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WikiLeaks Under Fire
Posted by
Soulskill
on Mon Feb 18, 2008 09:15 AM
from the also-possibly-on-fire dept.
from the also-possibly-on-fire dept.
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."
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Technology: Cringely Looks at the WikiLeaks Debacle 163 comments
dtwood writes "Infoworld's Cringely has an interesting take on the Julius Baer bank trying to silence WikiLeaks.org — and how stunningly stupid they've been. 'But the bank's solution is so mind-bogglingly stupid, you have to wonder if these guys need help getting their pants on each morning. First, this is exactly the kind of story bloggers and Net-centric journos crave. Big nasty corporation stomps all over plucky public-serving underdog. Who can resist that plot line? Second, the equation Bank Julius Baer = Money Laundering is now firmly cemented in the minds of everyone who has encountered this story, regardless of whether it's true. Trois: The documents in question, which might have been quickly forgotten alongside the 1.2 million others on the site, are now hotter than the Paris Hilton sex video. Dozens of mirror sites have sprung up, and Cryptome.org and PirateBay have squirreled away copies of the docs for any interested parties. "
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Wikileaks Calls For Global Boycott Against eNom 137 comments
souls writes "The folks at Wikileaks are calling for a boycott against eNom, Inc., one of the top internet domain registrars, which WikiLeaks claims is involved in systematic domain censoring. On Feb 28th eNom shut down wikileaks.info, one of the many Wikileaks mirrors held by a volunteer as a side-effect of the court proceedings around wikileaks.org. In addition, eNom was the registrar that shut off access to a Spanish travel agent who showed up on a US Treasury watch list. Wikileaks calls for a 'global boycott of eNom and its parent Demand Media, its owners, executives and their affiliated companies, interests and holdings, to make clear such behavior can and will not be tolerated within the boundaries of the Internet and its global community.'"
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But why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikileaks is an interesting website, and I can see no reason why anyone would want to take a site hosting confidential leaked documents from governments and big business offline...
Speaking seriously here, I wouldn't doubt it being a corporate or political DDoS attack, considering the confidentiality of the documents, and how damaging they could be to said companies/governments' reputations. Not a bad thing in my opinion, but they would think otherwise.
Re:But why? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGmA1Cpmldg [youtube.com]
Parent
Re:But why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:But why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, what about the mysterious UPS fire? I find that interesting because UPSes, especially commercial grade ones installed in server rooms, typically have safety mechanisms (read: big breaker switches) in them that prevent them from overloading and catching fire. In 15 years of working in server rooms, I've never actually seen one catch fire, though I've heard of a few freak accidents.
Parent
This is What Freenet Was Made For (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why WikiLeaks, although good in theory, won't be able to survive in practice. It is centralized, and being as such it can be subject to attack, threat and intimidation.
Those running WikiLeaks should also post their material to Freenet. This is advantageous for two main reasons: First, insurance against the site going down due to attack, lack of funds, etc. Second, it will prevent attacks in the first place since the attackers know nothing can be gained, there material is already out there and won't be able to be taken down. So even if Freenet isn't to be the main site, it is still useful to have the content on Freenet too.
Parent
Re:This is What Freenet Was Made For (Score:5, Insightful)
1/ It's slow
2/ No one uses it
3/ No one uses it because it's so slow
4/ It's so slow because no one uses it
5/ It's not preinstalled on all computers
6/ Its installation is as much jumping through hoops as a first use of Windows Vista
So yeah, backups on FreeNet is a good idea, but hosting the main site? Not if they want to be acessed sometimes.
I'd rather d/l the full archive off The Pirate Bay or Mininova, though. A lifetime of reading about "why all the systems should all be completely transparent to any one in the general public".
Parent
Re:But why? (Score:5, Funny)
Meanwhile Wikileaks gets to have it's operating premises reinforced, play victim, garner more support, funds, etc.
So you see, it's a win-win strategy all around. What, me cynical?
Parent
Restraining order? (Score:5, Funny)
Insult + Injury (Score:5, Funny)
To those behind the attacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember: What's once on the internet stays on the internet...one way or another.
Just deal with it.
Re:To those behind the attacks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:To those behind the attacks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Must be doing someting right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Must be doing someting right... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Yawn (Score:5, Funny)
Wake me up when the anchor of a ship accidentally cuts every cable around the WikiLeaks server buildings..
Winner: Counter-productive move of the year (Score:5, Insightful)
Could the people leaked about on WikiLeaks really be this dumb? Is there anything that will guarantee that this information will be more broadly distributed and read and more likely to come to the attention of the main stream media?
Why don't they just go the whole hog and DDoS the BBC and CNN at the same time to close the loop.
Re:Winner: Counter-productive move of the year (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, yes, they can, and it seems they are. Not 'dumb' per se, mind you, but operating without any idea of how things work in this day and age, when any information that finds its way onto the Internet is effectively immortal, and any attempts to suppress that information only succeed in calling even more attention to it.
There's no way to silence the truth directly anymore in this new medium. Indirect methods, however, like repeating a lie loudly and often enough, can still be effective.
Parent
Re:Winner: Counter-productive move of the year (Score:5, Funny)
"You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool."
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Parent
Streisand effect (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect [wikipedia.org]
Doesn't necessarily have to be big business/ gov't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't necessarily have to be big business/ go (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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.
Privacy for all or nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
For this reason, if you want truth, and are that interested in the truth, then you should advocate the full public disclosure of all corporate, charitable and government documents. Since this covers just about everyone, it follows that there should be no privacy at all and we ought to live in a world where everything is online. The alternative is to accept that there is a right to privacy, and if so, then institutions such as wikileaks ought to be viewed with a well deserved deep distrust, as the outcome can only be ultimately political.
http://gaddbiwdftapglkq.onion (Score:5, Informative)
Guess I should have posted this as an anonymous coward