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German Wikileaks Domain Suspended Without Warning
mb writes to mention that Germany has gone one step further in impeding access to Wikileaks. Germany's registration authority, DENIC, recently suspended Wikileaks.de without notice. "The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government."
Who leaked it!
...friggin' nazi's? Or is that wrong. Very wrong.
I read about this story on Wikileak's site (http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Germany_muzzles_Wikileaks)
This seems like Germany improperly suspending a domain name, but I don't think they are censoring any information in this move.
my bet is 25 posts.
.... this is why a decentralized Internet with no intelligence on the switches is important. Because of that, Wikileaks was able to have multiple hosts in multiple countries that are affected by very different sets of laws and busybodies. Even though two major players got together to knock Wikileaks off the Internet, it still is humming along quite nicely.
Folks, fear the day that somebody requests control over who gets to have access to the Internet (Obama, I'm looking at you) and who gets routed where. Yes, QoS is technically going in that direction, but it is still difficult to abuse that for the purpose of knocking random offenders of the Internet. If that somebody happens to be The Government, you can be sure that a) all other governments will want the same control, and b) diplomacy and general government douchbaggery will only leave the blandest, least offensive and best lobbied/bribed sites up and running. Everything else will have moved underground, where again, you'll have to know the right people to get access to the good stuff.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Lobbying - the 'unofficial' 'democracy'. Shaping societies since stone ages.
7 decades ago, they came for the Jews, today they came to suppress freedom of speech ... and tomorrow, they'll come for YOU.
Temporary work around for the handful of Germans who sprechen keine Inglisch.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
He would be proud.
So a site dedicated to flagrantly breaking the law, peoples trust, peoples privacy and holding itself above any law or moral standard on the planet gets taken down. Why should anybody be sympathetic? This is far from the case of the pirate bay where they - followed Swedish law (no downloads on the site) - refused blatantly illegal material - and provided a genuine service to the community. Instead wikileaks is a site dedicated to junior high antics of playing the bigger ass.
Think about it, this is a site based on breaking trust and that knows no moral grounds. Would they post detailed documents from Iran's nuclear weapons program if leaked, how about biological weapons, how a government database full of citizens information that would be perfect for identity theft? These are all documents that could be used maliciously by the wrong people. They can't even compare against sites that provide full disclosure for security vulnerabilities when vendors fail to take action.
This isn't a genuine censorship fighting site like a proxy used to bypass the great wall of China, they don't provide services like the Pirate Bay, all they do is play tattle tale to the world. They aren't even a genuine anti-censorship site as they do no meaningful fact checking. Compare them to a respectable site like the smoking gun which actually fact checks their material - and as a result has never been successfully sued. Just ask yourself what do you expect from a wikipedia spin-off?
No, I'm not opposed to open source, file torrents or the like, I also pretty firmly oppose censorship. It's sites like wikileaks that make those that oppose censorship look like extremists. Wikileaks doesn't deserve the communities support, unlike so many other sites that do. The best comparison for wikileaks is a carders website with the biggest differences being that they have a larger selection and give everything away for free.
If the U.S. seems to trample on some personal rights or freedoms, especially when it crosses international borders to do so or even if it requests extradition, this site immediately fills up with a lot of America bashing. Its funny that when it is Europe or Australia doing this we don't see the same sanctimonious outrage. If course, the U.S. actually has a constitution that guarantees the right of free speech and most other countries do not. I guess if you don't strive for high standards you cannot be held accountable.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
If you do something we don't like, we come to your home and search every last corner of it. We'll take your domain and publicly link you to child pornography.
I'd have a lot more sympathy for Wikileaks if they hadn't hosted a whole load of stuff that really should have remained secret and for good reason.
If what they posted was embarrassing, censoring it would be one thing.
When what they post undermines national security or criminal investigations or is otherwise normally considered privileged information for good reasons, and furthermore they go out of their way to keep contributors (who may well have obtained the information illegally) anonymous, and on top of that you have connections to organisations like TPB that are pretty blatantly trying to get away with breaking the law, then it's no surprise that the authorities take steps to close them down. Frankly, I'm not so sure that is a bad thing. A responsible free press is one thing, but Wikileaks is something else.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The raid is performed as a courtesy by the Stazi. They did it just to show that they could, and to send a message to people that they are free to trample rights as they allow (or not). It also demonstrates and establishes their power over others, and is a nice first step in suspending all rights (internet or not). I fear our new reichnet overlords. Remember to goose step, give a full from-the-shoulder salute, and cry out 'sig heil'.
This is censorship Nazi style.
This is why I think we have to wait before we let Turkey join the EU. We've got to clean up our own house first, and the more nations are added that exhibit such behaviour (Turkey for example was somewhat recently in the news for banning richarddawkins.net) the harder the cleansing is going to be.
so this MIGHT be a technical problem, though this still highly alarms me, since I am a political activist in germany, myself...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
In order for anything to appear on Wikileaks its secrecy must already have been compromised. Wikileaks merely makes this fact public. Thus when one of the very few things that should legitimately be kept secret appears there it is evidence that someone is incompetent; not that Wikileaks is irresponsible.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
In order for anything to appear on Wikileaks its secrecy must already have been compromised.
The moment you share a fact with anyone, its secrecy is potentially compromised. But for society to function, we must have a certain level of trust, and it does no-one any favours to reward arbitrarily betraying such trust.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm sure that the Germans did this all su sponte because they want to make it up to Australia for being on the other side in WW II.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
On international sites, .de domains function primarily as a tangible target for the censors we have here. The wikipedia.de domain has been forced on several occasions to remove its link to de.wikipedia.org. Keeps them busy, I guess.
I'd be more worried if they started raiding the homes of the domain owners--- oh, wait. :P
That's a very valid point there. While I think that while wikileaks does do a good job on the whole, there are indeed areas where they've gone overboard on this whole "expose everything" business
"Thus when one of the very few things that should legitimately be kept secret appears there it is evidence that someone is incompetent; not that Wikileaks is irresponsible."
Seems to me it's stronger evidence of irresponsibility than it is of incompetence, after all the person who leaked the information need not be incompetent.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
WL idea of transparency is peeking through OTHER PEOPLES curtains, they are no so quick to throw their own curtains open.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Someone incompetent entrusted the secret to the irresponsible one.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"Reward"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Full site (as far as I can tell): http://web.archive.org/web/20071118120426/www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks
The EU is first and foremost an economic power, and as such, it wants to expand. Ideals don't matter.
Dude, have you seen that web site? I'd want to ban it too, at least until it got a serious redesign... ;)
Dude!
NOT... Funny!
How about when they come to hang you, I will joke about your clothes, and how you deserve to be hung for wearing them, too?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is pretty serious stuff. I think the truth is that Australia is bring used as a test case for internet censorship at the international level by the hegemony.
I don't know anyone who feels the need for this intrusion into civil liberties. It's step on of a new world order... 'shut the fuckers down'.
If ideals do not matter and expansion is the driving force, then tell me why do European politicians always cite human rights violations as a reason for not accepting Turkey as a member?
Even if that was not the true reason, the EU would not have to pretend it was, if expansion and not other concerns were of foremost importance.
My point is: It might be more complicated than you make it seem.
While there is no real loss of access to the information or loss of information itself, the loss of the wikileak.de domain is bad for those who prefer to use it. As has been argued elsewhere in these comments, this is censorship and it is wrong (even if it was accidental or some misunderstanding).
How do we prevent this or restore this? The wikileak system should be more distrubuted. OK, it probably already is pretty distributed, especially when you account for the language- or country-specific domains. However, maybe we can do more? WikiTaxi (http://www.wikitaxi.org/delphi/doku.php/products/wikitaxi/index) is something I just learned about today and it looks quite interesting. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to bring down a P2P version of a wikileak website? I don't know the technical details of how to set it up, but there are a lot of incredibly smart programmers out there who can make it happen.
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
In Germany, simply greeting someone in public with, "sieg heil" ("hail victory") or the Roman salute (yes, whipper-snappers, its widespread use predates Hitler's Nazism) is punishable by up to three years in jail. Think about that for a moment: saying hello in an unsavory way could get you locked up for three years.
Perhaps certain Germans should watch their own excellent film production of the last days of Sophie Scholl, particularly the interrogation. 65 years ago a woman suffered humiliation for uttering the words "down with Hitler!" - today the German government s/down/up/ and does pretty much the same. And, no, locking you up until you stop speaking is not "better" than putting you to death, for there is no life in slavery.
If your response is "but the Reich was bad, and the Bundesrepublik is good!" then you're no different to Scholl's interrogator: you combine a belief in absolutes with a desire to eliminate those who aren't absolutely in step with you. The threat of fascism today is much greater, not because we're "nearly there" - the new Weimar republic is only just coming to fruition - but because once we reach it, today's technology in the hands of government makes resistance almost impossible.
apparently nazis are in power in germany again. you should leave that hellhole and move to netherlands, one of the last bastions of democracy, while we update the image of germany in our minds with the new fascist image and let that image affect our business and consumption decisions.
Read radical news here
Richard Dawkins Sight? You bet it is. Turns my stomach just opening it. Who the hell buys crap from him?
There is a reason that courts consider evidence obtained under dubious circumstances inadmissible, even holding this more important than getting the "correct" outcome in any one trial. It is the same reason that smart people do not negotiate with terrorists or pay ransoms to hostage takers, even though on that one occasion it may result in a terrorist attack or the death of a hostage.
Giving a voice to people who betray confidences, as Wikileaks does, merely shows that betraying confidences has no adverse consequences. Taken to its logical conclusions, this means no-one trusts anyone with anything sensitive, and a lot of society breaks as a result. No, I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a world that didn't encourage that outcome.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
For the same reason slavery is always cited as the driving for the American Civil War? While the institution was an abomination of human rights, the war was fought over cotton (economics).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
As far as my own hanging - feel free to joke about whatever you wish. I hope that I can find humor then too - I do tend to see it in every situation, and can only hope I don't prove myself the ultimate hypocrite in the end.
A lot of non-essential societal structures break as a result.
We should give a shit about it why?
Why do you give a shit about anything? Ultimately, it's all personal preference, but your definition of non-essential isn't necessarily the same as someone else's.
I happen to like a society that has values beyond the purely utilitarian survival-of-the-species stuff. I value individuality and the unique contributions everyone makes, and I believe these would be the first casualties in a privacy-free world, so as a consequence I value privacy itself.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Heise.de reports that the provider of wikileaks.de had cancelled the contract in December 2008 with effect to the 31st March 2009, so when the domain wasn't transferred to a new provider on 9th April 2009 its status was changed by the provider to "In Transit" and so is inaccessible. http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Wikileaks-de-Denic-wehrt-sich-gegen-Sperr-Vorwurf--/meldung/136096 Seems the guys at wikileaks.de haven't read their mail, maybe they thought it was spam.
Dude, have you seen that web site? I'd want to ban it too, at least until it got a serious redesign... ;)
What, you think that site isn't intelligently designed?
Ow.