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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.
Temporary work around for the handful of Germans who sprechen keine Inglisch.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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.
Really? you can't see any reason for a place people can leak information?
Yes, you just goosestep to what ever drum your corporate master beat.
Yes I did!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are against a site that provides raw information, because who knows, your name might end up in there without your vetting it first.
There, I got to the point for you.
You and I speaking about the same group chief?
The group that published, among other things, leaked ACTA documents?
Cause folk who are willing to play host to that sort of item are doing a far far greater service to us than a hundred Pirate Bays.
Wikileaks does not get in trouble for things which aren't true (or not solely due to untruths). It's the true things that people make the most fuss about. For example, the leaked Scientology OT documents were verified as genuine by the legal threats made by the COS, which were based on IP law, not defamation.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Given there are more than a couple of posts just above you doing some german bashing, might I suggest that posting almost immediately after the article goes up to complain about how there aren't more german bashing comments might seem a bit... hypercritical (and yes, that's the word I meant)?
A lot of what he said is illogical and untrue. Wikileaks does fact check, and in fact if what they posted wasn't true then it wouldn't be so controversial, and governments around the world wouldn't be attempting to shut them down. And no they don't post juvenile and second rate stories; a lot of what they publish is of important political and human interest.
Well it seems I've unintentionally replied to the GP in a round-about way.
Are you sure you understand what Wikileaks is all about? It is precisely about getting information that has been concealed from the public out so that knowledge of the truth of the world can be available. Most people live in a pretty strange dream world where there are "good guys" and "bad guys" and some really strange notions that are used to divide the world into factions that intend to kill one another.
As to your allegations of making information available for "identity theft" you are out of your head. There is a bigger problem. No one can steal an identity. What people can do is make others think that they are someone else. That is not "theft." That is fraud. The people being stolen from through the use of fraudulent means are the people who most depend on a system of identification that puts numeric tags on everyone for the purposes of tracking and controlling them. And when someone pretends to be someone else in order to fool someone else into giving them money, goods or services, in what bizarro world is it the "fault" of the person whose identity was forged or mimicked? "Identity theft" is the name given to fraudulent activity to make it seem as though the "victim" is the person whose identity was copied when the actual victims are those who were fooled by the fraudster. All of this is facilitated by these numeric tags and data records that are assigned to people. This system was created to make it easier to track and trust individuals for business purposes and somehow, the burden and the risk of managing such a system whose primary designers and beneficiaries are government and big money institutions has been placed on the shoulders of the individuals.
You might think your identity lies in the numbers and data records assigned to you. If you do, then you have bought into their game hook line and sinker. I don't. Stay out of debt and you will stay off of their system. People can attempt to "steal my identity" all they want, but since I stay out of debt, there is no way I can be harmed. (Yes, I know that increasingly employers and governments are using credit scores to determine if someone can be trusted... what a big dumb idea that is!)
Dude, I'm an Ozzie and I think Senator Conroy (our socialist "communications" minister) it a complete dick. This tactic stinks to high heaven of the ultra-socialist agenda these arseholes here have... suppress all opposing views, crush opposition, forceably own all infrastructure and control it very tightly; and finally force other countries into lockstep with your extreme agenda. God help us all here, cos we cant help ourselves from these extremists.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
I wasn't offering it as an example of a "good" leak, but as an example of a factually correct leak which still caused legal trouble.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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.
Transparency and whistle-blowing sound like pretty good services to me. Do they have best the editorial policies? Are they a good substitute for this thing we used to have called "investigative journalism"? Probably not, but morally, I'd put them on a higher plane than The Pirate Bay.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
I'll write slowly so you can understand. I'm not in favor of German bashing or on bashing countries in general. I was being sarcastic. On the thread about South Park for example there was all sorts of nonsense spewed because some Marines behaved in a juvenile manner. Considering most of them are in the late teens and early twenties, that's not surprising. There were not any German bashing posts when I wrote mine. There are delays you know.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
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
Just ask yourself what do you expect from a wikipedia spin-off?
That a site uses MediaWiki, and includes Wiki in its name, does not make it a Wikipedia spinoff. MediaWiki is free software, and can be used by anyone, for any purpose, and the word Wiki is not trademarked by the WikiMedia Foundation, and thus, anyone can use that too.
You have my sympathy. Every country has its dicks. My respect for Australia is not diminished by Conroy's bad behavior. I hope you keep fighting his nutty ideas. My comment was a protest against nation bashing and bashing my nation in particular. I won't bash yours.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
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.
Thank you for creating a list of things that Wikileaks has never done, and then criticizing them for it.
The notion that there is special information that governments may have but citizens must not under any circumstances have is reasonable. However, many governments have NOT been reasonable about asserting this, creating categories of information that remains secret to protect criminals at the highest level or (much more commonly) to protect power and profit.
Western governments do not have a great record of transparency, and corruption and official lawbreaking is extremely common. When we have a government that can be trusted, then we can talk about trusting them with secrets. Until then, sunshine is the best antiseptic.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because it's much more important that we get to see Gary Busey's drunk-driving mug shot than to find out that a major Western democracy has secret prisons where rendition and torture are practiced.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're not paying attention, homeschool. The hatred of tyranny crosses borders, even (maybe especially) here on Slashdot.
I remember recent stories about the UK's closed-circuit outrages, France's attempts at three-strikes laws, and similar stories hammering Australia, Sweden, and here, Germany.
It's funny that so many people from the most powerful country in the world are so defensive as to imagine that everyone is picking on them while not having a clue as to why it might be so.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'll write quickly, since you seem to have a hair trigger, ADD, and the manners of the southern portion of a north bound ass. At a grand total of 30 posts AFTER mine, you were jumping gun regardless of why you were bitching.
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
I didn't see very many (for /.) accusations that the French were hypocritical fascists or the Swedes were neo-Nazis or such. Hell, with the Saddam Southpark picture the U.S. was being blamed for the Iraq-Iran war and tens of thousands of great kids were being smeared because of some juvenile nonsense of a few. Does everyone here think they are above making mistakes? Does everyone here equate a mistake with evil?
I'm just opposed to painting large populations with a broad brush and I'm against stupid analogies that equate minor crimes with horrific ones. I've traveled and lived in a number of countries around the world and I've found that most of the people in all of the places are pretty decent, nice folks. But here in /., people revel in their bigotry while patting themselves on the back for being so progressive.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
So how do you know in what temporal order the posts were written? We are in different time zones and we connected at different points to different servers on the internet. Tell me how you are so sure of when my post was written or your post was available to me?
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
"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.
(Yes, I know that increasingly employers and governments are using credit scores to determine if someone can be trusted... what a big dumb idea that is!)
If they want to criminalize something, THAT should be it. I should never be turned down for a job because of personal financial issues. That's the whole reason I work in the first place.
Anyone else here been turned down for a job because of medical bills and a bounced check your wife incurred while you were unemployed?
Ah, the life of a corporate serf. Your rights mean nothing if you want to pay the rent.
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!
It's not merely "financial issues" but also a person's willingness to accept debt. You cannot have a good credit score if you do not maintain a certain amount of debt. If you paid off all bills and went cash only, your credit score would fall to the floor in a few years. It is the way the score is calculated.
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.
Bravo!
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
The excuse being that poor people are more likely to want to steal. The real reason is that big companies that steal and engage in other criminal activities just consider poor people too stupid to get away with theft, and thus are likely to bring their company down.
Creating hate for poor people is just another scape goat. It's sad that if you are lucky enough to be in a "visible minority" then you get to be a part of "affirmative action", but if you are poor it is legally and socially acceptable to discriminate against you.
You do not need to maintain a certain amount of debt, as many people erroneously believe. I have used a credit card to pay for almost everything in the last few years, and I pay off the full balance at least a couple times each month. I have only paid interest a small number of times when I was busy or just forgot to make a payment, and my card has no 'annual fee'. I have a phenomenal credit score. You forget that the credit companies don't just make their money off interest or yearly payments, but also off the merchants.
You only need to use your credit account semi-regularly in order to build a good score. You don't have to "hold onto" debt or have interest assessed. Credit companies are more than happy to make merchant money off of somebody who is always good for their money.
But you DID accept debt, you just paid if off quickly, it still existed even if you did get in before interest was due. It's the fact that you used the credit system that gave you a good rating. You are playing the game, you may be playing it a bit smarter than the average bear but you are still playing .... and leaving the associated trace.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
But you DID accept debt, you just paid if off quickly, it still existed even if you did get in before interest was due. It's the fact that you used the credit system that gave you a good rating.
I said exactly that. I was replying to this comment:
It's not merely "financial issues" but also a person's willingness to accept debt. You cannot have a good credit score if you do not maintain a certain amount of debt.
Employers also prefer to hire those with no family who can pledge their soul to the company and nothing else.
It's like they think they buy you when you sign the dotted line for IT jobs these days including scrutinizing many aspects of your personal life that are frankly none of their f**king business. I'm to the point now that I've declined to take urinalysis tests a few times because I'm tired of being treated like a criminal. And yes, I have clean urine.
I've got a job, it doesn't pay well, but I can afford to hold out for a company that lets me do my job in exchange for a paycheck, not meet their hypocritical moral standard, take abuse, have orders barked at me or generally be treated like a serf.
Last I checked they were simply renting a block of my time. They demand complete loyalty and devotion to the company but then you are the first to get harshly laid off with little or no notice and escorted out of the building because you're a potential threat. Never mind that you were a model employee and devoted your life to the company, they don't care. Never mind that you were well liked and never showed signs of vindictive behavior.
I guess there's a reason I'm teaching now.
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.
Really... maybe we should make it so we know your last years income too... After all it's been proven that rich people are more likely to steal as well. Just look at that Madoff guy.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
If course, the U.S. actually has a constitution that guarantees the right of free speech and most other countries do not.
Until the president decides to invoke sovereign immunity to step on your free speech rights.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
No not until. The courts still decide whether or not the President's claims are valid and Congress has power to confront a power grabbing President as well. Whether they have the balls to do that or not depends on them and how strongly they feel about what the President is doing. No branch of government has unfettered rights. If you don't understand that then you have no clue about the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. system of government. But also keep in mind, that just because you object to something and think it's somehow an infringement does not mean others agree or that you are correct.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
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.