WIKILEAKS IS FOR TOO EASY TO ATTACK?
German author and IT specialist Daniel Domscheit-Berg (centre) gets some media attention during the presentation of his book Inside WikiLeaks on Thursday in Berlin. Domscheit-Berg said the whistleblower could not protect its sources.
BERLIN, Germany - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was on the sharp end of some unwelcome exposures himself yesterday as a former ally spilled the beans on the controversial Australian and his whistle-blowing organisation.According to Daniel Domscheit-Berg WikiLeaks is far too easy to attack. The 32-year-old told German magazine Stern this week, quoting him as calling Assange "brilliant" but "paranoid" and a "megalomaniac.
Inside WikiLeaks is billed as a warts-and-all account of Daniel Domscheit-Berg's time as chief programmer and media spokesman for what his tell-all book calls "the world's most dangerous website."- Set for release in 16 countries from today, it says the "chaotic" WikiLeaks cannot protect its sources and accuses the "power-obsessed" Assange of being economical with the truth, according to leaked excerpts.
- Domscheit-Berg, along with others, left WikiLeaks in September complaining that Assange was being autocratic and that the organisation, ironically for a group on a crusade for openness, was becoming excessively secretive.
"The book tells my time at WikiLeaks, including the ups and downs of its development while I was there. It tells a lot of positive stories, but also is very open with my criticism about what was going on," the German said. "When Julian decided to misrepresent the situation around my departure publicly, and started to discredit me with half-truths and lies, I decided to get some of the facts straight."CYBER ACTIVISTS SUPPORTING WIKILEAKS ANNOUNCED CHANGE OF STRATEGY
LONDON, U.K - A loose grouping of cyber activists supporting WikiLeaks has abandoned its strategy of online attacks on organisations seen as hostile to the site in favour of spreading the leaked documents far and wide online.
The United States, enraged and embarrassed by WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables, has leant on organisations from Amazon to online payments service PayPal which have now withdrawn services to WikiLeaks.- The cyber activists briefly brought down PayPal's official blog by bombarding it with requests this week but failed to harm retail and web-hosting giant Amazon, which withdrew its services to WikiLeaks more than a week ago.
"We have, at best, given them a black eye. The game has changed. When the game changes, so too must our strategies," said the blog post announcing "Operation: Leakspin".- The activists are now encouraging supporters to search through leaked cables on the WikiLeaks site and publish summaries of ones that have been least exposed, labelling them so they are hard to find by any authority seeking to quash them.
"Use misleading tags, everything from "Tea Party" to "Bieber". Post snippets of the leaks everywhere," the blog said, referring to the US grassroots conservative movement and the 16-year-old Canadian pop phenomenon Justin Bieber.- Similar strategies have been used in the past on YouTube and the now defunct Napster by users seeking to share video and music while dodging copyright crackdowns.
- The activists had previously been using denial of service attacks, in which they bombarded the Web servers of the perceived enemies of WikiLeaks with requests that crashed the sites, in an operation named Operation Payback.
Protests will be held around the world against the detention of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.Demonstrations are planned in the capitals of Spain, the Netherlands, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Peru to demand Assange's release, the re-establishment of WikiLeaks domain name and the restoration of Visa and Mastercard credit services to allow supporters to donate money to the whistleblowing site.
IN SUPPORT FO WIKILEAKS, HACKERS STEP UP CYBER WAR
Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, gather outside the City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London where Julian Assange's case was heard
LONDON, U.K - Hackers stepped up their cyber war on Thursday in support of WikiLeaks as the embattled whistleblowers released memos showing the US views China as a "pernicious" competitor in Africa, lacking in morals.After a group which has dubbed itself "Anonymous" vowed to intensify its "war of data" against Mastercard, Visa and other groups which have cut funding to the website, the Swedish government then came under attack.
In an online chat with AFP, organisers of the group said thousands of volunteers were taking part in their defense of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, whom they described as a "free-speech martyr".- "We started off with a small amount of users (below 50)," they said. "Now, we are at around 4,000."
"We recruit through the internet, that means, everywhere: imageboards, forums, Facebook, Twitter... you name it, we're using it," they said.- Anonymous members launched their first distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack on Saturday, taking down PayPal's blog, ThePayPalBlog.com, for at least eight hours.
Since then, they have taken down the websites of Visa, Mastercard and the Swiss Post Office bank for severing ties to WikiLeaks and the website of the Swedish prosecutor's office for pursuing Assange on allegations of sex crimes.The latest apparent victims was the Swedish government, according to a report in the country's top-selling daily.
- Aftonbladet said the official government website, http://www.regeringen.se/, was offline for a few hours overnight to Thursday, publishing a screen shot which showed the server could not be reached. The site was working normally again later in the day.
- The paper also reported that WikiLeaks supporters had created a website bearing Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask's name which then redirected users to WikiLeaks own site.
Members of Anonymous also took aim on Wednesday at the websites of US conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin and US Senator Joe Lieberman, who called for US companies to withdraw technical support for WikiLeaks.- Palin for her part described Assange as "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."
Assange is currently behind bars in a south London prison. He handed himself into police on Tuesday after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant and he was then refused bail.U.S. TO BE BLAME FOR WIKILEAKS DUMP?
Australia’s foreign minister said that Australia would support Assange as it would any Australian arrested abroad. Mr. Rudd pointed it out that the U.S. government is responsible for the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic memos and cautioned against blaming the website that published the secret cables and its founder.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other American officials have said that WikiLeaks acted illegally when it posted the sensitive files, memos from American embassies around the world that have embarrassed Washington.- The U.S. government is investigating whether Julian Assange, the website’s Australian founder, can be prosecuted for espionage or other offenses.
- But Kevin Rudd said the blame lies with the leaker and the U.S. government’s failure to protect its secrets. “The bottom line here is that the core of all this lies with the failure of the government of the United States to properly protect its own diplomatic communications,” Mr. Rudd told Melbourne Talk Radio on Wednesday.
If Assange, who has been arrested and jailed in London in an unrelated sex-crimes investigation, is also going to be pursued, he must be presumed innocent, Mr. Rudd said.- “To have several million people on their distribution list for a quarter of million cables, that’s where the problem lies and the person or persons responsible for their unauthorized release, who then gets engaged in the business of disseminating the content of that information, be it WikiLeaks, or anybody else, well that’s a matter to be tested by the police,” Mr. Rudd said.
Assange surrendered to the British police on Tuesday to answer an arrest warrant issued for his arrest in Sweden. He is wanted for questioning after two women accused him of having sex with them without their consent.Assange defended his website in an opinion piece published in an Australian newspaper on Wednesday.
The 39-year-old writes in the opinion piece, published by The Australian, that there is a great need for WikiLeaks and denies that the site’s publication of classified information has endangered lives, a claim made last week by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.- “WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed,” Assange wrote. “But the U.S., with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.”
- He wrote that democracies require a strong media to keep governments honest and that WikiLeaks helps fulfill that role. “WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.”
WIKILEAKS - A PHENOMENAL LEAKING WEBSITE SOURCES?
Wikileaks has established a reputation for publishing sensitive materials
Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is once again at the centre of attention. It is preparing to unveil a new set of US secret documents which it says are bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is the latest in a long list of "leaks" published by the secretive site, which has established a reputation for publishing sensitive material from governments and other high-profile organisations.- In April 2010, for example, Wikileaks posted a video on its website that shows a US Apache helicopter killing at least 12 people, including two Reuters journalists - during an attack in Baghdad in 2007.
- A US military analyst is currently awaiting trial, on charges of leaking the material along with other sensitive military and diplomatic material.
- In October 2009, it posted a list of names and addresses of people it claimed belonged to the British National Party (BNP). The BNP said the list was a "malicious forgery".
And during the 2008 US elections, it published screenshots of the e-mail inbox, pictures and address book of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.- Other controversial documents hosted on the site include a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta, a document that detailed restrictions placed on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net in December 2006 and still splits opinion. For some it is lauded as the future of investigative journalism. For others it is a risk.In mid-March 2010 the site's director, Julian Assange (photo), published a document purportedly from the US intelligence services, claiming that Wikileaks represented a "threat to the US Army".
The US government later confirmed to the BBC that the documents were genuine.
The site now claims to host more than one million documents.- Anyone can submit to Wikileaks anonymously, but a team of reviewers - volunteers from the mainstream press, journalists and Wikileaks staff - decides what is published.
- It is operated by an organisation known as the Sunshine Press and claims to be "funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public".
- Since Wikileaks first appeared on the net, it has faced various legal challenges to take it offline.
- In 2008, for example, the Swiss Bank Julius Baer won a court ruling to block the site after Wikileaks posted "several hundred" documents about its offshore activities.
However, various "mirrors" of the site - hosted on different servers around the world - continued to operate. The order was eventually overturned.- Wikileaks claims to have fought off more than "100 legal attacks" in its life, in part because of what is described as its "bulletproof hosting".
- The site is primarily hosted by Swedish ISP PeRiQuito (PRQ), which became famous for hosting file-sharing website The Pirate Bay.
- "If it is legal in Sweden, we will host it, and will keep it up regardless of any pressure to take it down," the ISP's site says.
- The site also hosts documents in other jurisdictions, including Belgium.
- Its experience of different laws around the world meant that it was drafted to help Icelandic MPs draw up plans for its Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI).
- The plan calls on the country's government to adopt laws protecting journalists and their sources.
In Asia and the rest of the world, their Government have condemned Wikileaks website's publication. Thailand authorities have used their emergency powers to block domestic access to the WikiLeaks whistleblower website on security grounds.The order came from the government unit set up to oversee the response to political unrest that rocked the nation's capital earlier this year, a spokeswoman for the Information and Communication Technology Ministry said.
VISITORS GEOFLAGS SINCE AUGUST 26, 2009
