POOLED EDITORIAL
People’s Alternative Media Network (Altermidya)
12 March 2019
March 12 is World
Day against Cyber Censorship, when advocates around the globe will call for an
Internet that is not only accessible to all, but also free from restrictions on
free speech. It is specially relevant to us today, when our nation is practically
under cyber martial law and another tyranny.
The Duterte regime
is using every means to silence dissent, criticism and free expression: from
threats, incarceration to killings, to cyber warfare. The main target of this
latest assault are the alternative media that mostly via online disseminate
reports and views on events and issues that are rarely covered, if at all, by
the dominant media. The goal is to deny a public hungry for information the
reports and stories that it needs to understand what is happening in a country
besieged by lies and disinformation.
The distributed
denial of service attacks (DDoS) against the websites of Bulatlat, Kodao
Productions, Pinoy Weekly, and Altermidya began in December and have not
stopped since. DDoS is a malicious form of cyber-attack that aims to overload a
website and make it inaccessible.
The websites of Arkibong
Bayan, Manila Today and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines
(NUJP) have also been attacked, and so have the websites of human rights group
Karapatan, Arkibong Bayan, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan and lately, Ibon
Foundation.
Qurium, the
Sweden-based media foundation assisting Bulatlat, Altermidya, Karapatan and
Pinoy Weekly, has established that the same techniques and botnets are being used
against these websites. An independent review of Kodao Productions’ traffic
logs also revealed the same attack signatures.
Quirium noted that it has not seen the same scale of DDoS attacks in any
other country.
The details of the
attacks have been reported to the National Computer Emergency Response Team
(NCERT) of the Department of Information and Communications Technology. But the
agency has remained alarmingly silent on the issue.
We have every
reason to believe that these attacks are state-sponsored. In the past two
years, cyber warfare has taken the form of vilification and redbaiting of
progressive leaders and organizations through social media.
The Duterte
administration identifies “strategic communication” as one of the
pillars of its “whole of nation” approach against dissent and
criticism, in which the regime’s counterinsurgency program will infiltrate and
target social media and rid cyberspace of
“communist propaganda.”
The cyber attacks
are part and parcel of the ongoing assault by the administration on the media.
From threatening to revoke the franchises of big media companies to the attempt
at the incarceration of Rappler executive Maria Ressa, to the killing of
community journalists in the past months, the Duterte administration will stop
at nothing to silence the Fourth Estate and its critics.
But Duterte and
his keyboard and old-media army of mercenaries are hell-bent not only in
silencing their perceived enemies, but also in expanding the echo chambers they
maintain to create the illusion of continued support. On one hand, they attack
news websites and journalists in all possible ways. On the other, they maintain
a horde of fake supporters, employing what is known as “astroturfing” or the
practice of creating the illusion of mass support by employing bots and trolls.
The alternative
media have consistently upheld journalism for the people and given voice to the
marginalized and the oppressed. Because of the political and economic interests
of the corporate media, it is the alternative media that are discharging the
democratic imperative of providing the information Filipinos need in this hour
of national peril.
We enjoin everyone
from all walks of life to unite against, to expose, and to work together in
stopping the attacks against all media. We should exhaust all means to make
those responsible accountable for their foul deeds. There are many technical and legal remedies
that can and must be pursued to combat and halt the unabated DDoS attacks,
including mirroring target websites to keep them online.
To defend press freedom is to defend the people’s right to know. As our fellow journalists and advocates continue to expose the truths on the attacks on indigenous communities, workers, farmers, and other groups, we ask all freedom-loving Filipinos to stand with us. Only through the strength and power of our unity can we defeat these brazen attempts at silencing protest and suppressing the truth.
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