Wikileaks under attack: the definitive timeline

[RLENT]

Since Wikileaks released the US embassy cables on 28 November it has come under pressure on several fronts, from DDoS attacks to frozen bank accounts. We list the companies, politicians and organisations making life difficult for Wikileaks and Julian Assange

On Sunday 28 November Wikileaks began releasing the first of its 250,000 leaked US embassy cables. Almost immediately, a hacking attack known as a "DDOS" – distributed denial of service – attack tried to knock it off the net. These are the attacks that have followed in the succeeding days.

Sunday 28 November

• TECH: DDoS attack hits WikiLeaks as first set of US diplomatic cables is published.

Wednesday 1 December

• TECH: Tableau Software, which offers free software for data visualisation, removes the public views of graphics built using information about the diplomatic cables. It is the first company to distance itself from Wikileaks, and admits that the reason was pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent senator with ties to the Democratic party.

• POLITICS: Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security, calls for Wikileaks to be taken offline. "I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

• TECH Amazon removes Wikileaks's content from its EC2 cloud service, but later insists it did so because the content could cause harm to people and did not belong to Wikileaks – and that it was not due to political pressure or the hacker attacks against the site.

Friday 3 December

• TECH: Wikileaks.org ceases to work for web users after everyDNS.com, which had provided a free routing service translating the human-readable address into a machine-readable form, ends support.

Wikileaks shifts to a backup domain registered in Switzerland but actually hosted in Sweden, at Wikileaks.ch, though the cables are hosted in part by OVH, an internet provider in the north of France.

EveryDNS claims that the DDOS attacks against Wikileaks were disrupting its service provided to thousands of other customers. The company says it is "following established policies so as not to put any one EveryDNS.net user's interests ahead of any others. Lastly, regardless of what people say about the actions of EveryDNS.net, we know this much is true - we believe in our New Hampshire state motto, Live Free or Die."

• POLITICS: French industry minister Eric Besson writes to internet companies warning them there will be "consequences" for any companies or organisations helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country.

Saturday 4 December

• MONEY: PayPal, owned by US auction site eBay, permanently restricts account used by WikiLeaks due to a "violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy". A spokesman said the account was suspended because "[it] cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."
You can still donate at Commerzbank Kassel in Germany or Landsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at the University of Melbourne or at WikiLeaks - Support

• TECH: Switch, the Swiss registrar for Wikileaks.ch declines pressure from US and French authorities to remove the site or block access to it.

Sunday 3 December

• TECH: The Pirate Party in Sweden says that it has taken over the hosting of the Cablegate directory of Wikileaks after the server in France at OVH, which had been hosting the contents of the US diplomatic cables released so far, goes offline.

Monday 6 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Mastercard withdraws ability to make donations to Wikileaks. "MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," the credit card outfit says.

• TECH: Wikileaks' servers in Sweden attacked by distributed denial of service attack.

• MONEY: Postfinance, the Swiss postal system, strips WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of a key fundraising tool, accusing him of lying and immediately shutting down one of his bank accounts. The bank says that Assange had "provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process."
Assange had told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident, a requirement of opening such an account. Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty told The Associated Press the account was closed Monday afternoon and there would be "no criminal consequences" for misleading authorities. "That's his money, he will get his money back," Josty said. "We just close the account and that's it."

Tuesday 7 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Visa withdraws ability to make donations or payments to Wikileaks. "Visa Europe has taken action to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules," said a spokesman.

Yup ..... no "attacks" in any of that .... just move along folks ..... nothing to see here ....

Link to original article:

Wikileaks under attack: the definitive timeline

 

[Turtle]

Back in July when all that stuff was released, nothing was done to Wikileaks or Assange. Nothing. You know why? It certainly wasn't because Lieberman's staff had problems locating Amazon's phone number. It was because those releases exposed lies and corruption and coverups. Wikileaks or Assange wasn't attacking anyone, they were merely exposing lies and corruption in accordance with their stated goals. Embarrassing, yes, but those surrounding the lies knew that the lies and corruption was wrong, and everybody knew that Wikileaks and Assange was merely the conduit for the release.

Now we've got these cable releases, cables that show the private conversations of diplomats mostly, and were released not because they contain lies and corruption and coverups, but because they were embarrassing and damaging to the reputations of the people involved and the nation itself. They serve no altruistic purpose and are meant to take private information that doesn't deserve to be made public, and make it public, just because he can. It's a blatant attack on the US.

You wanna be a whistleblower, fine. You wanna engage in espionage, not so fine.

Saying that Wikileaks is under attack is a bit melodramatic, when what's happening is in reality a response to a attack. And the response is coming from people not under the control of the United States. That should speak volumes.

 

[RLENT]

Back in July when all that stuff was released, nothing was done to Wikileaks or Assange. Nothing.

...... that you know about or that was public knowledge .....

A wise man always has somewhat of a handle on what it is that he might not know ....

To state the above as an absolute fact, I believe, is a bit of a stretch, given the matter at hand, and the character and methods employed by those involved (governments, covert ops, etc.)

 

[Turtle]

...... that you know about or that was public knowledge .....

...said the spook janitor.
To use the same logic you just used in another thread, lack of proof is not evidence that something does or does not exist.

It is an absolute fact? No, of course not. But considering that Assange has a history of being very vocal any time someone tries to thwart his efforts, and is quite the drama queen when he does, and he said nothing about any kind of attacks after the previous releases, it's not all that much of a stretch to conclude nothing was done to him or Wikileaks after the previous releases.

So at this point is a theory, not a fact. You know, like the theory of gravity. Unless and until someone can demonstrate otherwise, I'm going with gravity.

 

[RLENT]

...... that you know about or that was public knowledge .....

...said the spook janitor.

Clearly, I am not maintaining that something does exist or did occur based on no evidence (as certain others are quite frequently prone to do) .... only pointing out the possibility that it may or might have ...

To use the same logic you just used in another thread, lack of proof is not evidence that something does or does not exist.

Exactly ....

It is an absolute fact? No, of course not.

Correct.

But considering that Assange has a history of being very vocal any time someone tries to thwart his efforts, and is quite the drama queen when he does, and he said nothing about any kind of attacks after the previous releases, it's not all that much of a stretch to conclude nothing was done to him or Wikileaks after the previous releases.

Assuming that Assange was even aware of something that may have occurred ....

That isn't necessarily the case ....

Clearly, he had no inkling of the little covert op being designed for him up there in the land of Lutfisk ....... otherwise he would have kept his Johnson in his drawers ......

So at this point is a theory, not a fact.

Yup, precisely.

You know, like the theory of gravity. Unless and until someone can demonstrate otherwise, I'm going with gravity.

The existence of gravity is generally regarded as a fact as consequence of an observation of something (the effect of an invisible force acting on physical objects) .... rather than just the observation of an absence of something .....(or the observation of nothing as the case maybe .... )

As such, it's not actually what I would call a real good analogy ..... if you know what I mean ... but nice try ...

 

[Turtle]

You can only see the effect of gravity, not gravity itself. Gravity is unseen, just like the unseen and unknown previous attacks on Wikileaks. It's like air. Can't see that either (well, except in Los Angeles you can), but you can see the effects of air.

But the analogy was not whether or not you can see gravity or an unknown and invisible attack on Assange, the analogy was that unless or until someone or something proves that the results of current observations are incorrect, there's no reason to dismiss the current thought.

That there might have been unknown and unseen attacks on Wikileaks is a good challenge to the theory, so all you have to do now is design an experiment or create an observation that proves the challenge, and thus refutes all or part of the theory. Merely postulating the idea that there might have been unseen and unknown attacks in no way refutes the theory.

So while the existence of gravity is generally regarded as a fact as consequence of an observation of something, the same thing can be said, at least at this point, about Wikileaks and there not being any attacks after the previous releases. Prior to 6 months ago, and with this most recent round of release, whenever he released something there has always been either criticism or outright attacks, and Assange has always addressed them quite publicly. The releases from 6 months ago, immediately prior to, and coinciding with the releases, he talked about his "insurance" file, and then not a peep out of him about attacks. That's a valid observation. Valid enough that many wondered if the "insurance" file was enough to scare people enough to prevent them from attacking. Now with these releases, still talking about the "insurance" file lest anyone forget it, he was still attacked and he immediately struck back and whined how he was the victim. So in this case, the absence of something is actually something.


But of course, using gravity in general was a bad example, since gravity doesn't exit at all. Rather, the Earth sucks.

 

[RLENT]

All I can say is:

Good Job !!! ..... the boys doin' the interrogations over at Abu Ghraib and down at Guantanamo Bay would be very proud indeed .....

 

[Turtle]

Here ya go

YouTube - Wikileaks keeps on publishing despite arrest

 

[cheri1122]

Gravity: not just a good idea, it's a law!

Ya know, I always thought that a disagreement between Turtle & RLENT would be really interesting to follow.....you guys are making my head ache & my eyes bleed.

 

[greg334]

I agree Cheri... But Gravity?

 

[Turtle]

Ya know, I always thought that a disagreement between Turtle & RLENT would be really interesting to follow.....you guys are making my head ache & my eyes bleed.

It's probably better to hear in person or on the phone. Here online we're just jackin' each other's chain. He's takin' one side, I'm takin' the other, both unmovable and unyielding in positions, regardless of where we actually stand.

Personally, I think the actually reality of it all is somewhere in the middle.