Nine years ago America faced its worst case of bullying when a tall, lean, bearded and brown skinned bully knocked down the pride of its financial capital. That is when for the first time the most powerful 'bully' in the world got a taste of its own medicine. And as any battered bully, it retaliated by hounding out the perpetrators.
As America continues to heal its ego by exerting its force over a resilient, irrational, radical and omnipresent adversary, it is faced with another bully. This time of a different sort- A medium height, clean shaved, white skinned educated journalist. Unlike nine years ago, this time America’s ego was hurt not by bring down a building but by bringing down (exposing) the entire military and foreign affair system of the country over the internet. This is what contemporary cyber law calls-“Cyber Bully”.
Ironically after more than a decade of being called the most wanted man in the world, the master perpetrator of 9/11 seems to have been dethroned by a tech savvy egoistic journalist who is now hiding in plush deep caves and mounts of London !
I wonder how the big bully will respond this time. It cannot bomb the cyberspace, it cannot send its military into the cyberworld, it can neither attack another web portal nor country under the false assumption that they might eventually bully them down. Under such a dilemma what can it do?
The worlds oldest democracy which is a staunch supporter of 'freedom of the press' has its hands tied. As much as it would be itching to order a shut down of the website which reported these sensitive and embarrassing cables, it is bound by its principles (for now). How can a country which goes around the world preaching the values of democracy, freedom of speech and press retract from its position, when it is at the receiving end? At one end it condemns the control of the press in China and Iran and at the other end it contemplates blacking out a media exposing government and corporate corruption.
At a time when America is debating means to tackle the problem of bullying in their educational institutes, it‘s an irony that the country itself is being bullied on land and in the cyberworld.
On reading this blog, I would like to point out to all those who reached till this point of the essay that I personally condemn the actions of Wikileaks. This is not to say I fully support the actions of the US also. The right to speech and free press is a corner stone of the First Amendment in the US constitution. But under a court ruling in 1931 and 1971 “No government can issue prior restraints against publication, except when there is an imminent threat to national security”. In this particular case exposing covert military actions and informants along with private foreign diplomatic conversations is a concern for national security. Under such circumstances the government of USA, within its capacity, has to press actions against the website. I do agree that certain information's on the website do throw light to the actual global situation but details of covert informants, military strategies, frivolous diplomatic conversations are not of public concern especially when they are contemporary and operational.
Wikileaks might have the right intentions but the means it has adopted (for this particular incident) to [mis]use the notions of “freedom of press and information” has projected itself as a Cyber Bull.
