The resolutely short answer goes like this: There's precedent for hackers taking over satellite channels by hijacking the uplink; and precedent for hackers taking over Web sites by redirecting the Net's directory services to point to different servers. Both techniques have the virtue of efficiency, since they attack "meta infrastructure" at central locations rather than the sources of the content themselves. In the scenarios I have in mind, the government might want to commandeer news and information channels for just a short period, long enough to achieve some goal before the deception starts to collapse. Say, for example, a couple of days before an election... It's a last-ditch scenario, since there'd be hell to pay once we caught on.

Gilmore's one of the founders of the EFF, so those threads converge. He's quite a guy. I've met him a couple of times at CypherPunk meetings and had the chance to chat at parties afterwards. Gilmore's one of that subset of Libertarians that emerged in the 90s, "digital libertarians" I guess you'd call them, who looked at the Internet as both an opportunity for greater freedom and a threat of more governmental control. Real shit-disturber--I got a chuckle out of him wearing a lapel pin that reads "Suspected Terrorist" and getting thrown off a British Air flight. He makes a good point: Nowadays we're all suspected terrorists, and we've lost the fundamental right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.