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Censorship Government Networking United States

WikiLeaks Moves To Swiss Domain After DNS Takedown 488

An anonymous reader writes "Netcraft posted two reports on the movement of the WikiLeaks website today. First the site was taken down by EveryDNS, who terminated the DNS provision for wikileaks.org. A few hours later, WikiLeaks moved to a Swiss domain (wikileaks.ch). Netcraft suggests this move could be because the wikileaks.org domain was registered with a US company, which could be influenced by the US government. The new wikileaks.ch site is hosted in Sweden, but redirects all of its traffic to France. Strangely, WikiLeaks has chosen to use EveryDNS again for their new domain." This follows Amazon's removal of WikiLeaks from their cloud hosting, which has the EFF and others worrying about free speech on the net as various hosting providers receive political pressure to censor certain content. Amazon claims their decision wasn't influenced by a government inquiry, while Tableau Software freely admits that a public request from Senator Joe Lieberman prompted them to take down WikiLeaks data visualizations.
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WikiLeaks Moves To Swiss Domain After DNS Takedown

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  • Ch Ch Ch Changes (Score:5, Informative)

    by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:03AM (#34429626)
    From Scave (1952132) on Friday December 03, @04:36AM (#34428870):

    "WIKILEAKS: Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160/ [88.80.13.160] [88.80.13.160] "

    Wikileaks.ch ch ch changes!

    • Re:Ch Ch Ch Changes (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mcgrew ( 92797 ) * on Friday December 03, 2010 @09:00AM (#34430100) Homepage Journal

      "Who are you?"

      "I am #2".

      "Who is #1?"

      "you are 88.80.13.160."

      "What do you want?"

      "Information."

      "You won't get it."

      "By hook or by crook, we will."

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:05AM (#34429628)

    LOL!

    • by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:08AM (#34429646) Homepage Journal

      and brave in dictating how we think other people's money should be spent.

      Welcome to the me generation, where the freedom and justice are just buzzwords to drive angst on message boards, but wait Jennifer Anniston has a new boyfriend? I can't believe they allowed that Palin girl to get to the finals, and did you see who the new judges on Idol are going to be?

      • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:20AM (#34429710) Journal

        The romans had bread and circuses, the conservatives/tories have home owner ship, holland has to mortage deduction and America has the two cars in the drive way.

        What does this do? It is about creating a working "middle" class. A hard working "middle" class. But not a real middle class. Not a middle class that has power but a middle class that have just enough to give them something to loose if they try to gain anything. The principle is VERY simple. Feed the masses just enough to don't make it an issue of starve or riot but rather, eat enough or riot and starve.

        Strike, and you loose your mortage, can't make the monthly car payments and therefor you got to swallow everything, just so you can keep the two cars you so desperately need for the job to pay for the cars because there is no public transport alternative.

        It is VERY effective. Look at the recent election results, people voted to protect the rights of rich people. Unemployed people voted against unemployment protection. All in the believe that they are some kind of middle class that doesn't need any government protection from the super rich. The divide between rich and poor has never been so big and the poor are voting to increase the gap.

        Forget about letting them eat cake. Let them dream of cake, and they will go as sheep to the slaughterhouse.

        There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter then the poor people.

        • Propaganda (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          . Unemployed people voted against unemployment protection. All in the believe that they are some kind of middle class that doesn't need any government protection from the super rich. The divide between rich and poor has never been so big and the poor are voting to increase the gap.

          You can't blame them. Propaganda says that if they work hard, get an education (and more debt with that) and invest their money smart (does anyone actually think the super rich invest in those shit mutual funds you invest it or even those "small caps" that your newsletter points out every month?!?); they too can be rich.

          Or the biggest one - anyone can be rich! Just start a business and a way you go!

          As someone who's started a couple of businesses, I really wish that were true. It's really hard with all the

        • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:44AM (#34429924)

          There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter then the poor people.

          I wasn't aware that being born to rich parents means you are intelligent. There can only be so many opportunities to exploit during one's lifetime. Sure, there are always brilliant and/or lucky people (usually both) who ride the innovation wave, but most of the "elite" could trace it's money at least a generation back.

          • by rvw ( 755107 )

            There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter then the poor people.

            I wasn't aware that being born to rich parents means you are intelligent. There can only be so many opportunities to exploit during one's lifetime.

            Rich kids are (on average) probably more intelligent than poor kids because of their environment. Rich usually means better food and health care, better education, parents that stimulate their children more, parents that have a better network that can help their carreers, and less stress factors as crime in the neighbourhood or in the family etc.

          • by Prune ( 557140 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @01:36PM (#34434486)
            One great tool against this problem is raising the estate tax.
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

          The divide between rich and poor has never been so big

          Are you sure about this? I'm sure there was a much bigger difference between a king or duke in the Middle Ages who could order anyone's head chopped off at will, who could seize anyone's land, and who could basically do what he wanted, to people today.

          Nowadays the "ultra rich" may be able to afford many homes and travel often. But unless they fly out of non commercial terminals, they still have to stand in the TSA line line everyone else. They can't kil

          • by blueg3 ( 192743 )

            Hopefully he means, "the economic divide between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is the largest in recent history", which is more or less true.

            Certainly when the king ostensibly owns everything and is above the law, there is a bigger divide.

          • by baKanale ( 830108 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @10:44AM (#34431350)

            They can't kill anyone or have anyone killed. They can't drive drunk.

            They're working on it [vaildaily.com].

            No, all they have is "bigger" toys, but the POWER that comes with riches is gone - reserved by governments only.

            Unless you count their ability to "campaign finance" the legislation they want that benefits them and their business interests.

            So yeah, there might be more zeroes at the end of the net worth of rich people than there were before, but considering that "poor" people and "middle class" people usually have shelter, television, transport (private or public), food, etc, it's actually the poor who are better off than ever before.

            And more and more people have to work two or three jobs to keep those things, because the rich people are paying workers less and charging more for goods and services in order to keep adding those extra zeroes.

          • Nowadays the "ultra rich" may be able to afford many homes and travel often. But unless they fly out of non commercial terminals, they still have to stand in the TSA line line everyone else. They can't kill anyone or have anyone killed. They can't drive drunk. No, all they have is "bigger" toys, but the POWER that comes with riches is gone - reserved by governments only.

            The ultra rich don't fly commercial, they fly charter or private; therefore, they don't go through TSA. They can't legally kill or drive d

          • They can't kill anyone or have anyone killed. They can't drive drunk. No, all they have is "bigger" toys, but the POWER that comes with riches is gone - reserved by governments only.

            You sure about that? They can buy off the cops and judges. And hell, even if they do get caught, they can afford the best lawyers in the country. Even if they don't get away with it entirely, they're going to get a _far_ lighter sentence than anyone else who committed the exact same crime. My father got a DUI and was given a far harsher sentence than a _17 year old_ rich kid I knew who had one. What was that kid's punishment? His highschool said they were going to withhold his diploma for a while. They neve

        • Enough Side Talk (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Friday December 03, 2010 @09:15AM (#34430272) Homepage Journal

          For fucks sake, can we give the social polemical shit a rest for just one article?

          The heart of the internet just skipped a beat. This is important in a technical and political sense. Is it too much to ask for some comments giving technical insight into the DNS system, historical precedents, or exisiting context? Instead we get a +5 copy paste rant about the death of the middle class that could be placed in just about any other thread or a ZeroHedge comment section for that matter.

          TOPIC, GENTLEMEN; PLEASE.

        • by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

          I liked the comment, but a few nits:

          just enough to give them something to loose

          Touluse, as in "No Time Touluse". ;)

          Strike, and you loose your mortage

          You just said "Strike, and you set your mortage
          free".

          Loose and lose are both verbs, but they have very different meanings. If you loose your money you're unwise, if you lose your money you're unlucky. I'm assuming English isn't your 1st language.

          There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter than the poor people. (ftfy)

          No, just more fortunate. I've known

        • There is a reason the rich are rich. They are smarter then the poor people.

          God I wish I had mod points on this thread, because this is literally stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard in my life. So I guess that means you're a homeless person then?

          Yeah, just like this: http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee-salaries/the-university-of-texas-at-austin/ [texastribune.org]

          Steven Weinberg (nobel prize winning physicist) $391,791
          Mack Brown (a fucking football coach) $2,511,667

      • by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        Bread and circuses. It's been this way for thousands of years - you're just realizing it?

        For a while we had a chance to build a different world. But human nature (I'm too lazy to do it myself so I will "trust" my politician/god/celebrity to do it for me) won out in the end. So either continue to be a sheep, or be a wolf.

    • Remember carefully that some speech is more free than others.

  • by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:07AM (#34429636)

    EveryDNS already said [pcworld.com] that their DNS servers were getting DDoSed, and so they found it a better move to drop one customer and their baggage for the sake of their other thousands of customers.

  • p2p (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:08AM (#34429640)

    futile... http://thepiratebay.org/search/wikileaks/0/7/0

  • by migla ( 1099771 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:10AM (#34429654)

    And, ultimately, no more Internet? Or what are the power elites gonna do to hide their shenanigans from the people?

    If this is what the so-called free and so-called democratic world is, I'd say we must be progressing nicely towards a total worldwide fascist corporate police state and/or a distributed and decentralized revolution to eliminate all hierarchies.

    Anarchism (as in wiki/Anarchism) FTW!

    • Wikileaks' successful movement from the country which it has transgressed* to one of the many countries that are willing to give it safe harbour is a sign of "a total worldwide fascist corporate police state"? It strikes me as a reminder that whistleblowing will survive so long as nations exist and are sometimes unwilling to play by eachother's rules. Heterogeneity for the win.

      *I don't mean this pejoratively, it's just a graceful verb in this instance.

      • by migla ( 1099771 )

        >Wikileaks' successful movement from the country which it has transgressed* to one of the many countries that are willing to give it safe harbour is a sign of "a total worldwide fascist corporate police state"?

        It's a sign of us not being there yet, but the DNS takedown is a step in that direction.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      Google News is already censoring certain websites (like infowars) that it doesn't like - upto last week Infowars was part of the daily G-News summary but not anymore. And on their youtube site Google is yanking videos "because criticizing the president violates community standards" or "video of US soldiers killing journalists/children is not acceptable". It's censorship. There's no other words for it.

      :-|

      How much does it cost to set-up my own Web Hosting Engine? I'd gladly host wikileaks regardl

      • >>>You listen to the stupid Alex Jones???

        Well what else would I listen to during my work hours? The only streaming audio not blocked are WMP files, so I'm limited in my options. I'm open to alternative suggestions if ye have some.

      • How much does it cost to set-up my own Web Hosting Engine?

        Uh, really? You've never hosted a website, even if just for tests?
        It costs the price of a decent internet connection (upload bandwidth is the most important) that doesn't block port 80 (some ISPs do, others don't) and a PC connected 24/7.

        I switched my default search engine to Yahoo.

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4221538.stm [bbc.co.uk]

      • Yahoo! search is now Bing. You're going to have to find someone else.

        Infowars isn't being censored that I can see, either. It's very difficult to get into Google News, and top-tier providers bounce in and out all the time.

        As for censorship, Youtube isn't stopping anyone from talking about the issues, only from showing graphic violence. Private site, their policies. It's not hard to start your own site and do it yourself - but it is slightly hard than just whining about it.

    • People spouting off about the lack of freedoms (and lack of democracy?!?!?!) demonstrated by the wikileaks relocations need to go back to 8th, maybe 9th grade Civics-- and relearn that Bill of Rights protections do NOT apply to private entities, and that EveryDNS / Amazon have every right to drop anyone who costs them more money than its worth (unless they signed a contract forbidding that).

      In fact, if youll go back and look at the Amendments again, youll note that theyre "Congress shall not"s, and that
  • No, they didn't (Score:5, Informative)

    by 68kmac ( 471061 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:11AM (#34429658) Homepage
    wikileaks.ch is actually registered by the Swiss Pirate Party. They just happen to have it pointed to the right server anyway. Tweet from the Swiss PP president (in German, sorry): http://twitter.com/#!/SciF0r/status/10641251581829120 [twitter.com]
  • by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:13AM (#34429666)
    So at what line do we consider something as 'free speech' no matter if it is in print, or on the internet?

    If a newspaper gets classified information through regular investigative journalism, they are now NOT allowed to print that information? (see: Pentagon Papers) [wikipedia.org]

    If Joe Lieberman was in power in 1971, would we even know the extent of the corruption of the Johnson and Nixon administrations? Or would all their lies and wrongdoing just be 'swept under the rug' and out of sight, out of mind? Would the New York Times and the Washington Post be threatened and censored from publishing their information?

    Some quotes to contemplate:
    Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. - Potter Stewart
    The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. - George Bernard Shaw
    The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. - John Gilmour
    As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends. - Jeremy Bentham
    • by Spad ( 470073 )

      It's free speech as long as you agree with it, obviously.

    • If a newspaper gets classified information through regular investigative journalism, they are now NOT allowed to print that information?

      If Joe Lieberman has his way...

      http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/shield/ [wired.com]

    • by tius ( 455341 )

      One of the most interesting comments that I've seen in regards to the wikileaks publications was along the lines: "Now western governments are concerned with privacy?!?"

      Personally, I see this whole thing as an educational reminder of the true nature of our species as a whole. I mean, really, step back. This is not about Americans, it's about humans.

      In the end I suspect the Buddhist's are right in believing that true compassion for one another will be our route to a better (human) world.

    • If you recall your history it wasn't the politicians that guaranteed free speech rights, it was the judges.
    • by Voline ( 207517 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:43AM (#34429918)
      You Have the right to free speech
      So long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it

      -- The Clash, "Know Your Rights"
    • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:56AM (#34430054) Journal

      Democracy ONLY works when the public is well informed and this means the public must know things you would rather keep secret. How can I vote for the guy who is going to make foreign policy if I don't know the foreign policy?

      Yes, this makes life very hard for democratic leaders. Though shit. It comes with the political system. I am sure cops would be able to do their jobs far better if we restrict the freedom of citizens as well. For instance a curfew would make patrolling the streets just so much easier.

      But we can't do that so we accept that criminals go free because they got rights.

      Wikileaks just made life harder for US politicians. So? What do you value more? Freedom or an easy life for the diplomatic core?

      And the silly thing is that the outrage isn't really present in the countries the US has the most troubled relations with. Iran doesn't even give a shit.

      But all this HAS given the US public a real insight into the true goings on on the diplomatic front. Just what is the official line? Well now we know. So we can base our votes on that... or one who promises the largest tax cut. Whatever takes the shortest attention span.

      • by dpilot ( 134227 )

        It would be a good idea for us to write to our "direct reports" - our congress-critters, Obama, and perhaps Biden - in direct support of Wikileaks. I plan to. I'm also struck that the government intelligence agencies keeps increasing their surveillance along with the statement, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear."

        I would suggest that the same applies to governments and other large organizations, and Wikileaks.

        It's kind of similar to a kid saying, "I'm sorry," when what he really means

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:17AM (#34429688)

    put in your /etc/hosts:

    46.59.1.2 wikileaks.org
    91.194.60.112 cablegate.wikileaks.org
    91.194.60.112 cables.wikileaks.org

    source: google robtex

    also, no ddos attacks (supposedly over 10gbps) were ever confirmed by their upstreams (bahnhof/ovh).

    either they're obstructed by their current registrar to change their root zone dns or just playing victim.

    well done, assange, sir.

  • by dkleinsc ( 563838 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:20AM (#34429708) Homepage

    Joe Lieberman's basic mindset appears to be that the public should know only what the US government wants us to know. He's hardly alone in this - people who want to control access to information want to control thought. However, this gives him and people like him about as much credibility as the Iraqi Information Minister.

    And of course, it's an anathema to democracy, but that never stopped Joe before. I should also mention that given who his financial backers are, you might as well call him the senator for Israel, not the senator for Connecticut (To be clear, I treat corporate-sponsored senators much the same way, for instance "Bob Dole (R-ADM)").

  • I think the title says it all.
  • PC World wonders: "In an idyllic future where we make heavy use of the cloud, what happens if a cloud service provider removes content it deems inappropriate, or just doesn't like?"

    Welcome to the mid-1990s. At least that's when I started worry about that, after my ISP deleted my web site because of content that offended the owner's moral sensibilities. That's when I sat down, figured out how to install Linux and Apache on an old computer, and began self-hosting.

    It's the exact same issue here, but with "cl

  • by golden age villain ( 1607173 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:24AM (#34429746)
    Eric Besson, the French ministry for digital economy, has declared that France cannot accept to host a website which violates the secret of diplomatic relations and endanger people who should be protected by said secret.
  • by miffo.swe ( 547642 ) <daniel@hedblom.gmail@com> on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:30AM (#34429780) Homepage Journal

    If the US has a hidden goal of making China look pretty moderate and nice in comparison to the west, its working like a charm. It would be doubleplus ironic if China would lighten their censoring at the same time as the west applies what now looks like total censorship on all leaked material.

    I was uncertain before but now im 100% certain, China will take over as the next super power and it will happen a lot faster than i could ever expect. I couldnt imagine just how willing the west is to commit seppuku and dismantle the democracy in favour for totalitarian fascism. Moussilini would be proud.

    • Nah. If this was happening in China it wouldn't be all over the news. They'd just quietly find Assange, put a bullet in the back of his head execution-style, and nobody would ever be the wiser.

  • Can you be sure to be the first to hear yesterdays news, today. People were submitting this all last night and evening, and after every other site reported it finally Slashdot get's t's act together and posts the story. I don't understand why people pay for this site -- probably the same people who pay for Hotmail.

  • Open Government (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CuteSteveJobs ( 1343851 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:31AM (#34429794)
    And so now that Open Government has well and truly arrived our leaders are busy trying to shut it down. Well the public have had no privacy for a long time. Now politicians and bureaucrats are getting a taste of their own medicine.

    The moral is don't say or do anything unless you wouldn't mind the entire world knowing. That means you too, Hillary!
  • God bless Switzerland, the birth place of the Red Cross and Geneva convention!

    People of Switzerland are kind and fair. Because these people themselves had to run away from persecutions during Reformation period.

    Julian Assange better come here himself to stay in one piece. The Swiss police is well trained after all and could provide a realistic protection.

    • by puto ( 533470 )
      Yes, bless the Swiss who financed th Nazis in WW2 and also had kept Holocaust's victim's accounts as their own.
  • by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:41AM (#34429892) Homepage Journal
    now what's important is, what are you americans going to do about this. some dipshit is censoring you at his will, using the power you gave to him.
  • This is history! With the unreal number of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks and Goverment actions against wikileaks, for me this is the First Real Cyber World War against a website!
  • demonoid (Score:4, Informative)

    by alphatel ( 1450715 ) * on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:51AM (#34430002)
    Demonoid has switched from .com to .ME overnight and .com no longer resolves. Obviously there's more brewing about out there than the sheeple care to realize.
  • Well... at least for those who need to cover up their tracks.
  • What I don't get is as of this posting their whois data is still showing:

    Name Server:NS1.EVERYDNS.NET
    Name Server:NS2.EVERYDNS.NET
    Name Server:NS3.EVERYDNS.NET
    Name Server:NS4.EVERYDNS.NET

    Why don't they just update their friggin dns records and call it a day. You can run your own dns server or choose from the billion providers that are out there - heck for that matter pick a half dozen or so on different services around the world and have fun seeing who is last to dump you.

    The only thing I can come up
  • by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @08:57AM (#34430064)

    There have been reports that a government inquiry prompted us not to serve WikiLeaks any longer. That is inaccurate.

    Hmmmm. OK. Fair enough.

    It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy. Human rights organizations have in fact written to WikiLeaks asking them to exercise caution and not release the names or identities of human rights defenders who might be persecuted by their governments.

    Right..... That sounds like a pretty political statement to me. Firstly, Amazon cannot say whether or not WikiLeaks controlled or had 'rights' to the content on there nor is it Amazon's place to judge whether it was putting anyone in jeopardy. Given that's almost the exact wording of the government 'enquiry' then the first statement seems grossly inaccurate. None of what Amazon says has been established legally.

  • The response to Tableau Software's cowardice, at least, is obvious:

    Everybody and their dog should take an account on their system and repost the data. Someone call Anonymous.

  • This Is Huge (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Friday December 03, 2010 @09:04AM (#34430142) Homepage Journal

    This issue goes to the heart of the controversy over who controls the internet; specifically who controls ICANN and the DNS root servers.

    Right now, DNS control resides with the United States, and up to this point they have defended this status quo by assurring the world that the US is a bastion of absolute free speech and therefore best placed to control this most centralised, hierarchical and critical piece of internet architecture.

    And now, when faced with the first real and signifigant test of its will, the United States' resolve crumples almost immediately. Gone is any guarantee--implied or otherwise--that the DNS servers will be beyond political or domestic influences(In truth, the takeing down of "terrorist" sites has been ongoing for some years). The weak appeal that these are the actions of a private company is a thin rag which fails to cover the US governments nakedness. This censorship is on the express will of the government.

    This was the first real test; the US failed it. This has the potential to split DNS completely; with US trust now bankrupt, no other country will give it credit. In 5 years time, when you go looking for wikileaks.org or indeed slashdot.org, don't expect to get the same IP address as everyone else.

    • What "terrorist" sites? There's PLENTY of garbage out there that stays up that should probably be more controlled - pedophilia, genuine terrorist sites (al-qaeda related, etc), etc.

      Just go look at racist sites from all sides of the aisle and you'll probably see better examples as well - sites that wouldn't see the light of day in Europe.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by McTickles ( 1812316 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @09:33AM (#34430480)
    Julian Assange: Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.
  • by cowboy76Spain ( 815442 ) on Friday December 03, 2010 @09:48AM (#34430668)

    I mean... they already have got him fired! [theonion.com]

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