This Machine Kills Secrets: Wikileakers, Hacktivists, and Cipherpunks Are Freeing World Information
FDL Book Salon Welcomes Andy Greenberg, This Machine Kills Secrets: How Wikileakers, Hacktivists, and Cipherpunks Are Freeing the World’s Information
By: Kevin Gosztola Sunday October 28, 2012 1:59 pm
Welcome Andy Greenberg (Forbes.com) (ThisMachineKillsSecrets) and Host Kevin Gosztola (The Dissenter) (author, Truth and Consequences)
This Machine Kills Secrets: How Wikileakers, Hacktivists, and Cipherpunks Are Freeing the World’s Information
It has been just over two years since Americans were really introduced to WikiLeaks. The high-profile releases of US State Embassy cables, war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the “Collateral Murder” video turned the organization and its founder Julian Assange into a beat, which journalists or reporters were closely following. One journalist, who has closely tracked the organization and its founder, is Andy Greenberg of Forbes.
His book, This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information, covers what he describes as “a revolutionary protest movement bent not on stealing information but on building a tool that inexorably coaxes it out, a technology that slips inside of institutions and levels their defense against the free flow of data like a Trojan horse of cryptographic software and silicon.”
The introduction briefly highlights the struggles WikiLeaks has faced in the aftermath of leaks in 2010. Greenberg writes, “WikiLeaks is on life support.” It is struggling to raise cash. Its most “ardent supporters” have become its “most bitter critics.” Assange seems to be “more interested in hosting a TV talk show on the Russian government-funded network RT than in rebuilding his organization.” And, skeptics are wondering if the web can ever be this “free anarchic realm” one might want it to be so that information can flow.
Chapter by chapter, Greenberg explores “the forces that coalesced to WikiLeaks happen”—The Cryptographers, The Cypherpunks and The Onion Routers. Then, he details the forces at work ensuring the leaks WikiLeaks brought about continue to happen: The Plumbers, The Globalizers and The Engineers.
More at:
http://fdlbooksalon.com/2012/10/28/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-andy-greenberg/
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