Terrorism is by far my favorite topic within Criminal Justice. Although it
could technically be labeled under Homeland Security, there are many
bleed-overs into CRJS. I'm writing on this topic today after finishing up
Chapter Three in "Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism" by Robert M.
Taylor, Eric J. Fritsch and John Leiderbach. The one thing that always trips me
up on the topic of terrorism is that it is always for a political goal. Simple
"evil" happenings cannot always be labeled terrorism although they
terrorize society. In Chapter Three I learned about cyberterrorism and how it
is a new tactic to achieve the same end goal as what our minds think of when we
think of 'terrorism'.
This subject brought to my mind the scandal of WikiLeaks and made me interested
to look into it fully since I never truly understood the situation 100% and see
if it was at all any kind of terrorism. The United States had sensitive
information leaked through WikiLeaks, which is an organization whose goal is to
bring important information to the public through “innovative, secure and
anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists”, per www.wikileaks.org.
The biggest player in the 2010 WikiLeaks information leak was Julian Assange,
the founder of the organization. He has been in the news constantly about this
debacle. WikiLeaks posted a sensitive video involving the United States
military but although this shook the US government, there didn’t seem to be a
political agenda for Assange so this could not be considered terrorism. He is
currently being held at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for sexual assault
charges that were brought upon him three years ago and Swedish prosecutors have
said that they may be trying him for his alleged sex crimes in 2020, according
to CNN’s Ben Brumfield. Five years from now.
Although the purpose of the WikiLeaks site is definitely not something that is
popular with world governments, it cannot be considered any kind of
cyberterrorism. I know that the chances were slim but it seemed plausible
enough prior to my research into the organization for it to be so. I can see
cyberterrorism becoming a primary security issue for the United States as
technology gets more and more advanced and hackers learn more and more about
said technology. ISIS specifically has proven themselves to be a very
technology-savvy group and I hope that we never get into a cyber war with them
or any other terror organization for that matter.
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