Where’s WikiLeaks?
So, the registrar for wikileaks.org wasn’t prepared for the load on its DNS servers and dropped the registration and wikileaks.ch is the new main site URI, but there are a lot of ways to find the information – remember: the Internet routes around problems.
EBW at Wampum provides the list in Looking for wikileaks?.
I expect LIEberman and the other attack dogs to go after Google and Wikipedia for any references to WikiLeaks.
I expect just as much interest in the world in general in going after WikiLeaks which hasn’t even been formally charged with anything, as we saw in going after Roman Polanski, who fled while awaiting sentencing for crimes he admitted to. Somebody want to tell me again how open and honest diplomacy is 😈
Update: Steve Bates tells me that LIEberman is on track. He has teamed up to two other Senators who still haven’t read the Constitution to get a bill that violates both the Bill of Attainder and the ex post facto law provisions of the “supreme law of the land” [Article I Section 9] to go after WikiLeaks directly.
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Following #wikileaks in Twitter also gets you the latest URL’s for Wikileaks. The Oligarchy is playing whack-a-mole, and about as successfully as RIAA was in stopping online music filesharing :twisted:.
– Badtux the Geeky Penguin
If they try to go after Google and Wiki, they will also have to go after the newspapers who’s job it was to filter the documents for sensitive information, redact what needed to be, and make available to the public that which they deemed worthy of a bugle call.
They can’t go after anyone except the individual who leaked the information, although they should be going after the designers and administrators of the network this stuff was pulled from. This shouldn’t be possible.
These are government documents, so they are automatically public domain. There is no copyright infringement claim, and the Espionage Law, a relic of World War I, only provides for the people who were authorized to look at the information and are obligated to protect it.
The “official media” are protected under the First Amendment, Ame, and the only outlet in the US is the New York Times which is “very cooperative” with the government . I really would love to see them try to move against Der Spiegel or Le Monde. That would be entertaining, after some of the comments made about Merkel and Sarkozy.
Like Badtux says, this is whack-a-mole, and the attempts make the US look even dumber.
Mr. Duff, the corporate media in the US is ignoring this like the plague. Only the New York Times is providing any coverage, and that is highly redacted after consultation with the government.
They only people who didn’t know about the information that was released are those who don’t think about anything outside of their own city, IOW, the majority of Americans.
Cole has a very good post about this, and I think he’s correct.
Wikileaks and the New McCarthyism: Maybe we Just Need a More Open Government
Ahhh… the Fascists are everywhere! 😉 😈
Bryan,
From Steve Bates link to TPM, I note that Lieberman, Ensign and Brown claim that they intend for their proposed legislation will help derail the very real threat posed to human intelligence sources”.
It occurs to me that, if they were sincere, Liberman and Ensign would have filed legislation to trap Cheney et al. after Plame was outed, as revealing her identity posed a “very real threat … to humn intelligence sources”.
Silly me, Lieberman hasn’t been sincere since he named his personal political party the “Connecticut for Lieberman” Party. (Because, God Forbid Lieberman be for anything or anyone other than Lieberman!)
Best,
Jim
They are more than slightly confused about the “intelligence” that State, Commerce, and Agriculture gather. All most all of it is “open source”. i.e. reading, watching, and/or listening to the local media. More comes from meetings and conversations with local people, both formally and socially. They don’t have networks of spies, that’s what the CIA does. In case people have missed it, a lot of what was released was cocktail party gossip, not actionable intelligence.
That CIA tasking document was a wish list, not an order. It was to tell people what the CIA was interested in, so if someone found relevant information, it would be forwarded to the CIA. It wasn’t an order to gather the information.
We have embassies to help the government to understand other countries so they can be influenced to go along with US policies. Most of what was classified were matters that the local government didn’t want their own people to know about, not real secrets. This stuff was talked about openly in the embassy community, but wasn’t released to local media.
The “human intelligence sources” involved in embassies are the members of the local hire staff who are also in the employ of the intelligence services of the host countries. This is another ancient diplomatic tradition, as is bugging embassies.
This is a big story only because of the reaction, or more precisely the overreaction, of people in the US government.
Remember the overreaction over Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” in late 2002 / early 2003? That’s what the overreaction over Wikileaks reminds me of.
In hindsight, we now know that the Busheviks wanted to invade Iraq from day one of the Bush administration, and the fictional WMD’s were just the excuse they ginned up to do what they already wanted to do. Makes you wonder what Wikileak’s alleged misdeeds are an excuse for… were the Feds already planning a program to bring the Internet under closer Federal control, and the demonization of Wikileaks is no more real than the demonization of Saddam’s WMD was? Is this all smoke and mirrors hiding a desire to use the NSA’s control of the root DNS servers (note that Verisign’s CTO spent 20 years in the NSA) to assert tighter control over the Internet (also see — the 100 or so odd websites whose DNS registrations were seized by Homeland Security recently)? Curious penguins are… curious.
– Badtux the Sovok Penguin
Found an interesting commentary at HufPo about this…
Julian Assange Has Made Us All Safer — and Been a Great Gift to US National Security
Yes, it will be very interesting indeed to see if Assange has his day in court, and whether it’s a fair court or not. 😉 🙂
Actually, as more information comes out I think that people will see that Assange brought the problem on himself by not clearing it up early, but deciding to leave Sweden without talking to the police, or giving his side of the story. Prosecutors the world over get very suspicious of people who don’t want to talk to them, especially when those people leave the country.
But is the case, Bryan? According to Assange’s attorney, Assange did ask the prosecutor for permission to leave Sweden in order to take care of his business in London, was granted said permission as long as he kept them notified of his current address and phone number, and in fact did keep them notified of his current address and phone number. Or as Assange supposedly said, “if they want to talk to me, all they have to do is pick up the phone.”
If you have people including major chunks of the world’s greatest superpower calling for your death or worse, and suddenly the Swedes say “oops, sorry, we didn’t mean it” about the deal that let you get back to handling business (remember, his trip to Sweden was solely for the purpose of registering Wikileaks there as a journalistic organization and holding a couple of fundraisers, he never lived there), and the Swedish prosecutor won’t pick up that phone and call the number that is in the prosecutor’s possession before issuing an arrest warrant, I think he can be forgiven for getting a bit paranoid about the real goal of getting him back into Sweden (a country which, remember, has cooperated with the CIA’s “extrajudicial rendition” torture flights — that’s another thing that came out in the Wikileaks leaks). We’ll find out the real deal shortly, once the Brits extradict him there (which they will do, they have no desire to have him on their soil either, they simply can’t deport him otherwise because he’s a citizen of the Commonwealth with residency rights thereof).
BTW, the Commonwealth thing is why he’s mostly been based in Britain. It’s closer to the timezones he’s most interested in (the European ones) than Australia is, and he doesn’t have to be worried about being deported to a CIA black site from there (kidnapped, yes, but deported into CIA hands, no). Sweden, from his point of view, is far less better situated there… once the Swedes have their way with him and deport him (the likely outcome), who do you suppose is going to be welcoming him on whatever plane he’s placed onto? Probably not the Avon lady :).
– Badtux the Paranoid Penguin
The investigation started in September. The detention warrant was issued mid-November, and Assange didn’t appear in court in response to the warrant, so an international warrant was issued.
One of the complainants is represented by a major league Swedish lawyer, and she is very unhappy about the way she has been treated, so Swedish officials have plenty of domestic reasons for resolving this issue quickly.
I don’t read Swedish well enough to decipher the court documents, but apparently some of the people involved are bigger in Sweden that Mr. Assange, so the case got kicked upstairs.
I would expect that the Swedish equivalent of NOW has become involved and the initial prosecutor in this case is about to discover the joys of life above the Arctic Circle.
I really want to read good English translations of the basic court documents before rendering any opinion, because aside from Mr. Assange, there are Swedish politics involved and nothing but press statements to go on.
When the warrant was issued on November 18, he should have returned for the preliminary hearing, but he didn’t. He has a Swedish lawyer who would have told him that.
I would expect that the Swedish equivalent of NOW has become involved and the initial prosecutor in this case is about to discover the joys of life above the Arctic Circle.
I really want to read good English translations of the basic court documents before rendering any opinion, because aside from Mr. Assange, there are Swedish politics involved and nothing but press statements to go on.
sweden has long been a model of gender equality, but with one notable exception: violence against women is appallingly frequent, and until recently, nobody wanted to talk about it.
that changed radically just a few years ago. sweden suffered international embarrassment when the issue was brought to light by (1) the swedish media doing its job, and (2) an amnesty international report.
When the warrant was issued on November 18, he should have returned for the preliminary hearing, but he didn’t.
one would think the founder of wikileaks could appreciate that a government and/or its citizens are acting decisively on an ‘open secret’ issue finally brought to light by a few courageous individuals, but nooooo… instead he had ‘important business’ to take care of elsewhere and hid out in an undisclosed location, rather than face the music when he got caught doing something wrong 🙄
The only thing we know he did wrong was his failure to appear at a court hearing, and that is the basis for the Interpol warrant. He has a lawyer in Sweden, so he knew what would happen, no matter what his British lawyer may say. Even if the underlying charge is shown to be without merit after the hearing, he was still required to appear and plead.
The initial prosecutor let him go to Britain, but it was obviously expected that he would return, and he didn’t. That is also the reason the British courts won’t give him bail, he has already shown that he is a flight risk.
The case against him is a separate issue and it doesn’t involve the British courts or his British solicitors and barristers.