It's been an interesting week at
Wikileaks.org. They survived a UPS fire at their co-location host in Sweden; weathered a well-coordinated denial of service attack; and now, predictably, the feds are going after them with restraining orders, trying to kill or at least impose strict censorship on one of the more blatantly anti-government/corporate-secrecy sites in Internet history. The latter problem may turn out to be the least threatening, since Wikileaks is located outside US jurisdiction. So the site's founders should just be able to thumb their noses at the Bush DoJ as it tries -- and hopefully fails -- to find a legal strategy that could work.
In case you're not familiar with Wikileaks, please see my OP above for part of their mission statement or go to one of the links at the bottom of this post and load the main page.
In brief, Wikileaks was founded by an international group of reporters, web developers and other mass media veterans, partially to counter the worldwide intrusion of corporate media horseshit into formerly independent news rooms. But mainly, Wikileaks wants to shine a bright light on governments, corporations and other institutions that plot in secret to force their agendas -- which invariably center on acquisition and consolidation of ever more money and power -- down the throats of the other 6+ billion people of the world.
They propose to accomplish this by providing whistleblowers from anywhere on the planet a secure, anonymous place to publish secret, sensitive, embarrassing or otherwise revelatory governmental and corporate material -- preferably the kinds that make these swine sweat, squirm, chug Pepto Bismol and reach for the Xanax.
Wikileaks wants to go one step further, though. Not only will they publish this stuff for the world to see, but they want to encourage people who live in the region that's most affected by whatever's being proposed in these formerly secret documents to analyze the material from their perspectives and local knowledge, then post their comments and analysis on Wikileaks.
I've been a member of their reporter/writer/news group for a couple of months now, which gets me their intermittent reports via email. The information below was part of today's briefing:
Wikileaks reportFebruary 18, 2008
Spy Blog: Wikileaks survives a fire, but is under Temporary Restraining Order partial censorship
Link
http://spyblog.org.uk Country
United Kingdom
Date
2008-02-17
It looks as if the interesting and controversial, Wikileaks website, which promises "anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable" publication of leaked documents from whistleblowers, and which recently published the devastating No2ID Campaign annotated leaked UK National Identity Scheme document , is weathering some technical hitches and legal litigation attacks.
It seems that there has been a fire in an Uninterruptible Power Supply, which took the WikiLeaks web servers offline for much of Saturday, at their Swedish co-location hosting company, PRQ Inet, which has experience of attempts at censorship, through their former hosting of the peer to peer filesharing and political phenomenon, The Pirate Bay.
(editor: shortly before the fire unknown persons launched a 500Mbps distributed denial of service attack. It is not known if or how the attack is related to the other events described in this article.)
More seriously and for the longer term, the brand name of WikiLeaks.org is no longer online, due to a
Temporary Restraining Order issued by the California Northern District Court in San Francisco, aimed at a Domain Name Registrar, rather than just the actual publishers of controversial material, who happen to be outside of US legal jurisdiction.
And
this article focusing on the court action:
US court attacks web freedom; enjoins Wikileaks.org out of existence
Date
2008-02-18
By
Stephen Soldz
One of the most important web sites in recent months has been Wikileaks.org. Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikileaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq , the 2003 and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya that apparently affected the Kenyan elections. Wikileaks has upset the Chinese government enough that they are attempting to censor it, as is the Thai military junta.
Now censorship has extended to the United States of America, land of the first amendment. As of Friday, February 15, those going to Wikileaks.org have gotten Server not found messages. Today I received an message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers. It seems that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings. Wikileaks was only given a couple of hours notice “by email” and was not even represented at the hearing where a U.S. judge took such a drastic step attempting to totally shut down an important information outlet. The result was this totally unprecedented attempt to totally wipe out the existence of Wikileaks:
“Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.”
The good news is that they're still accessible via servers located in other, less fascist nation-states. See below for a
https://s.p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/wikileak/2008/02/wikileaksorg_dns_problems_partly_censored_by_temporary_restraining_order.html">partial list: of active Wikileaks Cover Name URL links that somebody posted over the weekend. I'm using one of them now and it's running fine. I also tried to load about half of them at random and only got the "server not found" error a couple of times.
And if you load the page linked above, please see the comments at the bottom. Technical people might find that conversation useful and, if so, please translate for us nitwits.
Also, regarding access using the encrypted URLs, Wikileaks says: "Remember to check the Digital Certificate of any "https://" website you connect to (you may not always get a warning pop-up in your browser). ...(there are) pros and cons of accessing WikiLeakS.org via an SSL encrypted page, with or without the use of proxy servers, especially with regard to anonymity and to evading censorship." Again, a translation would be helpful, particularly concerning digital certificates and how to check and validate them.
So here's the partial list:
http://wikileaks.la/https://secure.wikileaks.la/http://home.e.co.za/https://secure.home.e.co.za/http://joburg.e.co.za/https://secure.joburg.e.co.za/http://new.alain.co.za/https://secure.new.alain.co.za/http://wikileaks.be/https://secure.wikileaks.be/http://stockholm.divx.se/https://secure.stockholm.divx.se/http://jwdc.org/https://secure.jwdc.org/http://ljsf.org/https://secure.ljsf.org/http://freedomsbell.org/https://secure.freedomsbell.org/http://freedomspen.org/https://secure.freedomspen.org/http://libertypen.org/https://secure.libertypen.org/http://sunshinepress.org/https://secure.sunshinepress.org/http://new.1.vg/https://secure.new.1.vg/http://zurich.base-v.ch/https://secure.zurich.base-v.ch/http://bratislava.iypt.sk/https://secure.bratislava.iypt.sk/http://new.iypt.sk/https://secure.new.iypt.sk/http://wikileaks.org.uk/https://secure.wikileaks.org.uk/http://new.ilex.cl/https://secure.new.ilex.cl/http://wikileaks.tl/https://secure.wikileaks.tl/http://freedomsbell.com/https://secure.freedomsbell.com/http://wikileaks.in/https://secure.wikileaks.in/http://bucharest.roxi.ro/https://secure.bucharest.roxi.ro/http://wikileaks.es/https://secure.wikileaks.es/http://wikileaks.ws/https://secure.wikileaks.ws/http://riga.ax.lt/https://secure.riga.ax.lt/http://special.k.vu/https://secure.special.k.vu/http://wikileaks.cx/https://secure.wikileaks.cx/http://new.it.cx/https://secure.new.it.cx/ So why should anybody care about this stuff? Well, looking at the big picture, Wikileaks is the spiritual descendant of Daniel Ellsberg and "deep throat" and exactly the kind of subversive, alternative information distribution system that's needed to keep these secretive, conniving bastards from just stealing anything that's not bolted down and then squawking endlessly about "national security" and "fighting the terrorists" -- like a talking Myna with severe brain damage.
So they try to keep this stuff under wraps because we're either treated as naive and clueless children bumbling around out here in the wasteland beyond the beltway, or we're dangerous subversives and potential violent revolutionaries who must be contained and controlled by any means necessary. Either way, for these vampires to succeed, they need us to remain ignorant, marginalized, alienated and disengaged -- which is to say, the ideal domestic population for governments and their corporate paymasters to fuck over as often as necessary.
The only effective response to institutionalized secrecy is a 15,000-watt spotlight shining directly into the lying, felonious little eyes of those who would presume to run the world, revealing them for the roaches they are as they scurry for cover back into the walls and cabinets and floorboards and resume plotting world conquest outside the glare of citizen oversight.
So it's a hell of a battle; in this corner, the power structure and moneyed elites defending their secrecy psychosis. In the other, nearly 6.5 billion angry people from around the world who are tired of getting fucked over by the swine in the first corner.
It's a little crowded over there, but they've come to demolish the walls the elites hide behind when they're plotting the "recycling" of anyone or group that's no longer useful to the cause of corporate imperialism -- or at least capable of running to the corner deli to get some Gucci-draped blue blood investment banker with a name like F. Eustace Piebald (Bud) Overtopbottomly IV, a pastrami and swiss on rye (pickle on the side).
Incredibly, even outnumbered roughly 6.5 billion to about 100 (Blackwater's very best), the elites have time, money, military power, propaganda, hardwired social control systems and a cowed and easily diverted peasantry on their side. Vegas says pick-em.
Wikileaks, and any similar sites or distribution systems that may emerge, shift the odds substantially toward the peasants and away from the overlords. When facts and the truth successfully navigate the arcane system of quasi-legal barriers the massuhs use to hide their actions and make it into the public narrative, people are initially shocked and furious, then eventually get pissed off enough to evict the vermin from federal buildings and corner offices and boardrooms all across America.
This kind of public disclosure is effectively impossible in today's controlled mass media environment and only achievable via the Internet. Which is why I think the Internet is due for some alterations in the name of "homeland security." Which is why I wrote this article,
"The Internet Must Die." That's why I think Wikileaks and any similar undertakings are critical and indispensable to give people the tools and forums they need to expose the war of attrition the elites wage on those of us who don't happen to belong to the hedge fund caste. They must survive and thrive, because we're rapidly running out of weapons in the class war.
If we're ever going to throw off the yoke that keeps us in thrall to these black-hearted vultures, exposing the rot that feeds on the shriveled souls of the overlord classes is the first step toward understanding how we allowed ourselves to get so thoroughly screwed by a system that's ostensibly of, by and for the people but has been perverted by the oligarchy into a country that serves primarily as world's largest outdoor theme park for the rich -- with a sullen-eyed underclass of tens of millions whose sole function is serving the theme park's patrons.
So best of luck and please keep this kicked at least for a little while. I'm curious if other people are able to connect and, if so, does everything seem to be working? Links active? No performance issues? Other?
Thanks a lot,
wp
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
