by Nick Briz

WikiLeaks describe themselves as, “a non-profit media organization dedicated to bringing important news and information to the public.” Their mission, total transparency. The kind of news they release is unlike any other we’re used to reading, and the quantity is overwhelming. Quite frankly the world isn’t structured to deal with this phenomenon. What they’ve accomplished in four years is unparalleled and their agenda is both questionable and commendable. WikiLeaks is arguably the biggest global news story right now, having finally pissed off the powers that be enough, the US and various other governments and special interests have declared war on WikiLeaks. Wikileaks.org had it’s DNS service pulled, Amazon.com (which hosted the site on it’s cloud) removed their services, Paypal cut off the account used to collect donations, and Mastercard, Visa, and others followed suite. Sarah Palin has said that Julian Assange, editor and spokesperson for WikiLeaks, should be hunted down like Osama Bin Laden.

“Anonymous“, a group with ties to the infamous message board 4chan, has decided to take up digital arms in defense of WikiLeaks. Their Operation Payback, endeavor, dedicated to attacking opponents of internet piracy, have now begun targeting the websites of corporations that have publicly removed services from WikiLeaks. Mastercard’s site recently went down, and #PAYBACK is trending strong on Twitter. The EFF (Electronic Fronteir Foundation) has declared this the first serious infowar.