Freedom and Anonymity: Keeping the Internet Open

"It’s starting to get weird out there. When WikiLeaks released classified U.S. government documents in December, it sparked several rounds of online conflict. WikiLeaks became the target of denial-of-service attacks and lost the support of its hosting and payment providers, which inspired sympathizers to counterattack, briefly bringing down the sites of Master­Card and a few other companies. Sites related to the hackers were then attacked, and mirror sites sprang up claiming to host copies of the WikiLeaks docu­ments—although some were said to carry viruses ready to take over the machines of those who downloaded the copies, for who knows what end. Months before, an FBI official said disruption of the Internet was the greatest active risk to the U.S. “other than a weapon of mass destruction or a bomb in one of our major cities.'"