There is a fascinating debate going on right now about the propriety of hacking Iranian government sites.
So far, the preferred method of attack for many online activists is something called Distributed Denial of Service attack, or DDOS attack for short. There are a variety of ways to mount this kind of attack, but the idea is basically to flood certain websites with too much activity for the sites or servers to perform properly. (There are even a number of websites one can visit and programs one can download to partake in a DDOS attack.)
As Evgeny Morozov explains, Twitter has been used as an organizing tool for launching DDOS attacks. And a number of high profile web-folk like this Daily Kos diarist and Tech President founder contributor Patrick Ruffini are cheer leading for the cause. But as Morozov points out, these attacks may not just bring down Iranian government sites – it may threaten Internet access throughout all of Iran. If these attacks keep pace, online activists outside of Iran could unwittingly cause the entire meltdown of Iran’s fragile Internet infrastructure.
Not unlike a coordinated bombing campaign against duel-use infrastructure like bridges and roadways, an organized DDOS attack campaign raises a number of moral and ethical questions. DDOS attacks are, after all, attacks. They are real and can be as destructive as conventional attacks on a country’s bridges or roadways.
The problem is, it seems that the proponents of these attacks have not wrestled with the difficult moral questions surrounding the likely consequences of their actions. In particular, they don’t seem to have considered the so-called “double effect” of an attack on Iranian government websites. Simply stated, the Just War Theory principal known as double effect seeks to explain how one can justify the foreseen negative consequences of an action (like bombing civilians) if the intended end result (like ending a war) is sufficiently good. An oft cited example is the dilemma over whether or not to bomb a military outpost that is next to a school; the outpost will be destroyed, but so too might a school full of children.
I think there are similar forces at work in the debate over whether or not to continue the DDOS attacks. These attacks may disrupt government propaganda sites like IRIN News, but so too might these attacks end up disrupting critical modes of civilian communications. Also, as Michael Roston artfully explains, such attacks seem contrary to the principals of free speech and open access to information.
To be sure, there are conditions under which these kinds of attacks can be defended. But I have yet to see any proponent of DDOS attacks explain in moral terms how he or she can justify the likely harm that will be visited upon “non-combatants” should these attacks continue.
High food prices have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first half of 2009, the head of the U.N. World Food Program said Friday, raising the total number of hungry people to over 1 billion.
Urging rich nations at a meeting of the Group of Eight's development ministers not cut back on aid, Josette Sheeran told Reuters the world faced a "human catastrophe" as more and more people struggle to eat a decent meal.
"This year we are clocking in on average four million new hungry people a week, urgently hungry," Sheeran told Reuters.
Late yesterday afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the last FY09 Emergency Supplemental, a conference committee agreement that includes language for full repayment of UN arrears.
That's $721 million to make up for the FY04 to FY09 shortfall in U.S. payments to the UN and $168 million for the voluntary peacekeeping account for Somalia.
Well done House of Representatives. Again, show your representative some love. The Senate is expected to take up the bill today.
Chalk this one up in the "I'm not surprised" column:
U.N. investigators said on Tuesday the trial of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi flouted international standards and urged the country's military rulers to ensure it was open and fair.
In a strongly worded joint statement, the five human rights investigators noted a U.N. panel issued an advisory ruling a year ago that the Nobel laureate's continued house arrest was arbitrary.
Well, yes, but in another sense, it's not really arbitrary at all; it's just...continuous. Even before Burmese authorities found, in the form of the soaking body of a foolish American, the excuse to try her again, she was still under arbitrary and unjust house arrest. And even if, as James Downie suggests, the delay in the beginning of her trial does represent a half-hearted sop to the standards of international justice and public opinion, the outcome is no less in doubt. There seems to be little that is less constant in Burma over the past 19 years than the arbitrary detention of Aung San Suu Kyi.
(image from flickr user Gilberto Viciedo under a Creative Commons license)
Human Rights Watch blasts Brazil for "siding with human rights violators rather than with their victims" in votes at the Human Rights Council. The evidence:
Over the past few months, Brazil has abstained on a resolution on the situation in North Korea, which deplored the grave, widespread, and systematic human rights abuses there, in particular the use of torture and labor camps against political prisoners. Brazil has also abstained on a vote on the situation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which sought to strengthen the role of expert investigators and to condemn the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and child recruitment.
During the special session on the situation in Sri Lanka, Brazil co-sponsored a resolution that affirmed the long-discredited principle of non-interference in domestic affairs.
Human Rights Watch continues, "In these votes and debates, Brazil has preferred to align itself with countries like China, Cuba and Pakistan that question the value of country-specific action at the council. Brazil has turned its back on countries like Argentina, Mexico, and Chile that have had a much more committed approach to human rights in the UN."
So says S-G Ban, at least, in this press conference announcing Clinton's appointment as UN Special Envoy to Haiti. If Haitians feel good about President Clinton, then he feels pretty good about them, too -- he says that "this is the best chance the Haitians have ever had."
Clinton also had strong praiseworthy words for the UN peacekeepers in the country, who contributed, in his words, to an environment of "children walking without fear" in Cite Soleil, one of the worst slums in Haiti's capital city.
Challenges aplenty remain. Clinton's chief priority, at first at least, will be in getting donor countries to contribute the money they have pledged for Haiti's reconstruction. While money issues obviously loom large for this impoverished country, it's encouraging that Clinton's plans also include some ambitious long-term projects, chiefly the development of a robust alternative energy industry. All this on Clinton's plate and more, for a lucrative $1/year salary.
The International Criminal Court yesterday formally ordered that Jean Pierre Bemba, a former Congolese vice president and militia leader, stand trial on charges that he commanded his militia in a campaign of rape, murder and pillage in the Central African Republic. Bemba was arrested last year in Belgium where he was living in exile.
The case against Bemba is unprecedented in international war crimes tribunals for the fact that it will center on the crime of rape. The number of alleged rapes by Bemba's troops far outnumber cases of murder that his troops are alleged to have committed in the Central African Republic in 2002-2003. Rape was Bemba's primary weapon of war. Accordingly, much of the jurisprudence decided upon by this case will have long-lasting effects on how future war crimes prosecutors and judges approach cases of rape-as-a-war crime.
At issue yesterday was whether or not the prosecutor could charge Bemba for both rape AND torture for the same act of rape. That is, when a soldier under Bemba's command raped a victim, the prosecution argued that this soldier is also committing the crime of torture.
In yesterday's pre-trial ruling, ICC judges said, basically, "not so fast."
Bec Hamilton summarizes the key point.
Although during the confirmation hearing the Prosecution said that Bemba’s...troops “used torture through acts of sexual violence for the purpose of punishing and intimidating the civilian population for allegedly sympathizing with Bozizé’s rebels, as well as for the purpose of discriminating against their victims”, the Chamber found that the specific purpose was not clearly articulated in the Amended Document Containing the Charges, and therefore the Defence did not have sufficient notice to respond to the charge. (para 299/300) It was this lack of notice, rather than an ‘in-principle’ view that both rape and torture as a war crime could not be charged for the same act of rape, that lead the Chamber to dismiss the charge of torture as a war crime.
So, it seems we will have to wait a bit longer for a resolution to the legal question: "is rape also torture."
If you want to learn more about the terrible crimes that occurred in CAR during 2002-2003, this Amnesty report is a good place to start.