had been campaign manger to Walter Mondale, said "A dead man can't leak stuff... This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. . . . I'm not for the death penalty, so. . . there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch." This proposal was met with universal agreement by the panel on the program." How could this not have been considered dangerous journalism? Clearly this is the ACTUAL type of careless journalism Julian and WikiLeaks were being accused of. We've discussed this possibility in class and seeing it here in print really convinces me that had Julian been shot by a Beckel listener, Beckel should've been held at least partially accountable for the violent crime.

However, my interest in the quote goes beyond the totally irresponsible comment Beckel made. This was one of the first ways that established media publishers began to attack Julian personally. By cirtically attacking Julian, his work through WikiLeaks became less credible. His molestation charges and reports of being a dirty guy compounded what the other media groups wanted the general public to perceive him as. Suddenly, the whole problem with WikiLeaks is Julian, not his work. It seems possible to me that it was a collaborative effort by the Administration, public, and private news outlets to promote that Julian was a bad person, therefore, don't take him seriously. My question is this: if there was a conspiricy to take WikiLeaks down by targeting Julian, aren't those who were involved guilty of the same thing that they accused Julian of? Julian aimed to provide information which he knew would cause the general public to distrust their government, at some level for at least a little bit of time. Vice versa, by directly attacking Julian, his work would be considered unreliable.

**Susan Thomas:** Benkler reports, "On the legal front, the Department of Justice responded to public calls from Senator Diane Feinstein and others and began to explore prosecution of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act; the military held (and continues to hold as of this writing) the suspected source of the leak in solitary confinement for over eight months, while the leading Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, called for his execution." (Page 3) And: "Sarah Palin linked to this commentary on her Twitter feed, and on her Facebook page stated that Assange "is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" (Pages 17-18) Here was one of his sources for information: @http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee It seems unlikely these people would have such a strong reaction to Wikileaks for personal reasons. If it is true that Wikileaks fed information (whether intentionally or not) to the Taliban that furthered the cause of Terrorism, this might explain their fervor. While it seems unlikely Assange should be prosecuted for any leak that exposes governmental wrongdoings, like the Apache helicopter incidents--since that is the benefit of a free press for a self-governed people, could he be prosecuted for leaking information that endangered innocents? Could he or others be prosecuted as terrorists or terrorist accomplices? While no government should be granted the power to cover up its own wrongdoings, should we not hold the government responsible to protect its citizens from undue exposure to violence and harm? Isn't protecting the identities and whereabouts of those who work toward international peace and justice, such as the Afghan sources, part of this task? And, if someone willfully or carelessly exposes them to harm, should they not be brought to justice? If not, how is their activity any different from the workings of an undercover, terrorist spy?