NEW YORK, Feb. 24  In the recent wave of hack attacks that brought down Yahoo, e-Bay, Amazon and other big commercial sites, we have witnessed the opening battle of the first Internet war of the new century. Who are the perpetrators and what are their motives? The New York Post called them e-thugs, cyber-brats and high-tech hooligans. But as this click-and-mouse game continues, its clear that mainstream media are avoiding several crucial dimensions of the new wave of wired crime and its consequence.

BY IMPLYING THAT the hack attacks are the work of mere vandals, news organizations tacitly dismiss the possibility that these actions have any intended purpose. At this point, there are so few leads about the perpetrators and their motives, what makes the media and cyber-cops so sure that the perpetrators motive was high-tech hijinks?

2600: The Hacker Quarterly Web site, an outlet respected in that community, denies that hackers are even involved. Wired.com goes further, reporting privacy advocate Jim Warrens theory that the U.S. government staged the attacks to shore up its proposals for expanding government power to monitor electronic transmissions. What better way to prove the need for massively expanded government surveillance and create a frenzy of support for it? asks Warren. Its a disturbing coincidence that immediately after the Clinton administration declares war on cyber terrorism ... suddenly we have a continuous cascade of denial-of-service attacks on the highest-of-the high on the Internet. PARANOIA RUNS DEEP As dot.coms dominate the net, dot.com thinking dominates the media coverage.

Paranoid? Maybe. But actions produce reactions, and in some cases they can be worse than the crime that prompted it. It is not unknown for national security bureaucracies to exaggerate or invent threats to justify the expansion of their own power. Already, companies heavily invested in e-commerce are lobbying the government to do something  anything  to ensure the security of Internet sites. That, in turn, may lead to the passage of draconian laws that could create a dangerous but well-funded bureaucracy of ever more sophisticated and aggressive computer cops.

Will the Central Intelligence Agency morph into the Computer Intelligence Agency? Dont say it cant or wont happen here. Even if government intervention to prevent cyber-crime is restrained and surveillance limited, there is still a deeper conflict underway: the growing backlash against the hyper-commercialization of cyberspace, a medium that many hoped would be qualitatively different that the old media it will ultimately displace. DOT-COM THINKING Will the Central Intelligence Agency morph into the Computer Intelligence Agency? Dont say it cant or wont happen here.

As dot.coms dominate the net, dot.com thinking dominates the media coverage. One doesnt have to support sabotage of specific sites  and I do not  to recognize that the Webs potential to be a rich, non-commercial informational and educational environment is being sabotaged every day by those who only care about their spreadsheets. It is, in the words of filmmaker Warrington Hudlin, a fight between capitalism and democracy.

Thats a form of hacking, too  hacking at our freedoms. Those who have rushed to the defense of e-commerce uber alles  as President Clinton did at his recent cyber-security summit with corporate execs often dont link the dangers posed by hacking with the growing digital divide that is fast creating two nations  one richly endowed with information and the tools to use it and the other shut out of the information revolution. Resentments are growing against a culture in which everyone wants to be a millionaire. And with the nation obsessed with dot.com values, alternative voices are increasingly harder to hear. INFO-WARS The Webs potential to be a rich informational and educational environment is being sabotaged every day by those who only care about their spreadsheets.

Whether vandals, or hactivists will ultimately be held responsible for the recent spate of attacks, a larger Net war may be on the horizon. The Guardian recently reported on a new Pentagon-commissioned study predicting more online conflict, citing a recent Rand Institute study that says the information revolution is shifting power away from nation states towards new non-governmental alliances and networks of civil organizations.

Net war refers to information-related conflict at a grand level between nation or societies, says John Arquilla, one of the Rand reports authors. It means trying to disrupt or damage what a target population knows, or thinks it knows, about itself and the world around it. A social Net war may focus on changing public or elite opinion, or both ... It may involve diplomacy, propaganda and psychological campaigns, battles for public opinion and for media access and coverage. DOT.ORG SCRUTINY Arquillas theory suggests governments will be paying closer attention the activist dot.orgs of the Web  non-profit, non-governmental sites many of which are buzzing with calls for organizing against the status quo, challenging governments and corporations alike. It is well known that much of the organizing for the anti-WTO protests in Seattle was done in online chat rooms and list servs. Media activists offered their own coverage of the battle in Seattle, with sites like Indymedia.org,which brought images of police abuse to a global audience. E-mail on the net is now a megaphone for activism everywhere. LESSONS TO BE LEARNED The lesson here: major media must shift from looking up at those in power to looking down at those in pain.

Many of these pro-active dot.orgs are still almost invisible on the U.S. media radar screen until something erupts, like the the WTO protests that neither the authorities planned for nor the world of TV news expected. The lesson here: major media must shift from looking up at those in power to looking down at those in pain. Increasingly voices from all over the world are getting access to the web and a new platform. They need to be listened to.

Yet there is little evidence that the dot.com world  and the fawning press that publicizes its every quarterly earnings report  care one whit about non-commercial sites or the democratic potential of the Internet. Lets hope that the all the journalists who are busy hyping the Internet gold rush in their ad-flush trade magazines will start taking a deeper look at these trends. Instead of focusing on profits and stock projections, news media should start reporting on those who use the Internet to empower individuals, expand knowledge and deepen democratic discourse.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/373699.asp

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 24, 2000