AntiWar.com is reporting that the US registrar for WikiLeaks has pulled its dot-org domain registration. Obviously anyone cooperating with WikiLeaks on that level is coming under pressure from the Obama administration. This looks like the first ever all-out war between an activist Internet site and the authorities that control the net. As I watch this I am studying how this is unfolding and who is willing to do what. Here are details about this development.
The site is still available through registrations in other countries, and its IP addresses. They are:
Note that these sites do not contain older material. According to the Wikipedia discussion of this issue, that information is contained at this site:
Eric,
Yep…and those banks want to shut down Wiki Leaks before their underbelly is exposed by the next leak.
Remember, PayPal is Wells Fargo, one of the oldest and biggest banks.
to share some of that dream – a tableau appeared; a pre-pubescent boy radiant in the glow of sun through a large glass window. He began to gently fold an old quilt – in a reminiscing but still close-to-him sort of way. The quilt was paper thin from use and age; the light shone through it as the boy folded.
There was melodic quality to the image, but no recognizable song – only the word “Quality” came through loud and sure.
Then the lol moment – Judy Garland began singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and images from the movie; the whole black’n’white to color thing being represented plus the image of the magician coming round to check on her after the storm plus a summary of Dorothy’s confusion over family, home and acceptance that is, where we belong.
By this time “Over the Rainbow” had engaged my brain and the dreaming faded.
I haven’t thought of that movie for a long time. Funny to have come up now, here.
What’s even stranger is that the night before this blog I woke up from a visionary dream with visions of Oz and ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ singing in my brain.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/paypal_announces_it_will_no_longer_handle_wikileak.php
PayPal Announces It Will No Longer Handle Wikileaks Donations
By Audrey Watters / December 3, 2010 10:06 PM / 30 Comments
In the latest in a series of blows to Wikileaks, PayPal says it will no longer support money transfers to the whistleblower site.
PayPal has posted a (late-night) statement to its website, saying: “PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.”
PayPal’s announcement follows Wikileaks’ loss of its DNS server today and its ousting from Amazon Web Services earlier this week. This comes on the heels of the recent release by Wikileaks of another round of leaked documents – 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.
PayPal isn’t the only way to donate to Wikileaks. You can make a bank transfer or send money directly by mail. But certainly sending money online via PayPal has become one of the easiest and most routine ways for folks to make all sorts of online donations.
It’s not the first time Wikileaks has run into trouble with PayPal either, as the organization had its account temporarily frozen earlier this year.
PayPal’s announcement will certainly result in a loss of donation dollars for Wikileaks. But it also marks an important symbolic loss for the organization as well, as it represents yet another major private tech company that has closed its doors to Wikileaks. In addition to those who’ve refused to provide Wikileaks with hosting and financial services, the visualization company Tableau Software also expunged all Wikileaks content from its site.
Although these companies have said that their terms of service forbid the support or facilitation of illegal activity, such pronouncements about Wikileaks are debatable. While it is a crime to leak classified information, receiving and publishing it is not.
okay, one last thing before I hit the sack, lets not forget mercury is in shadow/echo phase right now….
good night PW community and sweet dreams
love,
hypno
Amanda:
Tonight at the Wizatd of Oz, you fell into the Bongolan Slipstream!!!
fe — funny, i just saw the wizard of oz tonight at the state theater, complete with 1930s-style band to open up the evening. i guess i was too busy singing along to notice the wikileaks parallels. 😉
hey e — as for not believing that a hacker would go after wiki leaks, what about that fact that adrian lamo, the guy who turned in bradley manning, is a hacker?
i’m not saying that there’s a bunch of adrian lamos out there clogging wikileaks — the CIA spam lab actually sounds much more plausible to me. but not everyone out there is sane and balanced and has strong ethics, so i don’t think we can assume all hackers are/do either.
obviously with terms like “black hat” and “white hat” to describe them, there’s a range of personal philosophies in the hacker world.
but yeah, i don’t doubt the gov’t has its fingers in that pie (or on that keyboard).
Information Clearinghouse said on their site that they are supporting Wikileaks and they give a place to donate:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Information Clearing House Newsletter
News You Won’t Find On CNN
December 03, 2010
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This Website Supports The Work Of Wikileaks and Julian Assange
A Call To Action
I call on all of ICH readers to donate towards to cost involved in hosting and other expenses at Wikileaks. At a time when our government is employing all of the resources at its disposal to destroy this organization and its principals we can not remain silent.
We must put our money where our mouth is.
Do we live in a free society or are you afraid of the US government?
Are You Brave Enough To Take A Stand and say: “The world needs Wikileaks.”
Click here to donate and support this courageous organization.
http://wikileaks.ch/support.html
====
“The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep” – Edgar Watson Howe
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=iqnuv6bab&v=001ljJ4p7aX-nEDunWcVO6sUCYehw6neKxYSCp5fC344JD_EV1cibskDazjw4UbGM0xOHDXc25kbF9o6EagOMGsbASkuS_ykZbajhNCNLX3qpU%3D
it’s the CIA Spam Lab
http://www.metafilter.com/98046/Weapons-of-the-21st-Century
Another take:
“The dangers of encouraging activists to rely on technology were vividly illustrated when a State Department plan to help Iranian dissidents outwit the police by distributing anti-surveillance software backfired. The software was called Haystack, and last March the State Department granted it a rare licence enabling it to be exported to Iran; since Haystack was the only software of its kind to be afforded such a licence, this amounted to an official seal of approval. Then it was discovered to be wholly unsafe – ‘the worst piece of software I have ever had the displeasure of ripping apart’, according to the computer security expert Morozov consulted. Amid mounting criticism of their efforts, some of it from Iranian dissidents, the people behind Haystack finally threw up their hands in September and admitted the weaknesses of their system (its leading developer signed off with a tweet: ‘A whirlwind is coming straight for me … I flee’). In the propaganda war inside Iran, episodes like this give the government a valuable weapon. For big American internet companies like Google and Twitter, the danger is that their interests come to be too closely defined with those of the American government: that they’re seen to be smuggling in statecraft under the guise of delivering technology. In the conspiracy mills of the Middle East, campaigns for internet freedom are denounced as cover for America’s broader agenda, the stalking horse for a shady new military-Twitter complex.”
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n23/james-harkin/cyber-con
Someone on the Beeb today called this the first real cyberwar. So far this shutdown of WL seems fairly unprecedented, but I hesitate to call it a “war.” They had a special half-hour analysis program on it today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00chrgx/Hardtalk_Wikileaks_Open_Secret/
It is a war, for the freedom of the net, versus trying to shutdown an opponent’s infrastructure or government. Perhaps it is time for the “People’s Net” to be started? How about a space-based server network with wireless downlinks?
I think more than one party is after WL though, perhaps several different governments’ blackhat operations are unknowingly working together. Further speculation on the Beeb was that China and Russia are trying to forestall upcoming revelations about their machinations, and this entire US diplomatic cables episode has provided excellent cover for their attempts to take down WL. As for our gov’t, I’m not sure anyone wants any links to this series of attacks. We might have some sort of proxy attack system setup offshore, with forged IP addresses and other methods of deception. Kind of like a Gitmo for computers… All it would take is an anonymous room stuffed with servers and a big fat connection to the Net, and it could be anywhere in the developed world.
Somebody start writing the screenplay right now, with the proceeds going to Wikileaks…
Eric, Exactly. I had just assumed “what you said” and not given that “hacking” story another thought. BUT it is hugely worth pausing over isn’t it.
I am wondering about something — what’s with this story of “hacker attacks” on WikiLeaks? What hacker — white hat or black — would hack WikiLeaks, the biggest troublemakers in the world? Assange IS a hacker and he has to be the hero of every hacker from here to Andromeda.
So this ain’t the hacker community attacking his servers, it’s the CIA Spam Lab that I am certain exists.
Assange is smart enough to have alternate sites. Odd that with every wikileak that’s happened since 2005 that the furor over shutting down and arresting Assange is just prior to their release of banking information from 2008.
Those guys are trying to pull the levers on Oz as fast as they can.
Wikileaks is the Yorkshire terrier pulling the curtain down off the false fire-breathing wizard terrorizing Oz.
The jig is up.
they went after the ISP – Amazon – and the registrar, I don’t remember who that was, I have a screen shot somewhere from when I researched the WikLeaks chart for this article over the summer —
http://planetwaves.net/astrologynews/2021964291.html
omg……this is a huge can of worms…,,anyone in PWspace clued into what the current politics of the internet are? for me, anyway, it seems a pertinent piece of the pie.
Charges of Espionage disguised as Rape and can his website be legally shut down by the USA because he was charged with Rape in another country? Hm.
PSsst, if you haven’t figured it out, it’s the USA ……..
(OK fellow Californians – it’s time to declare California a separate and neutral country!!! Since the “private” company that controls the internet bottom line – ICANN – is here….this is our chance……just ‘sayin’….)
I’ve been meaning to research ‘who controls the internet’ for some time – here is a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yNxcYNUoP8
There is also a book out by that name (Who controls the Internet) but for the moment personally , I’ve only barely sighted the tip of an iceberg.