... could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.— Time Magazine
Wikileaks
http://libertypen.org/wiki/WikileaksFind
a comprehensive, growing whistleblowers web site. read their manifesto.
they are looking for editors. they have been stopped by a swiss judge
from publishing a leaked internal document alleging money laundering in
the caribbean by a prominent swiss bank. but, they have web sites
around the world so do it anyway. they are promoting a people's justice
department around the world, concentrating on transparency of
institutions and governments. especially anything that has political
consequences.
read a leaked memo from skype to the german justice department
outlying the cost for planting maleware in anyone's computer using
skype that allows the justice department to eavesdrop and record anyone
using the software's skype telephone conversations.
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US judge arranges summary execution of Wikileaks.orgMany-headed whistleblower site still standing
Published Tuesday 19th February 2008 02:31 GMT
The US arm of Wikileaks, a website that makes it easy for
whistleblowers to leak documents, has been cut off after hosting
evidence that claimed a bank located in the Cayman Islands engaged in
money laundering and tax evasion.
Dynadot, the US-based company that hosted Wikileaks' main site,
not only severed wikileaks.org from the net; it also agreed to lock the
domain name so it can't be transferred to another provider. A federal
judge in San Francisco signed off on the agreement on Friday (15 Feb).
The agreement came in a lawsuit brought by bank Julius Baer, the
parent company of the accused Cayman bank. After trying unsuccessfully
to get Wikileaks to remove the documents, Swiss-based Julius Baer went
after Dynadot, which according to this copy of the court order,
agreed to roll over in exchange for the suit against it being
dismissed. Dynadot also agreed to turn over records related to
Wikileaks, including "IP addresses and associated data used by any
person, other than Dynadot, who accessed the account for the domain
name".
Wikileaks allows whistleblowers to post documents anonymously - at
least when its webhost isn't coerced into turning over IP addresses and
other information most customers would consider confidential.
According to this piece from Wired News,
Wikileaks was unable to argue its position on the matter at a Friday
court hearing because it only learned of the hearing a few hours before
it started. Astonishingly, US District Judge Jeffrey White of the
Northern District of California signed off on the stipulation, anyway.
The episode is another reminder that an organization's security is
only as good as the security of the people who provide its internet
connection. Wikileaks claims that it is an "uncensorable Wikipedia for
untraceable mass document leaking and analysis". But this is true only
if its webhosts can be trusted not to pull the plug on its customers or
divulge sensitive client information.
In this case Julius Baer quickly realized it couldn't silence
Wikileaks, so it went after a weaker link in the chain, which evidently
was much less willing to put up a fight.
Wikileaks was founded in 2006 by people from a host of countries,
including the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa. It has
generated headlines by hosting documents exposing several high-profile
scandals, including those related to the collapse of the UK's Northern
Rock bank and to prisons in Iraq and and Guantanamo Bay. The site says
it has posted more than 1.2 million documents.
Steve Bellovin writes:
According to
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/us/20wiki.html a Cayman
Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust, didn't was unhappy that
a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and
terror campaign? provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in
violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws.
Since wikileaks apparently feared some sort of court order, the site is
hosted in Sweden on a site that
has gone out of its way to host sites that other companies
wouldn?t touch. It is perhaps the world?s least lawyer-friendly
hosting company and thus a perfect home for Wikileaks, which
says it is ?developing an uncensorable system for untraceable
mass document leaking and public analysis.?
(from
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/wikileaks-site-has-a-friend-in-sweden/)
Accordingly, Julius Baer Bank got a court order against the site's DNS
registrar, ordering them to delete wikileaks.org from the DNS.
It's amazing that a federal judge would do something quite this
blatant. It takes the whole web site off the air, including
content that is quite clearly protected by the First Amendment. Even
trying to censor particular articles is dubious, based on precedent;
blocking the entire site clearly violates precedent; see, for example,
http://www.news.com/Court-strikes-down-Pennsylvania-porn-law/2100-1028_3-5361999.html
Not surprisingly, the NY Times article quoted the web site as noting the
similarity of this case to the Pentagon Papers case. The Times also
noted how ineffectual the censorship attempt actually was -- not only
are there alternate names wikileaks.be, wikileaks.de, and wikileaks.cx
-- but the site is still reachable via 88.80.13.160.