The noose tightens around WikiLeaks' Assange

[Akoto]

Source: Associated Press

LONDON (AP) -- The law is closing in on Julian Assange. Swedish authorities won a court ruling Thursday in their bid to arrest the WikiLeaks founder for questioning in a rape case, British intelligence is said to know where in England he's hiding, and U.S. pundits and politicians are demanding he be hunted down or worse.

The former computer hacker who has embarrassed the U.S. government and foreign leaders with his online release of a huge trove of secret American diplomatic cables suffered a legal setback when Sweden's Supreme Court upheld an order to detain him - a move that could lead to his extradition.

Meanwhile, Assange continues to leak sensitive documents. Newly posted cables on WikiLeaks' website detailed a host of embarrassing disclosures, including allegations that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accepted kickbacks and a deeply unflattering assessment of Turkmenistan's president.

Assange is accused in Sweden of rape, sexual molestation and coercion in a case from August, and Swedish officials have alerted Interpol and issued a European arrest warrant to bring him in for questioning.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WIKILEAKS?SITE=NDBIS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[thunder rising]

1. The outrage brought to you by Bank of America ... an everybody gullible enough to believe it

[Bodhi BloodWave]

13. i wish you people would make up your mind

Is the Bank of America behind it, or is the US government behind it?

Before we learned about the Bank release the US gov was blamed by most of ya, now its the Banks being blamed for the same thing.

[EFerrari]

23. There's not much daylight between the banks and the administration, you know.

There really isn't much of a choice to be made here.

This is just another high tech lynching by the puppeteers.

[laughingliberal]

54. You're assuming they have different goals? nt

[Matariki]

75. You think there's a difference?

Boy, are you naive.

[Fearless]

81. Is there a rule that two parties can't want the same thing now? n/t

[midnight]

22. They have lots of influence...

[DJ13]

2. I bet the financial info gets an early release if they try to grab him

[caseymoz]

19. Their trying to grab him.

Expect more and faster releases from Wikileaks now.

[Downwinder]

21. Wasn't the "insurance file" created before redactions?

[caseymoz]

66. That's what I heard, but if you haven't noticed . . .

Our rulers are pretty dumb and act emotionally, see George W. Bush. He might be gone but there are too many people in the organs of government who think like that. And yes, I'm afraid Obama will go right along with them.

[Barack_America]

3. Who fucking cares what "U.S. pundits" demand?

And U.S. politicians sure as hell aren't worth much more.

[Better Believe It]

74. But what is the Obama administration doing to destroy WikiLeaks and its founder?

[Kali]

4. he hasn't been charged with anything

and in an interview today with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! his UK lawyer had some interesting things to say about all of this:

http://www.democracynow.org/

[nc4bo]

5. Do they really want to capture Assange?

Something tells me if something happens to him (imprisonment or death) there will be a monstrous data dump.

[drm604]

6. The insurance file.

For some time now Wikileaks has been encouraging people to download a large multi-gigabyte encrypted file. It must be on hard drives all over the world by now. I have little doubt that the encryption key will be released if anything happens to him.

[sudopod]

11. Bit torrent will be great for this stuff

when they start censoring the web.

[drm604]

16. They'll censor Bit torrent. n/t

[sudopod]

17. That's techincally much more difficult

and can be made much more so. This is especially true if one is only trading small files as opposed to Lord of the Rings Bluerays.

[Turborama]

26. No it's not, my ISP seems to have done it with great ease.

I cannot access any site related to tor(r)rents <---- I can't even type that word in and post a message on DU, ffs. Not only can I not access any websites that have anything to do with torrnts, I (or anyone else using my ISP) can't even access Google UK or the Independent UK's websites because my ISP says someone downloaded a torrrent from the UK. It's really fucked up and I'm changing ISPs next week when my subscription runs out.

It started (or ended, to be more precise) like this, one minute Utorrrent had a few TV shows downloading that I can't watch where I live, and the next time I log in, poof! everything's gone.

[sudopod]

29. Wowsers!

How long ago did they do that? That's awful!

[Turborama]

32. About a month ago

The guys at the ISP are pissed off because they are losing customers, apparently someone told them from the head office of "International ISP", whoever that is and whatever that means.

They are a provincial provider of satellite internet, I suppose that makes it easier for them to do but if they can do it as easily as that I guess it wouldn't be that difficult for other ISPs. Maybe we've been used as guinea pigs on some kind of pilot test of something far bigger in the future?

[sudopod]

35. It's all technologically possible to do what you describe.

And satellite sucks donkey balls, doesn't it? Here, hughesnet only allows 500 MB a day. :p I've heard of blocking the bitorrent port's traffic, but I've never heard of blocking sites with the word. Jeebus.

Have you tried changing the port it works on? That could still get blocked if they use deep packet inspection, but it might work.

There are also flavors that encrypt traffic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients) which might get past the deep packet inspection, but that might cut you off using heuristics (aka: you get caught downloading a big file and get stomped).

But that sucks that they can do that to you. :(

[Turborama]

36. I can't open that site you linked to

That's how hard their boot is down own everyone who uses this ISP's neck. As I said in the Chavez OP I started, I couldn't even post the article until I realized it had the word tor(r)ential in it describing the rain. I couldn't post this without adding the brackets just then, either.

I considered contacting a friend abroad to try using a VPN but I'm just going to change ISPs, I don't want to give this one another cent.

And you're right, satellite sucks massively. There is hope on the horizon, though. Hopefully these things will cover all remote locations in the not too distant future... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11846237

[sudopod]

37. http://anonymouse.org/

will it let you through to there? Probably not, but if so you should be able to squeeze something through their tubes.

[Turborama]

38. Nope, thanks for the suggestion though.

I've tried all those sites. Even Hide My Ass won't do it, and they are the best one I've found so far for restricted YouTube channels etc.

[sudopod]

39. Will the google cache link get through?

or https sites? Presumably they're encrypted in https, so they shouldn't be blockable.

Ex: Here;s the google cache link for the wiki page posted earlier:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=17259,18168,27342,27445,27744,27798,27868&sugexp=lcprodsca4&xhr=t&q=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FComparison_of_BitTorrent_clients&cp=61&pf=p&sclient=psy&site=&source=hp&aq=0&aqi=&aql=f&oq=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=7b9141da4f416ce8

Though it they're half as clever as they seem, they'll probably see "torrent" in the url and stop it. Thanks for being patient. :D

[Turborama]

40. That was weird

It took me to my iGoogle homepage and, after loading the header with the Google links at the top, it's just hanging (no pun related to the OP intended). :shrug:

[sudopod]

41. SRS stuff O_o

That's pretty heavy duty, though the fact that it lets you grab at least the top of the page makes you think that they at least aren't checking urls, but the page content itself.

It's pretty dirty that they try to make it look like you're having a problem too. At least they should have the decency to say "We aren't allowing you to do that for reason X" :/

[Turborama]

44. It's happening to both...

Any url's with the "t" word in them take forever to not load and then I get messages like this (spaces added by me)...

This web page is not available.

The web page at http: //torr ent freak. com/uto rrent-developer-shares-bitt orrent-speed-tips-080805/all-comments/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

Here are some suggestions:
Reload this web page later.

Anyway, this has totally derailed the OP. Is there a forum on DU we could discuss this further on? I haven't gone through it at length with anyone like this since it started happening and I'm finding it quite good therapy, lol.

[sudopod]

47. You can PM me if you want

I'm headed to bed soon though! We can pick it back up tomorrow.

Here's one more thing to try. See if you can just search torrent sites using this. IF you can, then encryption gets by their filters. You probably won't be able to load the sites you find in the results though. :(

https://encrypted.google.com

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

82. DU Computer Help and Support Group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=242

You have to be a donor to post there, but I see you are.

My, that has to be the most dickish, idiotic ISP in the world that's not located in a dictatorship.

[Turborama]

93. I didn't know about that group, thanks for the link

I'll check it out soon.

Yes, they are and I am surprised because their customer relations were really good up until that point. I really want to find out what actually went on but I expect it'll always be a mystery.

[crikkett]

64. you need to a) scan for virus and b) tell us who your ISP is

because your symptoms just don't sound right.

oh and maybe c) search your hard drive for hosts.txt and delete it. AFTER the scan.

[Turborama]

86. Nope, I have spoken to the ISP and they admitted it

To save having to go through it all again, I think I might have given more details above during the chat I had about it earlier...

[crikkett]

87. so who is your ISP???

[MedicalAdmin]

80. Zoinks.

That sucks. Yah - change providers. Please do us all a favor and out your asshat of an ISP.

The minute mine ever does anything like that they are toast. Of course I have a business account, several phone lines, a dedicated T1, and other lines all wrapped together so .... I might have a little more leverage.

[crikkett]

63. It's already happening.

But if bittorrent fails, there's always freenet
http://freenetproject.org

[sofa king]

28. He'd better have an insurance file as good as Seymour Hersh's.

Because he's clearly in the high-risk group of people who shoot themselves twice in the head.

[laughingliberal]

55. No doubt thousands have it now. *If* I had downloaded it, I'd make sure and back it up on a...

flash drive.

[Hissyspit]

10. WikiLeaks is not just Assange.

It is redundant in electronic structure, strategic structure, and personnel structure. Some of our leaders seem to have a problem grasping this.

[tomm2thumbs]

15. +1 - they keep trying to nail Jello to the wall

it ain't gonna happen - the oxygen has been let out of the tank and they can't get it back in

[MedicalAdmin]

79. Not to mention that if he is smart he already has a plan of succession in place.

I know I would and I'm just middlin' intelligent.

[wial]

7. all this for a broken condom

Saw elsewhere that's what it was -- two girls with an agenda seduced him after planning how to destroy him via SMS text messages that Assange's lawyers now have, and what happened was the condom broke and then he had sex with the other one too without a condom, and according to Swedish law that's rape. You can't make this stuff up. But all the corporate press reports is the word rape and not the complete absurdity of it.

(It's everywhere, search on Assange broken condom)

I hope whoever put the girls up to it pays dearly and over a very long period of time.

[Mimosa]

69. SOne or more government secret agencies were behind this 'honeypot' operation

It's rather pathetic. More pathetic are the corporate stooges using 'rape' in their reporting. *rolling eyes*

[MedicalAdmin]

83. The've already paid the girls (likely).

And now the ladies are gonna get broomed. To bad. They probably beleived the lies told to them about how much money, jobs, contacts, etc they were going to get.

Either that or they are already spooks.

[Bigmack]

8. You guys are all paranoid...

The Powers That Be would never go so far as.....

Wait a minute...

Never mind.

[maheanuu]

9. I Posted This To Amazon

Last night. After Reading that amazon had pulled the plug on the servers that wikileaks had under Amazons control...

Dear Amazon,

Would you please clarify your removal of WikiLeaks from your Servers. I have been a customer for years, and I need to know if you have removed them for political reasons or exactly why you have done this. I will not shop with any of the Amazon sites until I know that you have re instated them with a full apology.

If you do not stand with the constitution and a free press, then I cannot stand with you...

Sincerely

Kenneth R. Jackson
CPO USN Ret.

Perhaps you do not know this but there are thousands of us who feel this way. I am not sure if you will answer this, but if you do not, you will lose a customer for sure.

Now if we can get enough of us to boycott them we will be in the ball park... BTW Powells Books in Portland Oregon is a great store with great prices and I personally have switched to their books as they do mail world wide. As far as other Stuff I look around on the Net. I search for Progressive Supporting Businesses. Never again will I ever support anyone or any business that deals with the Republican Party in any way, shape, or form..

[MedicalAdmin]

84. That is freaking awesome.

And Powells is great, isn't it. The largest independent bookstore in the nation.

Aren't they union?

[Proletariatprincess]

12. Let's remember that Wikileaks is an organization...

Julian Assange is one of it's founders, but I believe it will continue with or without him. At least I hope that it will. Wikileaks has an important mission and a large staff, as reported on DU today. A crusading entity like Wikileaks cannot allow the loss of one member, no matter how profile and important to destroy the whole operation.
I hope I'm right about this.....

[Bodhi BloodWave]

14. actually, he isn't even one of the founders, he is just the one of em who likes to be in the news.

Was Wikileaks your idea as many assumed?

I don’t call myself a founder.

Nobody really knows about the founders, says Wikipedia …

Yes. This is simply because some of the people in the initial founding group are refugees, refugees from China and other places. And they still have family back in their home countries.

[Proletariatprincess]

27. I stand corrected.

I made the mistake of repeating what I heard on MSM.
My point is the same, though. Wikileaks should continue with or without Assange.

[Luminous Animal]

62. He doesn't like to be in the news. He is one of "them" who volunteered to take the heat to protect

others. Activist groups do this all the time to protect their more vulnerable members.

[caseymoz]

18. The headline is offensive. It implies that there's something lawful going on here.

Since when do US officials get involved calling for an arrest in a "rape" case totally in Sweden's jurisdiction? (btw, the charges, from what I've heard, are not even rape!) Our government certainly can't figure out anything to arrest him on.

I hope Sweden keeps on mistyping the warrant for the whole decade.

What makes our officials think that our treatment of Assange won't piss off millions and cause thousands of Wikileak mirrors and imitators? Besides the fact that getting Assange won't even stop WikiLeaks.

[Akoto]

20. Apologies. The rules require me to use the exact headline. n/t

[Luminous Animal]

57. Not in GD. The headline, in this case, is disgusting. The headline smacks of "hang him."

[Ichingcarpenter]

59. Actually .... I think its important to see what AP's headline said

and how nefarious and slanted it is.

[Luminous Animal]

60. I don't disagree. But I don't like it being one of 119,000 headlines on Google.

I won't second guess the OP but the OP did not point out how nefarious and slanted the headline is. In my opinion, there is mere reporting and there is thoughtful analysis of what one is reporting. In this Google driven information world, the headline reigns.

[tammywammy]

77. This was originally posted in LBN n/t

[caseymoz]

65. Oh, no, not meaning you. I know that. It's AP!

This damn "professional" news organization, which should go into moral receivership in shame!

[WinkyDink]

78. I've found quotation marks helpful. :-)

[EFerrari]

24. If they take down Wikileaks, five more will go up.

I don't think they can stop it unless they shut down the net.

[Mimosa]

71. Censoring all net content is surely in the plans of the Octopus

To censor internet content would be something upon which the USA, the UK, China, European nations, even the Arabs and Israel could all agree?

[U4ikLefty]

25. NOOSE...why such violent language against Assange in the media???

I fear he is being set up for "Islaminization". You know, the demonization of a person/peoples through the repetitive use of language in the media.

I often wondered how those in power take down a courageous rebel...I am watching with fascination at my country doing logical backflips to make him a "rapist", a "terrorist", and now dead at the end of a rope.

This is the shadow government at work. Pay attention to their methods.

[SoapBox]

30. Ditto, Ditto!

I agree...

I just think that it's weird that there is all the breathless drama over
what he *did*...versus what is in all the information.

Personally, I'm embarassed by our lame-o political types.

[Goldstein1984]

31. Same reason this post has been unrec'd to

There are enough stooges who agree that truth is an enemy of the state.

[laughingliberal]

58. +1000 nt

[dorkulon]

92. Seems an appropriate metaphor for someone who is probably going to "commit suicide" in prison. /nt

[ProudDad]

33. Ah, AP

Thus the misleading, hysterical title...

[ProudDad]

34. That execrable POS DiFi...

GOD DAMN HER!!!

"In Washington, the top Democrat and Republican at the Senate Intelligence Committee called on Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Assange for espionage. Committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, BDfuck-Calif., and vice chairman Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said in a letter Thursday that they believe Assange's behavior falls under the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to willfully pass on defense information that could hurt the U.S."

She's ALWAYS been a fucking waste of skin and full of shit!!!

[NuclearDem]

42. People like her are making me never want to vote again

She rode a wave of Dem support into Congress and then pulls this shit.

Wonderful.

[ProudDad]

52. I may have voted against the republican running against her

in her first race for the Senate...

But never again!

[Swamp Rat]

85. "People" like Feinstein?

:hide:

[krabigirl]

46. Can't wait to vote her out in 2012.

[Hawkeye-X]

89. Hey DiFi - what about Don Siegelman?

She should be asking Holder to drop ALL charges against him.

Julian Assange can handle his own problems, and many more will pick up Wikileaks if Mr. Assange is disposed of in any way or form.

[NuclearDem]

43. Way to go, Holder...

You'll put the middleman on trial who provided the documents that said torture was going on in Iraq, but you won't actually prosecute the people who enabled it.

Fuck the DoJ. Seriously.

[Raksha]

50. Sickening, isn't it? It's worse (according to Obama's DOJ anyway) to call out the torturers

than to be one--or to be an accomplice to torture after the fact.

[Parker CA]

53. Nailed it. It's fucking sad and disgusting and shameful and wrong on so so many levels. nt

[HipChick]

45. Either way..for a man to go sleeping around without a condom

is reckless..just nasty......

[ohheckyeah]

49. About as reckless as the two women

who had sex with him without a condom?

[laughingliberal]

56. +1 nt

[Luminous Animal]

51. I here ya. Sex without a condom rarely happens.

[tkmorris]

61. Oh fer chrissake...

Do you think it's criminal? Prosecutable? And do you really think those two women didn't know as well as he did the condom broke?

[JVS]

70. +1

[caseymoz]

67. We don't even know if THAT allegation is true yet.

And no man has an international manhunt against him just for that. He hasn't been tried on anything. And it looks like, for some reason, Sweden won't correctly fill out the warrant with Interpol. And British agents know where he's at but won't nab him, and they're waiting on the correctly spelled warrant. Possible reason: they don't believe he's a criminal. It doesn't smell right.

[kenny blankenship]

68. And unless they invited a porn camera operator to document their 1 nite stand

complete with long take close ups of the penetration, NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW. Even a conventional "sex tape" with a static camera would likely be unable to give a definitive answer yes or no whether the alleged act occurred. The ENTIRE NIGHT would have to be audiotaped as well as videotaped continuously to substantiate the charge.

That is UNLESS someone in Sweden is automatically held guilty, simply by being accused.

[caseymoz]

73. I heard the warrant charges read on NPR

And it wasn't even rape. The wording is odd, but it was in translation, and I don't know how they do it in Sweden.

It seems that they are reporting this as the one charge that would divide left the most over him. The next step, watch for it, for the right to attack progressives for not being concerned enough about a rape charge being investigated.

I wonder, though, that these charges are trumped up not to actually arrest him, but to create a smear against him? Yet, knowing about the US international unlawfulness, he's too afraid to face them.

And I'm rather surprised the woman or women haven't come forward. In something this high-profile, generally they'd do that, it seems.

[Mimosa]

72. Consensual sex becomes a matter for Interpol.

LOL this is ridiculous.

[dorkulon]

91. Wake up.

People have unprotected sex all the time. In fact, it used to be the only way people had sex. And it's more fun -- in the short term, anyhow.

[Luminous Animal]

48. "The Noose" for doing nothing illegal. Thank you lynch mob media.

[WinkyDink]

76. Evidence of war crimes is a bit more than "embarrassing." Sweden is doing our dirty work.

[Blue_In_AK]

88. Does Assange have co-leakers

who can take over Wikileaks if he is arrested?

[tammywammy]

90. I thought I read on here that he's part of a team.

He's just the front man, while the others work behind the scenes.