Why Hasn’t The Government Seized The Domain Name WikiLeaks.Org?
Yet the site WikiLeaks.org is publishing on a daily basis top secret and classified documents of the US government.
This information is by in large damaging the country, its relations with other countries and even many countries relationships with other countries.
The US government has said on many occasions some of the information endangers the lives of US citizens and citizens of other countries who have assisted the US.
Bottom line is that information owned by the US government is being published and transmitted without it permission by WikiLeaks.org.
So the obvious question is why the office of Homeland Security felt compelled to stop the transfer of intellectual property that was taking place on rapgodfathers.com but hasn’t made a move on WikiLeaks.org?
The domain WikiLeaks.org is registered at Dyadot.com a US based registrar and since its a .org domain the registry of the extension is also located in the US.
The weeks publication of top secret documents is not the 1st time such documents have been published by WikiLeaks.org; that site has been publishing such documents for months.
So why is homeland security more concerned with the “illegally downloading” of a P. Diddy song that the publication of millions of pages of top secret documents?
Which is a bigger threat to national security?
Or has the intellectual property community and their lobbyists just secured greater rights for clients; record companies, clothing companies and movie makers, than the government even has to protect its most valuable property?
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Lol
Look, if anyone wants to know the perspective of someone who actually deals with this stuff for a living, instead of talking heads on TeeVee, here’s what Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to say:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/gates-on-leaks-wiki-and-otherwise/
“Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time.
“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought.
“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’’
Am I crazy or am I receiving copy after copy of the same of this BigLieSociety guy’s comments in my email over and over again, but when I check the blog I only see one matching comment. Is he just posting the same thing multiple times and the spam system is blocking the duplicates however they still get emailed before the spam system gets it?
JP
I’m deleting duplicate comments as I can
“Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. ”
so is this another black op?
“here’s what Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to say”
===
Check out the recent video interview (on the 60 hour round trip to/from Australia) of Gates and Hillary.
The “Press” went down on one plane and returned on the other. Gates took what appeared to be an aging flying DOD command center. Hillary took {her own ride}, a flying palace. The Press noted the difference.
It is a rare opportunity to sit and watch and listen to Gates and Hillary side by side in banter about the world. You can educate yourselves and draw your own conclusions. The Press pushed on a few buttons, mostly who will occupy all the musical chairs in DC.
You might see that Gates and Hillary are part of a club where their roles, or who plays what role, are tossed around like… who will do the dishes tonight?
The Press did ask the obvious question of why these two are flying 60 hours almost non-stop with two well-heeled convoys to/from Australia for what had to be a very brief (coordinated) face-to-face meeting.
ICANN is flying how many people to Colombia next week ? for what ?
Reality? No point pulling the domain….Assange & co would just republish with the same name on some obscure ccTLD within 24 hrs……With the global publicity these guys get, they wouldn’t miss a beat.
owen frager
“Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. ”
so is this another black op?
If not, you would never know!
Respect:
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/2/
Chris
Then why seize any domain, most of the torrent sites that were seized are back up doing business under a different extension.
I’m talking about the legal end.
The theory of it.
Two bad = One good?
Let’s stop the world from knowing the truth (or part of it) because some domainers are worried about losing their domains.
Reality? No point pulling the domain….Assange & co would just republish with the same name on some obscure ccTLD within 24 hrs……With the global publicity these guys get, they wouldn’t miss a beat.
——————-
http://usnews.6te.net
just because someone publishes stuff doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is going to be able to interpret it or care about it’s possible meaning. in fact, they may not even know it is published.
that’s where mainstream media comes in. they choose what gets public attention (not necessarily what’s important), they do the spin (interpet it) and they do the hype (promotion).
the internet enables distribution for anyone. anyone can publish “news”. but it doesn’t guarantee anything more. maybe not everyone can do what the mainstream media does, so effectively (yet).
the new yorker article on assange is one of the more in depth ones i could find. it says that assange admits he’s not trying to do objective reporting. he has a position on issues he’s trying to advance. he seems to hate spin, but yet he’s got his own.
conspiracy theorists take note: it also points out that wikileaks relies on technology developed by the us navy and released to the public (onion routing). anyone can read the code and modify it. not to mention that the internet itself has its origins in military procurement. but i’m sure this was all part of the grand evil plan, right? who needs evidence? it’s obvious.
i think despite the internet, the mainstream (commercially supported) media is still very much in control of people’s attention. i think most citizens are not to be bothered with research (too much work). and i think tv, with it’s superior ability to trigger emotion, is still the best medium to persusade people to adopt one or another way of thinking about anything. the decline of education only perpetuates the general state of apathy that results from these factors.
here’s an excerpt from the new yorker article:
In 2007, he published thousands of pages of secret military information
detailing a vast number of Army procurements in Iraq and Afghanistan. He
and a volunteer spent weeks building a searchable database, studying the
Army’s purchasing codes, and adding up the cost of the
procurements-billions of dollars in all. The database catalogued materiel
that every unit had ordered: machine guns, Humvees, cash-counting
machines, satellite phones. Assange hoped that journalists would pore
through it, but barely any did. “I am so angry,” he said. “This was such a
fucking fantastic leak: the Army’s force structure of Afghanistan and
Iraq, down to the last chair, and nothing.”
it could be that anything that’s released on wikileaks only reaches a very small audience unless the mainstream media gets behind the story. elsewhere in the article assange alludes to lots of stuff they have which has “niche” appeal at best. maybe it’s time for wikileaks to hire some marketing types. lol.
think about it.
The real question is why is the guy so dumb to have his hosting in the US at Yahoo and his domain at a US Registrar.
Is Julian Assange in Britain?
news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/02/is-julian-assange-in-britain/
If he starts publishing negative information about the oil cartel, global banks or the Mafia,
he might disappear.
Hello Everyone,
Interesting News On This Subject Matter:
Wikileaks.org to Banks: You’re Next
http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/wikileaks-bank-megaleak/2866
____
Demonoid Stays Ahead of ICE, Switches Domain to .ME
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/91427/demonoid-stays-ahead-of-ice-switches-domain-to-me/
_____
Sites With Government Seized Domains Are Moving On, On….
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/27/ice-ice-baby/
_____
Homeland Security’s Domain Name Seizure May Stretch The Law Past The Breaking Point
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101130/00494412051/homeland-securitys-domain-name-seizure-may-stretch-law-past-breaking-point.shtml
_____
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Operation in Our Sites II Press Conference
http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2010/ag-speech-101129.html
I hope this is interesting and helpful…
Best,
Dan
Hi,
Another Perspective:
Quote:
Law professor David Post notes that the Department of Homeland Security is seizing entire domain names, not to protect national security, but to enforce run-of-the-mill copyrights. He calls this an unconstitutional due process violation, noting that “80 websites . . . have now been prevented from speaking to US citizens even though the website operators, whose domains were seized, had no notice or opportunity to respond to the charges against them (and to argue, for instance, that they are NOT infringing copyrights or trademarks), no adversary hearing, and certainly no adjudication before a neutral [judge], that anything unlawful is going on at these sites.”
He also notes that Congress has not yet passed a bill that would have granted the federal government the specific authority to seize domain names. (Senator Wyden or Oregon has put a hold on a bill known as COICA, the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, that would allow U.S. courts to “seize” domain names belonging to U.S. or foreign websites simply upon a charge, by the Attorney General, that the site was “primarily devoted” to infringing activities.)
Earlier, CEI’s Ryan Radia and 40 law professors criticized COICA, arguing that it contained “egregious constitutional infirmities,” and would lead to restrictions on speech that are unconstitutionally overbroad and violate First Amendment rules against prior restraints. Professor Post also argues that the domain-name seizures would be “prior restraints on speech” that are “blatantly unconstitutional.” END QUOTE
Continues Here:
http://www.openmarket.org/2010/12/02/homeland-security-violating-due-process-and-free-speech-in-internet-power-grab/
___
Best To All!
Dan
://blog.icann.org/2010/12/us-government-opposes-launch-of-new-gtld-program-in-cartagena/
That Justice Dept page is enlightening. Law enforcement does not use the word “infringement”, they use the word “crime”. These are the folks who seize counterfeit goods at the border. If counterfeit goods are being imported into the US, then it’s indeed their jurisdiction and it may be “crime”. But when it’s stuff that people in other countries are doing on web servers in those countries, and not necessarily involving US connsumers, it gets murky. I guess this is what ACTA is all about. It’s certainly not crystal clear that it’s within their jurisdiction to shut these sites (servers) down nor that the transactions being conducted through them are what we’d normally think of as importation of counterfeit goods into the US.
Ideally, to stop these sites from doing business, they should have cooperation from the countries where the servers are located (hence ACTA). The question is: do they?
Sure, they can seize the name in a US-based TLD. But it’s just a name. It’s the IP that’s essential for connecting to the network. Names are just a convenience. Maybe DHS should take aim at the regional registries and start seizing IP blocks. I’m sure no one will protest to that.
It will be interesting if this type of thing does spurn a renewed interest in alternative DNS, other than filtered, PPC-driven nonsense like OpenDNS and Neustar. Alternative root servers have been available for many years, but many users are unaware of them.
Gates is right. All of the information is known. It is nothing shocking, yet is has become the talk of all the networks. Thus serious issues like QE II and government bailing out non-banks like Verizon, GE, etc… get pushed to the back pages.
Sorta off topic, given how popular the keywords seized, wikileaks, domain names, etc… Are tees days I wonder how much G traffic this post is getting?
Jp
Several hundred a day from g search
The topic is hot but at the last look there were over 3,500 stories on wikileaks in g news feed
Several hundred a day ain’t bad. Be cool if you could sell ads specific to posts? Just a thought.
Hi,
Shut Down:
The website of whistle-blowing organization Wikileaks has been shut down by
the company providing it with domain name services…… EveryDNS.net said it
had …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11907641
_____
Best,
Dan
what about WikiLeaks is the NSA-sponsored website publishing info thay want people to digest. Controlling the information dosage to people minds.
seems like a true nature of wikileakage
“Wikileaks.org to Banks: You’re Next”
..hmmm, I bet that will be an interesting one to read.
Looks like Wikileaks is back up using the swiss extention .ch
gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/wikileaks-back-online-after-six-hours-1.722441
Well there you have it. Wikileaks is going to beadvertising there whereabouts by raw ip address. This is getting interesting. Imagine advertising your ip address with ipv6.
And what country controls all the ip addresses currently? I actually don’t know, but I’m guessing the US.
“And what country controls all the ip addresses currently? I actually don’t know, but I’m guessing the US.”
Manages the allocation of IPs in Europe.
http://www.ripe.net/info/ncc/roles-responsibilities.html
RIPE, ARIN and 3 other regionial organizations control IP management for their region.
They indirectly receive their authority from IANA which is a division of ICANN.
http://www.iana.org/about/
Maybe, George would elaborate more.
Yup, as I thought….WikiLeaks is back up on the WikiLeaks.ch domain…
Y’know, its interesting….
…The loudest indignation is coming from politicians around the world that have been embarrassed by their own (or, their Govt officers’) private, and often stupid, comments – the objection being dressed up as ‘National Security’…
…Most of this is Govt officials saying stupid & disrespectful things about other nations’ Govt players……Its, at best, dubious (and, at worst, a downright misuse of power) to use Govt powers to prosecute the owners of WikiLeaks for publishing their own embarrassing statements……Blame the perpetrators, not the reporters…
Oh…..and, btw….Where’s the talk of treating like ‘Terrorists’ (Sarah Palin), or facing ‘execution’ (US Presidential aspirant, Mike Huckabee), and pulling the domains (and licences) of editors/proprietors of The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegal – who are all publishing these same leaks just as WikiLeaks is……???
I thought so….
Well said Chris. I have to wonder what is the size of the audience who would take such extreme suggestions seriously. I mean c’mon. The great majority of these cables appear to be just opinions, not facts. They are what amounts to the gossip of diplomats. Yet we have such emotional responses, from pepople who probably have not even read the cables, threatening extreme action, even violence. Weird. The harsh comment from Palin makes perfect sense when you consider Wikileaks published the contents of her hacked Hotmail account. I’d expect her to have a personal peeve with Wikileaks.
Obama Considering the Option of Asking for Hillary Clinton’s Resignation
Shades of the similar resignation requested from the DOD General who gave the Rolling Stones Magazine information
From WikiLemons, Clinton’s Diplomatic Lemonade
New York Times – Mark Landler
MANAMA, Bahrain – Last Monday afternoon, a grim-faced Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped before the microphones in Washington to condemn the leaking of confidential diplomatic cables, a grave security breach…
Hi Everyone,
A little more news for Dec 04 on the ‘wikileaks saga’ ~
PayPal freezes WikiLeaks account
PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks’ account in the latest action against the whistleblower website, which has been posting leaked US embassy cables online.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/04/paypal-shuts-down-wikileaks-account
____
WikiLeaks Attacks Reveal Surprising, Avoidable Vulnerabilities
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/wikileaks-domain/
____
Best!
Dan