They May Have Lost Their Name, But Wikileaks Goes On
Duncan Riley
31 comments »
The United States has joined China and Thailand in attempting to censor Wikileaks, however the site itself goes on.
A Californian judge ruled that Dynadot, the name registrar for Wikileaks.org, should remove all traces of Wikileaks from its servers and further should “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 ruling followed an application from Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss bank named by Wikileaks as being involved in money laundering, to have documents relating to the company removed from the site.
Although Wikileaks has lost its URL, the site is hosted in Sweden, and is still up at 88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks. Unfortunately for Bank Julius Baer, the legal action will probably result in more people reading the documents in question.
Wow, Wikileaks is one of the best sites publishing documents about repressive regimes. They are also the ones who posted the leaked Iraq War Rules of Engagment documents. And without notice…
It seems that Judge Jeffrey White has never heard of the first ammendment. This is akin to trying to shut down the NY Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers.
And so you (Duncan) feel compelled to help people reach documents that our court agrees should not be accessable. That’s more “grey” area then I saw during my time at BofA’s Prime Brokerage — and those guys are sleezy. Throwing the morals out the window, interesting choice.
Toby, it’s the Judge who has thrown morals out the window by shutting down legitimate press sites. The only moral response is to publish more. Thank you Duncan (and Mike).
You can also still get to Wikileaks via http://wikileaks.be & http://wikileaks.cx and any of the other covernames around the world http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names
This was the email sent out to people on the mailing list:-
February 18, 2008
The website WikiLeaks.org has been taken off line in many parts of the world. Wikileaks is a website dedicated to leaking documents that are “anonymous, untraceable, uncensorable.”
Several factors have taken the site off line including DDoS attacks, which was followed by a fire which took out the main servers hosting the site in Sweden, and a restraining order on the domain name ‘WikiLeaks.org’ issued in the United States.
According to the website HongPong.com, Wikileaks experienced “a 500Mbps distributed denial of service attack” before the fire, but it is not known if the DDoS attack is connected to it.
After the attack, a fire was reported in the Uninterruptible Power Supply of the servers which host the site.
The third and final factor taking the site off line is a permanent injunction granted in the California Northern District Court in San Francisco, California to Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss Bank, which has caused the domain to be taken off line in the U.S.. Wikileaks previously published hundreds of documents obtained from a whistleblower of the Swiss Bank, “purportedly showing offshore tax evasion and money laundering by extremely wealthy and in some cases, politically sensitive, clients from the US, Europe, China and Peru.”
According to a Wikileaks press release received by e-mail, the injunction issued by the court states, “Dynadot [Wikileaks host] 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 order was entirely written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on Wikileaks’s California registrar Dynadot (”the power company”). The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents,” said Wikileaks in the release.
Despite the injunction, Wikileaks states that they will “keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.”
Bob (#3): Our court doesn’t agree with you. So, unless you want to live in another country, you need to learn a little respect. Fight it in court, fine, but ignoring the law (yes, I know it’s not illegal, but it’s definitely “grey” area) and publishing this is just bad morals. The post would be just as good without the link.
That’s pretty bold claim.. is there such a thing? Good research topic for academic-minded scholars..
Thank goodness for Sweden…
PirateBay + WikiLeaks = fighting the good fight.
cannot agree with tony… courts, attorneys general, are too often beholden to the government to give them unthinking obedience. if they are really serious, you won’t see duncan in america again, or they will sue tech crunch, you never know with governments… i appreciate the rebelliousness
oh…if you actually read the wikileaks vs Bank Julius Baer transcripts, etc. on the wikileaks site you will see how this could be turned into an awesome movie.
The Bank had its private detectives following the guy that leaked all this stuff around.
Sadly though this isn’t a movie and you will see the extent of power that some of these financial institutions focused on the uber rich have. if you’ve ever gone to Switzerland and visited any of their offices you will find that they have a sort of eerie prestige …
Toby, there are higher laws and principles than what some judge says. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
The standard model for moral development that I’ve seen (though I’m no expert) is Kohlberg’s six stages of moral development. At stage four, people learn to justify actions based on the laws and norms of their society. OTOH, at stage six, they examine universal moral principles. If these supercede laws, they can participate in civil disobedience.
While the stakes may be smaller here, when Rosa parks sat in the front of a bus, she was operating at a higher moral level than the sort of people who would say, “unless you want to live in another country, you need to learn a little respect.”
The people who believed in principles, like Thomas Jefferson, built this country and I’m proud to be here and to stay. My disrespect for people who think that blindly following rules trumps ethics makes me more American, not less.
Toby, what crime is Duncan committing? Linking is not a crime.
http://www.thepiratebay.org
Earth to Bob and Kevin:
The Pirate Bay is in no way comparable to Rosa Parks.
Get off the high horse.
“Bad morals?” to defy something “gray??” Sometimes it is very good morals to defy a law outright. Laws change. If we are vigilant THANK YOU Techcrunch et al, and THANK YOU WIKILEAKS. Thank You Thomas Paine and Thanks to Bob who got to thank Thomas Jefferson before I could and who typed the appropriate fully referenced response so quickly.
Foolish not to respect the *power* of a court, or the ideal office it represents, respectable is as respectable does, or rules in this case. Our courts have gone crazybad of late and it is our duty to oppose crap rulings. I am posting and sending these links far and wide. THANK YOU.
These things have been virtual public record for over FOUR YEARS and NOW some vindictive lunatics have convinced a fascist-in-robes to put the horse, now a hred of horses, back into the barn? Absurd. And Immoral.
Dave, I never said anything about Pirate Bay. OTOH, look at Wikileak. There is stuff every bit important as Rosa parks to people in other places in the world there. They are publishing documents from repressive regimes that are torturing and killing people. Sorry if I take that seriously.
I’m curious, Duncan, Michael…
Will you guys remove the link to Wikileaks if a court order comes in?
(not trying to be confrontational, just wondering how you’d handle it)
@15 Arrington thinks he is above the law being an ex-lawyer. So if he was asked to remove it he would dig his heels in.
In fact isn’t Arrington THE law in the blogosphere. Try crossing him or his friends and see how he manages to turn everyone against you. Just ask Fred Wilson.
If you don’t like to read torture manuals, campaign to stop torture, not to stop torture manuals being leaked.
We’ve got a database entry about this case, which has some of the court documents — http://www.citmedialaw.org/thr.....-wikileaks
Toby,
Let’s try not to link morals and the law, n’er the twixt shall meet.
And while we’re on this, how moral is it to summarily judge againt those who are not there to defend themselves? Didn’t this judge just ignore the law? Or did the Justice Dept. tell him this was ok because they think it’s a good idea? In this “we make up the law as we go” current air the Administration in Washington has fostered…..who really can respect the court system? Remember, respect is earned, not mandated.
This all stinks to me of nervous officials afraid of the light, my guess, far too many Californians are involved in this for Judge White to risk the light of day on this matter.
Toby, don’t be such a god damn tool.
What’s really interesting about this story is that NONE of the major US news outlets are covering it at all, not even a mention anywhere. Seriously, search Google News for “wikileaks”. Almost all the stories are from outside the US or from small sites and blogs.
Thank baby Jesus that we have so many independent news outlets these days that don’t bow to the almighty dollar.
@21: I agree
This is a HUGE story but unfortunately it’s not being treated as such by the mainstream media.
Constitutional freedoms have been an illusion since the 50s. This is the most obvious case of censorship I have seen to date. It’s not even for “the sake of the children” this time. It’s all about protecting the global inner circle of power and wealth. I’m guessing that a phone call from Washington to California took place before this order was enforced.
@Toby : Your real name is Kunta Kinte … remember?
Duncan, Thank you very much for publishing this. It is scary how much the constitution is ignored in this country by all branches of our government.
Well, it takes balls to post such a story in a prominent outlet, and apparently techcrunch has them. Bravo!
@Sean
I was going to say great point but then I went into Google News and searched. The New York Times and SF Chronicle have now covered it along with the AP. I guess we just have to expect the mainstream press to be a day behind on a story like this. Amazingly the NYTimes went one step further then Duncan and linked to the foreign sites as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02.....ei=5087%0A
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks
I HATE when news articles DON’T link us to said story/site. So much time is wasting having to google sites we are going to find anyways. THANK YOU Duncan
WikiLeaks can still be easily accessed here:
http://www.wikileaks2.com
http://www.wikileaksmirror.com
Thomas Jefferson, and for that matter a lot of people who did not write the Constitution, but lived it and fought for it, deserve a lot of credit, but wasn’t it Madison who pushed and pushed until we got the Bill of Rights? Please don’t forget one of the biggest heroes in US history.