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EasyDNS Falsely Accused of Unplugging WikiLeaks
kdawson writes "EasyDNS, a DNS and hosting provider, was mistakenly identified in press accounts as the entity that knocked wikileaks.org off the Net. It wasn't them, it was EveryDNS, a completely separate outfit. EasyDNS suffered a series of online reprisals as the false attribution spread. When WikiLeaks approached them to add to the robustness of their DNS support, EasyDNS said yes." And just to be fair on the disclosure thing- I've been using EasyDNS for many many many years and have always had great service, so I just thought it was cool that they stand up for the cause.
RELEASE THE HOUNDS!
Accuracy matters not in Security Theatre.
So many people, especially the slashdot crowd, are cheering on Anonymous and other parties who are DDOSing parties involved in the whole Wikileaks thing as some sort of testament to free speech. But this isn't free speech anymore, it's just mob justice and there's no due process in mob justice.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Will this boost their business, or will it hurt it? I wonder what will show up as the top hundred results in a few weeks...
EasyDNS Plugged WikiLeaks
or
EasyDNS falsely accused of unplugging WikiLeaks
Only time can tell, but I would guess the latter. Kind of like when my local paper misprints something and they apologize in a short posting in an unread section between two huge car ads...
and they're being assholes about it/a?
http://pinopsida.com
That should solve the mystery of why Wikileaks "went back" to EasyDNS for hosting. Shame that people didn't dig a little deeper when that seemed weird.
Taco has never claimed to be a journalist. Slashdot has never claimed to be impartial. It's still basically Taco's blog, if you want journalism, try AP, or Reuters, or something like that.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What cause is that? Releasing a stream of illegally-released classified information from a democratic nation?
Too bad people can't see this for what it is: a foreign national releasing illegally-obtained classified information in a coordinated effort to deliberately try to influence public opinion and US policy.
Assange has already said he considers himself a "media insurgent", and that if forced to choose between "journalist" and activist/advocate, he would choose the latter. His response to a Washington Post reporter's query he apparently felt wasn't deserving of his attention was, "I'm too busy ending two wars."
He's an egomaniac, and the fact that Wikileaks is "going to publish classified information anyway" is used as a justification by mainstream media outlets to go ahead with the publication, under the guise of the public's "right to know". Well, since Wikileaks would likely publish any and all classified information it could get its hands on, my interpretation of the media's justification is that they feel they, not the government that works on behalf of the people, are the arbiters of what does and doesn't constitute properly-classified national security information.
That's exactly where this is leading, and what it results in is an environment where closed and repressive societies have an advantage in the information realm over open and democratic societies. Steven Aftergood, a guy who is a veteran crusader against excessive government secrecy and director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said, "WikiLeaks must be counted among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law nor does it honor the rights of individuals." Indeed.
THIS is restricting press freedoms.
What is with the kdawson articles being posted by other editors?
Huh. I wonder where this weird idea of "innocent until proven guilty" came from... Hm.
FYI, FWIW: note that the actual submission is from 'kdawson', not CmdrTaco.
Taco posted it. I guess he could have edited that part in, but I think that text is probably from the 'kdawson' submission...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
The whole DNS thing is a red herring. First of all EveryDNS is a free DNS service that survives on donations. They don't have the capacity to survive a cyber attack from the US government. From their page, they have 490m domains that rely on their free service. It's a shame they they didn't hold out and ask for help and donations rather than fold so quickly, but they did have to think about their other users. They aren't the bad guys
Let's assume journalistic incompetence rather than third party malice, but ire is redirected to EasyDNS who are actually one of Wikileaks main supporters. The irony would have been for a Wikileaks .ch provider to be knocked off by its own supporters, but EasyDNS seem to have handled the situation well.
All in all, no harm done. EasyDNS reputation remains intact, Wikileaks remains up.
The same cannot be said for Amazon, Paypal, Visa, and Mastercard.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
There's no way the vegans will be on-board with this "meatgovernment" idea.
and mob justice
it is why we have courts. it is why we have government
if everyone were their own policeman, judge, jury, and executioner, injustice would increase, not decrease, even with good intent, because of simple miscommunication
which is why increased gun ownership in peacetime civil society is a gateway to more injustice, not a salvation from it, and why libertarianism will never work: individuals are often confused, and some have bad intent. you need society to be regulated and made secure by a government structure that can be held accountable, and you need to pay for it. the alternative is simply worse
we need government to save us from ourselves: take all of the abuses of every government that ever existed, and guess what: the abuses of the individual are far worse. whether simple petty crime, white collar crime, or well intentioned but confused effort, individuals are worse than governments, when given no structure, no security, and no regulation
i fear my fellow man far more than i fear my government
and i will probably be flamed for saying all of this, but i don't care, bring it on. i like being the one who says the ugly truths about the world that no one wants to admit
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Honestly, what are you trying to accomplish with the insults? Trying to hurt my feelings? Seriously, do you think that works? Your insults are just precious. I mean, calling someone a preschooler and a baby is just adorable and refreshing in these profanity laced modern times.
Trying to look the big man? I don't think anyone cares. Doing a little trolling? You get one response from me, just for fun. I like trolls. Especially adorable profanity avoiding trolls like you seem to be.
Carrying around that much anger can be really bad for your health. Anger management classes, meditation, or just some good old fashioned sex might help bring your blood pressure down before something important goes pop.
I do hope you enjoy the attention. Interacting with other human beings feels good, doesn't it? I know the type of interaction seems irrelevant, but you should try "friendly" interactions, they feel even better!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
YARGH! Damn the G-Man, and let slip the DoS scripts of war!
Hoist the skull and crossbones, me mateys, and let us send these oppressive land lubbers to the briny deep!
Wait, what, falsely accused? (lowers authentic reproduction sabre) Aw, nuts. :-(
The name of the company is DynDNS.com. You know, the company that bought EveryDNS; disabled the ability to sign up for new EveryDNS accounts?
And has been in the process of transitioning accounts from EveryDNS to "DynDNS.com" custom services over 2010, probably so they can eventually discontinue the free services and force everyone to pay?
If they made the decision to kill Wikileaks' services, they should take responsibility for the shutdown, and not hide behind the legacy EveryDNS name which will be a distant memory in some time.
what justice would it be ? regular justice ? which can only be had, if you have heaps of cash. and even in that case you would get less justice than those who have more ?
the justice which is totally subservient to the administrations, which are actually people who have won elections with direct or indirect support and funding of established private interests ? even the supreme court judges are directly appointed.
if, you leave no justice option for people to pursue, they pursue mob justice. thats the cold hard reality of life.
Read radical news here
The problem is that what wikileaks does is not illegal in almost any country that values freedom of the press. Especially not in the US.
What they're uncovering is often the illegal behaviour of governments which are justifying actions based on popular support (which there was right after 9/11), and then not doing those actions, but something worse. Don't shoot the messenger. This is why the US enshrined freedom of the press in their constitution in the first place.
Here is a letter EasyDNS sent out to all customers last night about this issue. I removed Mark Jeftovic's email and phone number for obvious reasons:
This notice is being sent to all active domain holders on the system.
Your easyDNS username is:
Email address on file for account:
Date username was created:
Username was created from:
In this email:
1. The WikiLeaks Situation
-----------
1. The WikiLeaks Situation
-----------
It is not very often we send out an all-member email blast, so when we do, it's usually pretty important.
First and foremost, everything is ok. Please read the information that follows carefully but understand that we would never do anything that we thought put our members at risk.
The Basic Background:
=====
On Friday, Dec 6th, easyDNS was mistakenly identified in various online channels as the DNS provider who revoked DNS Services for the controversial website Wikileaks, and a large internet backlash ensued against us. In fact, the Wikileaks DNS provider was a free DNS provider in New Hampshire called "EveryDNS.net". At some point this was mistakenly reported as "easyDNS", and it gathered momentum from there. The problem was compounded on Saturday, Dec 7th when the New York Times picked up the story, also incorrectly identifying us as the party who "unplugged" Wikileaks. The U.K based Guardian did the same thing again on Tuesday, December 7th.
A timeline of events has been posted here:
http://easyurl.net/5119e
And our original rebuttal to the misinformation was posted here:
http://easyurl.net/a3191
easyDNS Added To WikiLeaks.ch DNS
======
On Sunday, Dec 5th, we were approached by a group acting on behalf of Wikileaks and asked to provide DNS for their fallback domain WikiLeaks.ch. We agreed to this on several conditions.
http://easyurl.net/fbbff
We did not take this decision lightly, and whichever side of the fence you fall regarding what Wikileaks is doing, after being falsley accused of unplugging Wikileaks and taking an enormous amount of backlash for doing so, we felt we did not have much choice in the matter but to forge ahead and take on this challenge.
http://easyurl.net/507d8
We actually consider this part of the situation to be well in hand. Tonight the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail ran a story about this bizarre sequence of events and we expect it to run in the print edition (possibly as the cover story) on Thursday, Dec 10.
That story is here: http://easyurl.net/gandm
However, and this is large part of the motivation for this email, the Globe story concluded with the following quotation, which we feel sends the wrong message, as I mispoke when I said the following: "Our lawyers have basically told us that if they want to shut us down they'll show up with an injunction and we'll have to follow it and then try and have it overturned later," This may connote that we think we, as a company, may be shut down. We do NOT think this is going to happen at all. What I meant to convey in the quote is: "If they want US (easyDNS) to shut THEM (WikiLeaks) down, they'll show up with an injunction, and we'll have to follow it, etc etc". And if that happened, we would be terminating service to wikileaks alone. Further information about this clarification is here:
http://easyurl.net/gm2
We wanted to let you know as an easyDNS member, that we are taking every measure to ensure that this situation does not disrupt the continuity of your domain services at all. In conclusion, we believe we have taken the course of action that fits who we are as a company. If you've been dealing with us for any amount of time then hopefully you know w
For some information, it is a privilege for the producer to have a medium via which he can disseminate that information. Being a privilege of benefit primarily to himself, he should be willing to pay for whatever costs are involved.
For other information, it is a privilege for the consumer to have access to it. In this case, the consumer should be willing to pay or provide something in return for the privilege.
Problems arise in the first case when the producer takes the opinion that he is providing some valuable service to a consumer, as opposed to himself.
Problems arise in the second case when the consumer would be happy to exchange something in return for content or for use of a medium, but faces the problem of limited or nonexistent options for doing that.
We tend to come around again and again to marginally adequate solutions, such as "eyes on advertisements" or "micropayments" or "exchange of personal or demographic data". Here is where a visionary genius is welcome to solve the problem in some revolutionary way. Any volunteers?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Citation necessary. The US government declined to negotiate for redactions under the idea that they could stop the release, they were wrong. If it were that egregious and irresponsible, I doubt that Wikileaks would have offered and that the government would have declined. In other words it's their own damned fault for being so arrogant.
What you're suggesting is pretty barbaric. Pfc Manning apparently committed a crime, I'll wait for that to be formalized before accusing, but even if that's the case, Assange and Wikileaks haven't done anything wrong. By that stretch of reason, perhaps you ought to be "disappeared" as you voting seems to be dangerous to the American state and our service personnel.
with the collateral damage when EasyDNS is mistakenly identified as having cut off wikileaks?
Best Slashdot Co
TL; DR, just skimmed it. However, I found these two contradictory assertions there:
If people are able to pick in which decisions they will participate, then most of them will want to participate on a few "hot-button" issues. The result is mob rule and demagoguery.
Hollywood
IT industry
The PC era
The Constitution
Freedom of press
Big Cars
California
Texas
Research and Science
Freedom of love / preference of gender
Freedom of religion
Opportunities
Fantastic Nature
Great Personalities
Strength and Commitment
USA has been the focus of the World now for at least 50 years.
Now it's time to take advantage of what internet can truly mean for democracy, and get rid of some practices which are undermining true representative democracy. And yeah, getting rid of the two-party system would be cool too, but if you'd like to keep getting screwed over, that's your choice.
Don't mistake critique of hatred, like islamic fundamentalists are crying about whenever someone mentions women's plight in islamic countries.
It's because we care. Truly.
(Yeah, I know you were being sarcastic, but this is a good reply nonetheless I think)
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Do you really think if Wikileaks was able to get hold of this information to release publicly that our enemies who we don't want to have the information couldn't? This has exposed a large security breach for the government, one which we have no way of knowing how many times it was exploited (and by whom) before it had been publicized. Anyone taking security seriously should already assume that our enemies had all of the information that Wikileaks got by this point and act accordingly.
If we assume our enemies already have the info that the government doesn't want Wikileaks releasing who is left that they want to hide it from? The people. This leads to the question, why should our government need to hide from its citizens? If we cannot know what our government is doing then how can we know they are serving our best interest?
I don't necessarily support what's going on but neither am I dead set against it. There are compelling arguments on both sides here and a blanket position for one simply doesn't make sense.
A legitimate point in a limited system. But the object of collaborative governance is to scale from very small systems up to eventually being applied to all democratic decision-making. At that point, the idea of a few hot-button issues won't be evident. There will be millions of them at different scales and in different communities. Your hot button and mine will be free to be different.
More to the point, however, there won't be yes/no options like for a law that does or does not allow immigration into one geographic region. Instead, there will be an array of potential solutions. Large numbers of people might get excited about one issue, but it won't be "us" vs. "them." It will be: "which idea works best for everyone?"
And putting the two above together: there won't be politicians who inherently force issues into yes/no debates. Politicians thrive on dissent, because it gets people excited to love them and hate the other guy. When you take the politicians and the black/white decision-making out of the mix, the propensity for singular hot buttons diminishes enormously.
when the government system that is in place to protect the people fails, the only recourse left is to revolt. this is simply a "digital revolt" which is different from what people are normally accustomed to. traditional "physical protest" (i.e. forming a chain of people in front of the entrance to a store, marching down a road etc) almost always disrupts standard business practices or day-to-day activities. It sounds like you expect a protest/revolt to not inconvenience anyone.
additionally, the organizations that pulled support from wikileaks were the first to demonstrate lack of due process. they referenced SLA agreements about "wikileaks using their services for illegal activities" long before illegality had even been proven.
regardless, the mob's activities pale in comparison to the civil liberties that are currently being trampled upon by the government. in that respect, they may be somewhat justifiable.
I've been using them for ages. They're a great bunch of engineers and they provide a high value service. In the decade that I've been using them, I've never ONCE thought, "I wonder if I should move my domains somewhere else?" I can't think of any other service provider in my life that I haven't reconsidered at least every once in a while.
If you have any DNS business to send their way, show them slashdot's support!
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Government e-mail is not copyrighted.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
I heard they wrote a book about this kind of thing. "A tale of two cities" or something like that. Brothas fightin' the power end up causin' shit.
TFA blog post begins with "On Friday, Dec 6th". That can't be right, Dec, 6th was a Monday. When are they talking about?
As a Sr. Sysadmin, I've used EasyDNS for 4 years for a successful dot com's corporate presence, and also used it to register and provide DNS for a couple of personal domains I own.
They DO NOT DESERVE any bad press. I've always been happy with them, and could recommend them to anyone.
I am not associated with them in any way, and if they sucked I'd say they suck.
IT doesn't matter because the point he was making is that even with a free press there are still restrictions on what can be released by the press.
Saying that Government e-mail is not copyrighted says nothing about the restrictions in the first place and only ignores that they are there and capable of being in place.
i know some people REALLY like their guns, but i'm not aware of a biological pathway in which cold steel and gunpowder creates pharmacological addiction
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What restrictions, specifically? Can you quote me the law that presides over this case?
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Restrictions over copying and distributed copyrighted materials or knowingly giving the enemy information about bases, equipment, troop strength, operations, personnel and so on as define in the espionage act.
the point is that there are limits to the freedom of the press and the press cannot just do anything it wants in some regards.
No, I mean the specific laws. You can't just point in the vague direction of a foreign document and say it might have something in it about the case. You can't be for locking a man up without first being absolutely sure which laws he has broken.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Yes I can. That's what prosecutors and investigating LEOs are for. To lock people suspected of committing crimes up while awaiting trial. Society has been on board with this idea for quite some time too.
This leaked document provided by wikileaks violates the Espionage act carrying a severe penalty. All of the documents that are marked secrete continue to violate the espionage act and simply possessing them can carry 10 years in prison.
I haven't read all the documents released, I don't care to. But from reports, I can reasonably see a couple specific statutes that a violation occurred on. There are probably more depending on the contents of the information in possession or the effects of the releases. It was not my intention to specifically accuse wikileaks of anything nor was it my intention to argue the merits of it. It was my intention to state that there are limits to what can be published in the name of journalism and there can be serious repercussions if you cross those limits.
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
I sort of see the theory, but I don't see how it'd really work any different in practice to the current system. Most people won't consider a "whole array" of potential solutions. I don't fully believe that the reason we end up with yes/no debates is due to politicians deliberately causing dissent; but rather that the natural way to go from "a whole array of potential solutions" to "one that we all agree on" is to incrementally combine similar proposals and/or discard fringe proposals until you get to a manageable number of potential solutions.
That process inevitably means that a lot of people end up disenchanted with the process, because their specific concerns are ignored by the majority.
It's not as if current proposals are floated by some politician and then rammed through without any changes. Every significant piece of legislation is the result of a lot of compromises to get something that is acceptable to the majority. That doesn't mean everyone likes it; actually, it pretty much guarantees that nobody really likes it, not even the original proponent, because everybody has had to give something up in order to get it passed.
Also, our hot button issues are already free to be different. There are already many decisions going on at all levels of government which citizens are entitled to (and encouraged to) participate in. Most people don't, because we're lazy (essentially). Instead we choose to get fired up over the same issues because that's what gets reported on. Even if the conflict is purely the result of politically maneuvering, given that collaborative governance allows people to participate as they see fit, there's still motive and opportunity for people to raise awareness of particular issues.
The document says: In all cases, citizens find that they have no voice in almost any social decision. However, the system requires support of citizens, and all politicians are open to receiving the views of their constituents. They have to be in order to survive. The trouble is, most people choose not to participate.
I don't think that Allowing everyone to participate in every decision is likely to fundamentally change the attitudes of members of a community, for the reasons explained above: most people will feel that their specific view is being ignored, and therefore they will feel that participating is not really a valuable use of their time. Just like they feel now. It may make it more transparent as to why their views are not, and cannot, be specifically catered for; but I don't see why that would make them more keen to continue participating.
I appreciate your thoughtful reply. A lot of your argument flows from this point
Every significant piece of legislation is the result of a lot of compromises to get something that is acceptable to the majority.
and that's just the point... that is only the case for significant legislation. Most decisions do not go through that process because they are not significant to a majority. This applies decisions that are not energizing to a large number of people either because they are boring or because they are small scale.
I don't think that Allowing everyone to participate in every decision is likely to fundamentally change the attitudes of members of a community, for the reasons explained above: most people will feel that their specific view is being ignored, and therefore they will feel that participating is not really a valuable use of their time. Just like they feel now.
How does this follow? There are many times where a person has a fantastic solution to a big issue, but they can't get it to appeal to their representative so they give up. An open system where anyone can contribute has the potential (if constructed well) to allow good ideas to be noticed and brought to more peoples' attention.
I suspect we'll never come to an agreement, as my point of view is based solely on my own expectations of human behaviour. I think you have different (somewhat more positive) expectations.
The short version is that it's already quite possible to participate in decision making processes for even minor things. Local governments, community groups, school councils, etc: everywhere you look, there's people practically begging for members of the community to get involved. Most people don't, partly because it's perceived as too difficult or time consuming, and partly due to apathy or disinterest.
There are many times where a person has a fantastic solution to a big issue, but they can't get it to appeal to their representative so they give up.
I'd really need to see many examples of such before believing it's true often enough to be significant. Most fantastic solutions are fantastic for a particular person or group of people, but have a negative impact on others. Usually not due to malice, but simply ignorance. Most people simply don't have the time to understand everyone's perspective on an issue. Once you start to factor in the views of everyone that will be affected, the fantastic solution stops seeming so fantastic.
Further, representatives have a vested, personal self-interest in latching onto and introducing fantastic ideas. If someone is able to come up with a fantastic idea but is somehow unable to convince someone who has every reason in the world to take it on board, then it seems unlikely they'd have much more success in an open forum filled with many other proposed solutions. However they also have an interest in not offending groups, which is why they reject solutions that are one-sided. (To a degree: obviously they have no interest in promoting solutions that will improve things for people that would never vote for them.)
Consider any scenario you like, and the more people that are involved in it, and the more diverse the backgrounds of those people are, the harder is for them to come to an agreement. So making it easier to participate is a double-edged sword: it's easier for you to have your say, but there's many more people also having their own say.
Another thing I've noticed is that if you ask people to make a decision on something, they'll be reluctant to even have an opinion on the subject. If you say "I'll make the decision, does anyone have any suggestions?" then everyone will suddenly have an opinion because they won't be responsible if it turns out to be a bad solution. What incentive does someone who has a bee in their bonnet have to come to a reasonable compromise, rather than sticking to their guns and trying to get their exact vision implemented? If they win and it all goes pear-shaped, hey, it's not their fault - everyone else agreed with them! If they get overruled it just proves to them that the system "isn't working" because their brilliant idea wasn't listened to.
So for all those reasons, I don't think the implementation of such a system would really change much. Most people would continue to be apathetic; most of those that do take an 'interest' in an issue will do so because whatever media personality they listen to told them to, and will continue to be poorly-informed on the issues; and those who actively participate and actually care will be just as disenfranchised as they currently are, because the decisions are still going with the majority who are just parroting whatever the talking heads said.
Without a corresponding cultural shift, I don't really see that improving the technology will make a significant difference. Of course, actually implementing such a technological solution would probably require that the society already be undergoing such a shift.