In recent modern history, the role of Internet and web-related organizations and groups has become much more profound, diverse and interesting as the world continues to develop its cyber profile. As a result, more and more web-related political organizations have been emerging within the last couple of decades, however none compare to the rise in popularity and strength of Wikileaks and Anonymous.
The question of truth vs patriotism has come up throughout the chapters of human history and has especially reared its head during times of great conflict and uncertainty especially within US history. The issue of how much truth the public was allowed to know became a large-scale issue for both World Wars and became especially important during the Cold War. As such, multiple agents and organizations slowly rose to address this issue and help the American people access the truth, regardless of what the law says. As a result of this quest for truth above patriotism and the loyalties one has to their own country or government, these individual organizations rose.
In recent times, the group Anonymous has not only aimed to solve and answer questions of truth but has also taken on a sort of vigilante persona in trying to rectify the wrongs of the world. For better or worse, Anonymous takes action above the law and as such attacks various persons who have committed injustices throughout the web. Recently, Anonymous has promised to attack key cyber infrastructure used by terrorist organizations, most notably ISIS. However, Anonymous first rose as an organization thirsty for the truth and as such used cutting edge cyber warfare tactics to glean information off of government websites, the dark web, etc.
Taking a step back from such blatant shows of vigilantism, Wikileaks aims to address issues of truth by leaking significant files and vaults of information from US government sources. Wikileaks uses cyber warfare to ascertain large volumes of information to share on their own platforms of information. While this action has been criminalized, it continues by the anonymous members of Wikileaks and continues to showcase glimpses into the US government. Most recently, Wikileaks has released their Vault 8 of CIA information which details a program the CIA has used called Hive that allows the CIA to covertly obtain information from malware utilized.
These organizations and agencies illuminate an interesting and important question that faces our society and has become even more important with the current political climate: how important is the truth to the American people and does the quest for truth supersede loyalties to one's own nation or government? Groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous clearly value the pursuit of truth over the laws that govern a nation and the intentions of those that govern the nation. However, to what extent is this approach dangerous or is this approach even dangerous at all?
