Pundit Country

Wired has a post up today about a group of hacktivists proposing an attack on the government controlled servers in order to block government propaganda about the riots and protests occurring in the aftermath of their recent controversial election.

While I’m a firm supporter of these protests (especially as evidence mounts that there was in fact some illegality occurring), the DDOS attack goes over the line as this paragraph in the story so clearly points out:

In both Iran and abroad, the cyberstrikes are being praised as a way to hit back against a regime that so blatantly engaged in voter fraud. But some observers warn that the network strikes could backfire — hurting the very protesters they’re meant to assist. Michael Roston is concerned that “it helps to excuse the Iranian regime’s own cyberwarfare.” Text-messaging networks and key opposition websites mysteriously went dark just before the election. Morozov worries that it “gives [the] hard-line government another reason to suspect ‘foreign intervention‘ — albeit via computer networks — into Iranian politics.”

If the U.S. is going to condem cyberattacks against other countries (and we should) then we cannot engage in these types of activities. Doing otherwise compromises both our moral and lrgal standing in the world (think about the debate on torture and how that has jeopardized our standing.

Related articles

• Human rights in Iran (timesunion.com)
• Victory requires Facebook friends (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• War With Iran: Has It Already Begun? (thetruthwarblog.blogspot.com)

Related posts:

1. The Iranian post-elections debacle
2. The Iranian protesters manifesto
3. Picture of the Day
4. Quote of the Day
5. “It’s just trench warfare now”