conclusion: Oh Noes, what about CHINA! *eye roll*
SPITZER: Time for tonight's person of interest. Here's the real meet meaning of the WikiLeaks story, the powerlessness of government in the internet era. In the last few days, supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have launched "Operation Payback," shutting down major website like Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. One of the alleged perpetrators is all of 16 years old.
PARKER: Nico Mele is the perfect person to speak on this new wild, wild net. He has been on the cutting only of edge of social media and politics. He ran Howard Dean's 2004 president Internet campaign and teaches about technology and government at Harvard's Kennedy School.
It seems a little bit scary to me that anybody can organ attack on an institution and shut them down. What does that mean?
MELE: Almost like a sit-in. Anybody can go sit in the lobby of a bank and shut the bank down for an hour.
SPITZER: That's a fascinating metaphor. But it really isn't. First of all, a sit-in requires many people, and second of all it shuts down only that one little branch. This was right at the heart of the internet infrastructure for major global institutions, and they went kaput. And how many people did it take to organize this?
MELE: It took a few people to organize it but hundreds of thousands to participate. It's a denial of service attack. What they do is, they get lots of people to all request the web site at the same time, and figure out ways of automating it, but it's still a broad coordinated activity.
PayPal shuts down Wikileaks account, but you can still give money to the Ku Klux Klan. This was a political action these hackers took and an act of civil disobedience.
PARKER: Is this something we should admire?
MELE: I absolutely think it's something we should admire. They're standing up for a political value they believe in, which is a radical free speech on the Internet. I would argue maybe it's the only value the internet actually has.
SPITZER: You say you admire them. How far does that go? Cyber war is the new frontier. China could shut down our grid. Where do you draw the line of what's permissible?
MELE: I wouldn't equate this with cyber war.
SPITZER: Why not?
MELE: I don't know that they broke any laws, right?
PARKER: All they did was show up.
MELE: All they did was show up. All they did was request the website. A lot of people requested the website at once.
SPITZER: If China were to do that and try to overwhelm our internet structure --
PARKER: We should be shut down.
SPITZER: -- would that be cyber war?
MELE: You're talking about a sovereign state going after another sovereign state's critical infrastructure.
SPITZER: It was a non-sovereign, 10,000 people who are anarchists --
MELE: This was a brief attack that actually disabled a few systems for very short period of time. It's very analogous to a sit- in.
SPITZER: The defense of people like a PayPal or a Visa or MasterCard is kind of like the defense that the major telecommunications companies have. We're just pipelines. We are just vehicles for other people to do their thing. We do not either filter content or even care about the content. Do you see that distinction as being meaningless in the Internet world?
MELE: Well, I don't know -- I don't know if I see it as being meaningless, but I do think there was kind of an act of political paranoia here, where PayPal will let you give money to the Ku Klux Klan, but they won't let you give money to a platform for whistleblowers?
SPITZER: I'm not disagreeing, I'm just trying to parse this, because I think this is kind of new and it will move in all sorts of different directions, and it may be sort of the frontier of combat of the future.
MELE: I tend to think of the internet as a that people interact with each other and bypass institutions. Right?
PARKER: Right.
MELE: And consequently, it's very hard to capture it for any substantial length of time. It was designed in part to avoid any kind of single point of failure. You can always cut the cable going into your house, right?
SPITZER: China is trying to cut into a whole nation.
MELE: Sure.
SPITZER: They're doing a pretty good job of it.
MELE: And I also think, let's not forget, that a lot of this power actually rests in the hands of corporations rather than in public infrastructure. I mean, if Google wanted to, Google could take WikiLeaks off the Google databases. When you Googled " WikiLeaks" you wouldn't see anything. That's a power they have, and in some ways a power I see PayPal tried to execute there.
SPITZER: All right. We will continue this conversation. Nico Mele, thanks for joining us tonight.
MEALY: Thank you.
SPITZER: And thank you for watching.
PARKER: Nico Mele is the perfect person to speak on this new wild, wild net. He has been on the cutting only of edge of social media and politics. He ran Howard Dean's 2004 president Internet campaign and teaches about technology and government at Harvard's Kennedy School.
It seems a little bit scary to me that anybody can organ attack on an institution and shut them down. What does that mean?
MELE: Almost like a sit-in. Anybody can go sit in the lobby of a bank and shut the bank down for an hour.
SPITZER: That's a fascinating metaphor. But it really isn't. First of all, a sit-in requires many people, and second of all it shuts down only that one little branch. This was right at the heart of the internet infrastructure for major global institutions, and they went kaput. And how many people did it take to organize this?
MELE: It took a few people to organize it but hundreds of thousands to participate. It's a denial of service attack. What they do is, they get lots of people to all request the web site at the same time, and figure out ways of automating it, but it's still a broad coordinated activity.
PayPal shuts down Wikileaks account, but you can still give money to the Ku Klux Klan. This was a political action these hackers took and an act of civil disobedience.
PARKER: Is this something we should admire?
MELE: I absolutely think it's something we should admire. They're standing up for a political value they believe in, which is a radical free speech on the Internet. I would argue maybe it's the only value the internet actually has.
SPITZER: You say you admire them. How far does that go? Cyber war is the new frontier. China could shut down our grid. Where do you draw the line of what's permissible?
MELE: I wouldn't equate this with cyber war.
SPITZER: Why not?
MELE: I don't know that they broke any laws, right?
PARKER: All they did was show up.
MELE: All they did was show up. All they did was request the website. A lot of people requested the website at once.
SPITZER: If China were to do that and try to overwhelm our internet structure --
PARKER: We should be shut down.
SPITZER: -- would that be cyber war?
MELE: You're talking about a sovereign state going after another sovereign state's critical infrastructure.
SPITZER: It was a non-sovereign, 10,000 people who are anarchists --
MELE: This was a brief attack that actually disabled a few systems for very short period of time. It's very analogous to a sit- in.
SPITZER: The defense of people like a PayPal or a Visa or MasterCard is kind of like the defense that the major telecommunications companies have. We're just pipelines. We are just vehicles for other people to do their thing. We do not either filter content or even care about the content. Do you see that distinction as being meaningless in the Internet world?
MELE: Well, I don't know -- I don't know if I see it as being meaningless, but I do think there was kind of an act of political paranoia here, where PayPal will let you give money to the Ku Klux Klan, but they won't let you give money to a platform for whistleblowers?
SPITZER: I'm not disagreeing, I'm just trying to parse this, because I think this is kind of new and it will move in all sorts of different directions, and it may be sort of the frontier of combat of the future.
MELE: I tend to think of the internet as a that people interact with each other and bypass institutions. Right?
PARKER: Right.
MELE: And consequently, it's very hard to capture it for any substantial length of time. It was designed in part to avoid any kind of single point of failure. You can always cut the cable going into your house, right?
SPITZER: China is trying to cut into a whole nation.
MELE: Sure.
SPITZER: They're doing a pretty good job of it.
MELE: And I also think, let's not forget, that a lot of this power actually rests in the hands of corporations rather than in public infrastructure. I mean, if Google wanted to, Google could take WikiLeaks off the Google databases. When you Googled " WikiLeaks" you wouldn't see anything. That's a power they have, and in some ways a power I see PayPal tried to execute there.
SPITZER: All right. We will continue this conversation. Nico Mele, thanks for joining us tonight.
MEALY: Thank you.
SPITZER: And thank you for watching.