The Independent, New Zealand March 26, 2003
A Minefield In Cyberspace
By Bill Ralston
If you have not yet overdosed on live footage of the war in Iraq - via Sky-based cable channels BBC World, CNN and MSNBC - the internet can add further perspectives on the conflict.
Rupert Murdoch's racy and somewhat jingoistic Fox News is not on Sky but can be accessed as "video streams" and in tabloid-story form on foxnews.com.
BBC.co.uk provides a more balanced approach, along with the other major US networks including cbs.com and abc.com.
To the standard international newspaper sites you may check from time to time, you may wish to add the likes of Debka.com. This gives an often reliable, if slightly conspiracy-laden, view of the war from an Israeli perspective. Some of its intelligence is highly accurate but occasionally one can get the feeling it is slipping in a bit of disinformation as a favour to someone in Mossad or the CIA.
It helps if you speak Hebrew as the English language version can lag 24 hours behind inside news for the "family."
The other side of the coin can be found with aljeera.net - though this requires a good grasp of Arabic.
The United Nations newsroom can be accessed at un.org/news/ for an official view of the war.
Weapons freaks will enjoy janes.com. Janes is the Bible of various forms of lethal ordinance and, while it is a pay site, its free subscriber access leads to some worthwhile material.
The US Department of Defence at www.defenselink.mil has all the latest DoD handouts and plenty of links to other US military websites. Then there is www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq.htm providing everything from cloud cover and the weather in Baghdad to a list of targets, various weapons of mass destruction and a host of related sites to do with levelling that chunk of the Middle East.
More cynical surfers might choose www.Disinifopedia.org which questions a lot of George Bush's claims and shines a spotlight on the spin in the war campaign.
The anti-Bush view of www.democraticunderground.com also helps balance the diet of PR flak from www.whitehouse.org.
The extremely pro-war Patriots for the Defense of America (defenseofamerica.org/) aims to promote "moral clarity on the war."
For more Iraqi views, visit www.iraqpress.org. This is an anti-Saddam site with dubious accuracy but plenty of gossip.
For a directory of several hundred anti-war sites, refer www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar.
However, browsing some war sites can be a little like running through a minefield. Cyberspace has, in many ways, become a battleground. It is not just the vehicle for pro and anti-war propaganda. Small web wars are underway.
According to the US company F-Secure, some 1,000 sites connected to the US administration or Islamic groups have already been attacked and defaced by anti-war elements.
Suspects range from peace activists, to US-based patriotic organisations and Islamic extremists.
The phenomenon is not entirely new. After the Bali blast there was also an outbreak of cyber attacks originating from Indonesia and Malaysia against computer targets in South-East Asia.
One example of pro-US cyber terrorism was reportedly the Ganda e-mail worm, which offered people pictures of Iraq and attacked Bush.
Earlier this month the FBI warned American hackers not to launch cyber attacks against Washington's enemies, saying that "patriotic hacking" was still a crime.
Apparently bombing and invading another country are not.
Copyright © 2003, The Independent, New Zealand
