WikiLeaks Under Fire 282
kan0r writes "The transparency group WikiLeaks.org currently seems to be under heavy fire. The main WikiLeaks.org DNS entry is unavailable, reportedly due to a restraining order relating to a series of articles and documents released by WikiLeaks about off-shore trust structures in the Cayman Islands. The WikiLeaks whistle blower, allegedly former vice president of the Cayman Islands branch of swiss bank Julius Baer, states in the WikiLeaks documents that the bank supported tax evasion and money laundering by its clients from around the world. WikiLeaks alternate names remained available until Saturday, when there seems to have been a heavy DDoS attack and a fire at the ISP. The documents in question are still available on other WikiLeaks sites, such as wikileaks.be, and are also mirrored on Cryptome. Details of the court documents have also been made available."
Re:But why? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGmA1Cpmldg [youtube.com]
Streisand effect (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect [wikipedia.org]
If it can help... (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I can resolve the wikileaks.org hostname from time to time only. Their website is still accessible from my network location (SoCal): http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks [88.80.13.160]
$ dig wikileaks.orgwikileaks.org. 864 IN A 88.80.13.160
wikileaks.org. 864 IN A 87.106.162.82
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns3.everydns.net.
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns2.everydns.net.
wikileaks.org. 198841 IN NS ns4.everydns.net.
ns2.everydns.net. 101251 IN A 204.152.184.150
ns3.everydns.net. 12596 IN A 208.96.6.134
ns4.everydns.net. 601 IN A 64.158.219.3
(special message dedicated to whoever wrote the slashdot lameness filter: foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar foobar)
Clouds on the Cayman tax heaven REPOSTED HERE (Score:5, Informative)
Is David helvetic and Goliath a bear?
DANIEL SCHMITT
2008-02-15
This is the story of Rudolf Elmer of Switzerland, former Chief Operating Officer of Bank Julius Baer on the Cayman Islands. The story of a man suspected of leaking to the press information about the activities of a Swiss bank specialized in hiding and laundering the money of the ultra rich through anonymizing offshore trust structures. It also is the story of a man and his family living with the consequences of being suspected of fouling the nest of a traditional Swiss bank engaging in dubious activities. This story might differ from previous ones related to this issue, mainly because while researching the story, Rudolf Elmer has also been asked for his account of things.
Over the last few months Wikileaks has obtained and published various documents related to allegedly illegal activities in the Cayman Islands performed by Bank Julius Baer and started initial research into these. Regarding the same bank Wikileaks had obtained legal documentation on the case of a Rudolf Elmer, former debuty head of BJB cayman, in a Dec 2007 Zurich court case against Bank Julius Baer. The law suit relates to various irregularities of health-care/social-security payments by the bank, as well as the matter of stalking (including at least one acknowledged car chase) Elmer and his family by BJB-hired Private Investigators Zurich-based Ryffel AG,
Initial research easily turned up that 2002/2003 some sensitive documents had slipped out of the Swiss banks office in the Cayman Islands, apparently reaching US tax investigation units and eventually sent to the Swiss financial magazine CASH, which reported on the disclosure, but possibly due to an injunction or Swiss banking law, not the details. This event also triggered an article in the Wall Street Journal an article in Swiss Weltwoche [weltwoche.ch], titled "The leak in paradise", giving background information on what happened back in 2003 on the Caymans.
When the leak of trust structures was discovered in 2003, Bank Julius Baer initiated legal investigations on the Caymans, involving the search of the home of each employee and when not gaining any insights from that, undertaking a polygraph test on the employees. It still remained unclear where the data went.
The group of people having legitimate access to these documents was small, Rudolf Elmer, who was BJB Caymans deputy head and Chief Operating Officer at that point in time also fulfilled the position of Hurricane Officer, whos duties included keeping backups. Elmer, facing a spinal surgery coming up in a few days time, was on sick leave and had some trouble scheduling the test. He thus became a suspect.
The Polygraph Test
The transcript of the polygraph test conducted by a Lou Criscella and passed on to Wikileaks is very abstract to read with names of clients being substituted with single letters. While not all the context thus is properly understandable, the transcript does not show any wrongdoing.
Reading the transcript one gets the impression that data has slipped out of the Cayman Islands as early as 1997, and timelining the transcript with a couple of later documents will also reveal that Elmer is accused of having leaked data that was produced after the date that he left from the Caymans.
Elmer complained to the American Polygraph Association, the institution his interrogator works for, the Cayman Prime Minister and other entities about the conduct of the test.
Normally sick people would not be interviewed, but the APAs Ethics Commission, stated in a letter that the ethical rules for polygraphing do not apply to the Cayman Islands, and as the test had not been fully carried out, most of the APA rules would not apply anyway. He was informed there are no regulations on the Caymans for polygraph tests as in the United States.
Re:But why? (Score:4, Informative)
Wasn't a UPS, but a 3-phase power conditioner for a machine room. Yes, it was a freak accident.
http://gaddbiwdftapglkq.onion (Score:5, Informative)
Guess I should have posted this as an anonymous coward
The Text: "Clouds on the Cayman tax heaven (Score:3, Informative)
Clouds on the Cayman tax heaven
From Wikileaks
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Is David helvetic and Goliath a bear?
DANIEL SCHMITT
2008-02-15
This is the story of Rudolf Elmer of Switzerland, former Chief Operating Officer of Bank Julius Baer on the Cayman Islands. The story of a man suspected of leaking to the press information about the activities of a Swiss bank specialized in hiding and laundering the money of the ultra rich through anonymizing offshore trust structures. It also is the story of a man and his family living with the consequences of being suspected of fouling the nest of a traditional Swiss bank engaging in dubious activities. This story might differ from previous one's related to this issue, mainly because while researching the story, Rudolf Elmer has also been asked for his account of things.
Over the last few months Wikileaks has obtained and published various documents related to allegedly illegal activities in the Cayman Islands performed by Bank Julius Baer and started initial research into these. Regarding the same bank Wikileaks had obtained legal documentation on the case of a Rudolf Elmer, former debuty head of BJB cayman, in a Dec 2007 Zurich court case against Bank Julius Baer. The law suit relates to various irregularities of health-care/social-security payments by the bank, as well as the matter of stalking (including at least one acknowledged car chase) Elmer and his family by BJB-hired Private Investigators Zurich-based Ryffel AG,
Initial research easily turned up that 2002/2003 some sensitive documents had slipped out of the Swiss banks office in the Cayman Islands, apparently reaching US tax investigation units and eventually sent to the Swiss financial magazine CASH, which reported on the disclosure, but possibly due to an injunction or Swiss banking law, not the details. This event also triggered an article in the Wall Street Journal an article in Swiss Weltwoche, titled "The leak in paradise", giving background information on what happened back in 2003 on the Caymans.
When the leak of trust structures was discovered in 2003, Bank Julius Baer initiated legal investigations on the Caymans, involving the search of the home of each employee and when not gaining any insights from that, undertaking a polygraph test on the employees. It still remained unclear where the data went.
The group of people having legitimate access to these documents was small, Rudolf Elmer, who was BJB Caymans deputy head and Chief Operating Officer at that point in time also fulfilled the position of Hurricane Officer, whos duties included keeping backups. Elmer, facing a spinal surgery coming up in a few days time, was on sick leave and had some trouble scheduling the test. He thus became a suspect.
The Polygraph Test
The transcript of the polygraph test conducted by a Lou Criscella and passed on to Wikileaks is very abstract to read with names of clients being substituted with single letters. While not all the context thus is properly understandable, the transcript does not show any wrongdoing.
Reading the transcript one gets the impression that data has slipped out of the Cayman Islands as early as 1997, and timelining the transcript with a couple of later documents will also reveal that Elmer is accused of having leaked data that was produced after the date that he left from the Caymans.
Elmer complained to the American Polygraph Association, the institution his interrogator works for, the Cayman Prime Minister and other entities about the conduct of the test.
Normally sick people would not be interviewed, but the APA's Ethics Commission, stated in a letter that the ethical rules for polygraphing do not apply to the Cayman Islands, and as the test had not been fully carried out, most of the APA rules would not apply anyway. He was informed there are no regulations on the Caymans for polygrap
WikiLeaks.be Address (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is What Freenet Was Made For (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is What Freenet Was Made For (Score:3, Informative)
Freenet has improved remarkably. It's certainly not what you'd call fast, but for popular content or anything small (text documents, for example) it isn't bad at all. You'd probably end up waiting several minutes for a 1MiB chunk of text that wasn't overly popular, but that's hardly problematic for something like this.
My usual browsing experience is that Freesites load their text in somewhere between 10s and 60s, with the pictures loading over the course of the next 2-3 minutes. Some load instantly if they're popular enough for your node or one of its immediate neighbors to have a copy already. If you haven't tried it recently, check out the current build. Be patient, and give it a couple hours of uptime to get thoroughly integrated, but it's way better than it once was.
BBC - result of the Julius Baer case (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Winner: Counter-productive move of the year (Score:3, Informative)
There were quite a few entries linking my nick to my real name in the past - accidential leaks. Nowadays Google provides only false positives. All the old data has expired, died forgotten. If it still exists, it's not being indexed.
Re:But why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But why? (Score:2, Informative)
Also, in response to your question, "Are we not oozing towards a single world government?", I doubt it. Given the effective power of international organisations like the UN (having nearly no money or resources) and the fact that there is an increasing social distance between different parts of the world due to political, religious, and ideological differences, there's really no indication that global government is happening -- unless you count the somewhat unified interests of international corporate enterprises.
It's not DoS, it's by Court Order that shut it (Score:3, Informative)
The case was brought by lawyers working for a Swiss bank
A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.
Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.
The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities.
Re:But why? (Score:2, Informative)
The rights mentioned in the constitution are considered to be unalienable rights extended to all of mankind by the Creator Himself (for definitions of man that have varied throughout time, generally in a more-encompassing direction. I hear some places even let retards and cripples marry these days). Furthermore, within the constraints placed upon the entire federal government (yes, even pudge's "all powerful" executive) "No Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" does not say "except for non-Americans". "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial" does not say "except for non-Americans" (and the judicial section of the Constitution does not provide for any options except for "criminal" or "civil", there is no "other" (except for the military courts regulated by the legislative branch and dealing only with military issues, and the administration refuses to permit its captives to go down that road), even for non-Americans (or for Americans who fly to the middle-east and get rejected from Al Qaeda)).
It's just convenient for the people in power to convince the public otherwise.
Re:This is What Freenet Was Made For (Score:3, Informative)
1. It's slower than the regular internet, sure, but that is to be expected. Anonymity and encryption isn't totally free. But it is perfectly usable for things like this.
2. An rapidly increasing number of people are using it. About a year ago, numbers were estimated at about 500. Today it is more like 5000. Due to the anonymity, numbers aren't definite, by design, but there are mechanisms to guess the network size.
3. I don't think Freenet's slowness is the main reason for people to not use it. It is easily fast enough for websites (known as freesites), forums (using the Frost message board software) and filesharing of songs, movies and ebooks.
4. I don't think the network size makes it particularly slow. The routing algorithm is designed to scale to millions of users. With a larger network, popular files will possibly be faster to download if your peers are also downloading them but I don't think it will have a massive effect. At the moment you can see that popular Freesites and content are very fast to retrieve.
5. No p2p software is installed on all computers, but millions of people still use it. I realize you are comparing this to website where a web browser is pre-installed on all computers, but I think this will only be a barrier to the casual user.
6. The installation process for Freenet is very simple and getting easier all the time. It's just a few clicks on an installation wizard and you are ready to go. It is designed to work through firewalls so they shouldn't be too much of an issue.
I agree that at this moment in time it isn't feasible to move wikileaks wholesale onto Freenet, but I predict that what will start happening more is that sites such as this will move contentious sections off their main site and provide links to a Freenet site that can't be censored.
It already happens to some extent now, content that is at risk of being censored gets uploaded to Freenet fairly rapidly. I see that trend continuing and Freenet becoming more mainstream.
See my homepage link to download and try out Freenet.
Thank you Julius Baer... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.juliusbaer.com/global/en/contact/contactform/Pages/default.aspx [juliusbaer.com]