Recently in Legal issues Category

Just a note that the increasingly irrelevant and discredited WikiLeaks cult is understandably upset by the arrest of the tragic Julian Assange
at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where he has been evading Swedish sexual offences allegations for 7 years, whilst, quite frankly, taking the piss out of his diplomatic hosts.

The USA has applied for a "computer related" Extradation Warrant, which should be resisted, as it has nothing to do with the UK.
Any "bait and switch" to press further charges e.g. Espionage Act etc. if Assange is ever in USA custody, cannot happen legally under the UK or European i.e. Swedish laws,
due to the Extradition principle of Speciality.

"US warrant says that between Jan 2010 and July 2010 he conspired with Chelsea Manning to "effectuate" unauthorised disclosure."

The "computer related" allegation involve the supposed /failed offer to help crack the SIPRENET NTLM hashes to help Manning to gain more access to Diplomatic Cables ? N.B. Manning was not convicted of this.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/press-release/file/1153481/download

The UK Courts should allow the Swedish government to re-activate their dormant prosecution for rape, which does not expire until mid August 2020.

"District Judge Michael Snow finds Julian Assange guilty of failing to surrender" "He sends Julian Assange to the Crown Court for sentencing as the offence was so serious"

c.f. BBC journalist Daniel Sandford's twitter account of today's Westminster Magistrates Court proceedings.

Asange will serve some time, up to 12 months, in a UK prison for breaking his Bail, but given his allegedly failing health, he will at least get hospital treatment if needed.

Hopefully the UK will be rid of him as soon as possible.


The Julian Assange extradition to Sweden appeal is to be read out / published / streamed live by Sky News on Wednesday morning:

Wednesday 30 May 2012
9:15am
Courtroom 1

http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/current-cases/CCCaseDetails/case_2011_0264.html

"Whether a European Arrest Warrant ("EAW") issued by a public prosecutor is a valid Part 1 EAW issued by a "judicial authority" for the purpose and within the meaning of sections 2 and 66 of the Extradition Act 2003. "

The Assangistas do not appear to have noticed how the choice of Supreme Court Justices to hear this case, appears to be stacked against Julian Assange,
if you assume that they are not ignorant of the WikiLeaks media hype and allow this to influence them to some extent in this European Arrest Warrant case.

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers

lord_phillips_thumb.jpg

"Lord Phillips is the first President of The Supreme Court, having been Senior Law Lord from 1 October 2008. He was previously the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales."

As the President of the Supreme Court, he could decide to make the lead opiion, on the important legal point of the use or abuse of European Arrest Warrants, a system which must be reformed.

Or he could leave it to Lord Brown's last judicial opinion before retirement.

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood

lord_brown_thumb.jpg

Techically he has retired from the Supreme Court on his 75th birthday on the 9th of April, but the Supreme Court has discretion to appoint recently retired Justices and he had not yet retired when the case was being considered from January onwards.

He produced the lead opinion in the Law Lords (who were re-branded as the Supreme Court) in their rejection of the Appeal by Gary McKinnon extradition to the USA case. Assange is correct to fear that he may be extradited to the USA to face simuilar computer hacking of US military computer charges or worse.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldjudgmt/jd080730/mckinn-1.htm

He even managed to sneak in some damaging nonsense implying that the as yet unproven allegations against Gary McKinnon regarding the New Jersey naval base, were somehow akin to creating a danger to navigation i.e. like a Cornish Wrecker or someone who moves marker buoys etc.

"the equivalent domestic offences include an offence under section 12 of the Aviation and Maritime Security Act 1990 for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment."

even though the US authorities have never alleged this and any Naval Captain should be
court martialled if he relies on unencrypted internet emails, rather than lookputs, radio, radar, sonar, charts, Global Positioning Satellite systems etc. for navigation or the safety of his ship.

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers was content to agree with Lord Brown over the Gary McKinnon appeal rejection, so he is likely to do so again, if Lord Brownis given the job of writing the lead opinion.

The Assangista conspiracy theorists do not seem to have realised that "Lord Brown also served as President of the Security Service Tribunal from 1989 to 2000, President of the Intelligence Services Tribunal from 1995 to 2000, Intelligence Services Commissioner from 2000 to 2006"

As a Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) Commissioner, his bland, uninformative Annual (censored) Reports to the Prime Minister are notable for their utter lack of any criticism of the British Intelligence Agencies whatsoever.

He utterly failed to convince anyone that the role of Intelligence Services Commissioner provided a method of "security cleared" protection for the general public against any bureaucratic excesses or malpractice by GCHQ, MI5 the Security Service or MI6 / SIS the Secret Intelligence Service

Lord Brown will be completely familiar with the "special intelligence relationship" i.e. "bend over backwards to the USA" attitude

It will be utterly astonishing if Lord Brown finds in favour of Julian Assange.

Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore

lord_kerr_thumb.jpg

Lord Kerr is a former Crown Prosecutor and then Chief Justice of Northern Ireland i.e. he and his family have been / still are under the threat of assasination and worse by terrorists,
Several of his colleagues will have been threatened or killed during "The Troubles".

He is likely to be very familiar with the need to protect the identities and lives of Covert Human Intelligence Sources.

He is extremely unlikely to be sympathetic to Assange's recklessness / malice in publishing the unredacted names of people mentioned in the WikiLeaks US Diplomatic Cables and the Afghan and Iraq war diaries and even the personal details of the
hated and derided, but still legal British National Party members, some of whom were then harassed.

Lord Wilson of Culworth

lord_wilson_thumb.jpg

A recent appointee to the Supreme Court, he "was a judge of the Family Division of the High Court. From 2005 until May 2011" presumably he will be familiar with "he said / she said" domestic arguments and alleged sexual offences between initially consenting adults.

At a guess he will be the most sympathetic to Assange's "rape trial by media", but he is unlikely to dissent from the lead opinion of his more senior colleagues.

The only thing worse for Julian Assange than a rejection of his Supreme Court Appeal, in which case he will be sent off to Sweden forthwith (assuming that the European Court of Human Rights does not allow an appeal), would be for the Supreme Court to allow his Appeal.

If Julian Assange is not to be extradited to Sweden on the dusbious "invetigation without charge" European Arrest Warrant, then he will be far more likely to be arrested and held in the United Kingdom, if the United States authorities unseal their Grand Jury Indictment of him in relation to the Bradley Manning military case, which appears to have provided WIkiLeakS/org with so much material.

Extradition from the UK to the USA requires no prima facie case, just like the European Arrest Warrant and so it is much more likely to happen from the UK than from Sweden.

We have criticised the wikileaks.org propensity to use the social media networking service Twitter, to broadcast short (140 characters maximum) "tweets" without any accompanying full page press releases or web page detailed explanations. - https://twitter.com/wikileaks

To their credit, Twitter , which parts of the US government have praised and supported, when it has been used by say Iranian, Burmese, Zimbabwean or Chinese political dissidents has notified some, but not yet all, of its subscribers, who have been named on a Court Order which demands their private Communications Data details i.e. subscription names and addresses and phone numbers, as well as any credit card details and any IP address details.

This applies to the half a dozen or so twitter account named in the Subpoena.

However this Subpoena is not narrowly targeted against specific criminal communications, it is a generalised "fishing expedition" / data trawling exercise.

[UPDATE 9th January 2011: it turns out that this is not actually a Subpoena, but a 18 USC 2703(d) order, a controversial legal power introduced by the anti-terrorism "PATRIOT Act, which is, inevitably,,just as was pointed out at the time it was rubber stamped into law, now being abused for non-terrorism purposes.

See this blog article by Chris Soghoian Thoughts on the DOJ wikileaks/twitter court order

The order, issued under 18 USC 2703(d) is not a subpoena (even though the AP, New York Times, Salon and many other outlets have reported that it is). Subpoenas are essentially letters written by law enforcement officers, on official agency letterhead, and have not been reviewed or signed by a judge. The 2703(d) order in question was issued by a magistrate judge.

It also attempts to demand "All records and other information" including "user name and source and destination IP Protocol address(es);" of all of the other Twitter accounts which these named accounts have communicated with from November 2009 to mid December 2010, including all non wikileaks related matters.

The https://twitter.com/wikileaks account currently broadcasts to at least 634,892 followers.

There may have been a few thousand fewer such followers on the 14th December 2010, when the Subpoena was signed, but snooping on hundreds of thousands of innocent people, worldwide, is unethical and entirely disproportionate. and will provoke even more bad publicity for the United States government.

Which other social networking and email providers have been served with similar Subpoenas, for similar wikileaks related "fishing expeditions" ?

Which US Government investigative agency actually got the US Department of Justice to apply for the initially secret "sealed" Subpoena ?

If only there was a working Anonymous Whistleblower website where such information could be published - unfortunately that does not include either WikiLeakS.org nor OpenLeakS.org at the moment, or for the foreseeable future.

Instead of rebuilding their insecure SIPRENET infrastructure, their personnel security vetting procedures or their systems for handling Confidential Human Intelligence Sources, the US Army appears to be stupidly harassing WikiLeakS.org associates, or even people merely suspected of being associated with WikiLeakS.org i.e. "shoot the messenger"...

CNET report

July 31, 2010 4:16 PM PDT

Researcher detained at U.S. border, questioned about Wikileaks

by Elinor Mills

LAS VEGAS -- A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference, sources said on Saturday.

He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project.

Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland flight Thursday morning when he was pulled aside by customs and border protection agents who told him he was randomly selected for a security search, according to the sources familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous.

Appelbaum, a U.S. citizen, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Receipts from his bag were photocopied and his laptop was inspected but it's not clear in what manner, the sources said. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained, the sources said. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said.

After about three hours, Appelbaum was given his laptop back but the agents kept his three mobile phones, sources said.

[...]

There is obviously no evidence that Jacob Appelbaum has committed any crimes,

The fact that there were US Army investigators present makes a nonsense of any claim that this was a "random security search".

What happened to the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution ?

Nobody who lives in a free society should tolerate being interrogated about their political opinions by Government bureaucrats or military officials. They are meant to protect freedom of speech and freedom of association, not to collaborate with our enemies by infringing or destroying these rights and freedoms.

The New York Times reports:

Army Broadens Inquiry Into WikiLeaks Disclosure

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: July 30, 2010

WASHINGTON -- Army investigators are broadening their inquiry into the recent disclosure of classified military information to include friends and associates who may have helped the person they suspect was the leaker, Pfc. Bradley Manning, people with knowledge of the investigation said Friday.

Two civilians interviewed in recent weeks by the Army's criminal division said that investigators were focusing in part on a group of Private Manning's friends and acquaintances in Cambridge, Mass. Investigators, the civilians said, apparently believed that the friends, who include students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, might have connections to WikiLeaks, which made the documents public.

It is unclear whether the investigators have specific evidence or are simply trying to determine whether one person working alone could have downloaded and disseminated tens of thousands of documents.

[...]

One of the civilians interviewed by the Army's criminal division, who asked for anonymity so that his name would not be associated with the inquiry, said Friday that the investigators' questions led him to believe that the Army was concerned that there were classified documents in the Boston area.

"I was under the impression that they believed that perhaps Bradley had used friends in Cambridge as a mechanism for moving documents," he said.

The civilian also said that the Army had offered him "a considerable amount of money if I were to keep my ear to the ground and be an in with them with WikiLeaks." He said that he had turned the Army down and that he had no connection to WikiLeaks. The other civilian also said in an interview on Friday that he had no connection to WikiLeaks.

The first civilian said it appeared from the questioning that Army investigators "are trying to build a network among Bradley's friends to infiltrate WikiLeaks."

[...]

The reported attempt recruit a paid informant associated with Wikileaks, appears to be rather inept and counterproductive.

Is the US Army also keeping , say, New York Times journalists under surveillance ?

Which other tentacles of the vast, competing US military / security bureacratic empires (comparable to the Russian Siloviki) as outlined recently by the Washington Post Top Secret America articles, are also involved in operations against WikiLeakS.org and against their associates, readers and potential whistleblower sources around the world ?

Is everyone reading this independent WikiLeak.org blog (no "s") also unfairly regarded as a suspect ?

Just what sort of media, whistleblower source protection, anti-libel tourism etc. legislation , are Julian Assange , Daniel Schmitt and the other WikiLeakS,org activists actually helping to draft in Iceland ?

Chris Vallance from the BBC has an article and video interview with some of those involved: Wikileaks and Iceland MPs propose 'journalism haven'

Coupled with Iceland's attractions for companies looking for cheap, non-carbon cycle electricity and cooling for their internet server farms, such legal protection could be very attractive to "cloud computing" and publishing services.

Will WikiLeakS.org get some server space and bandwidth in Iceland ?

Perhaps they should firstly pay US$ 250 for the wiikileaks.is Icelandic domain name registration (limited to Icelandic citizens) ?

Will the Icelanders manage to shame the increasingly repressive and hypocritical European and North American Governments into sorting out their own equivalent laws, which also badly need reform in the internet age ?

Here are some more details of what is being proposed:, but not an actual detailed legal Bill:

Icelandic Modern Media Initiative - Proposal

The annual congress held by the German Chaos Computer Club, between Christmas and the New Year, yet again provided WikiLeakS.org with a chance to communicate some of their activities, in front of an enthusiastic, highly information technology literate audience.

Video of the presentation, in several online formats is now available online:

26C3: Here Be Dragons video recordings

Daniel Schmitt and Julian Assange gave an update of some recent WikiLeakS.org activities:

3567 WikiLeaks Release 1.0 mp4 iProd mp3 ogg

Rather strangely, they claimed that they know of no other working whistleblower service , and so seem to be planning to extend to Corporate and Government whistleblowers, their Knight foundation funding application idea of letting local newspaper wbesites use a bit of web server code to provide a secure whistleblowing channel via the WikiLeakS.org infrastructure.

Given the various whistleblower hotline and other services which exist, mostly in response to the Sabarnes-Oxley Act legal requirement (with a criminal penalty of up to 10years in prison) to protect whistleblowers, at least for United States regulated financial industry companies etc., this claim seems a bit elitist.

Do they totally dismiss the work done by, for example,

http://whistleblowers.org

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is a 30-year-old nonprofit public interest group that promotes government and corporate accountability by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists. We pursue this mission through our Nuclear Safety, International Reform, Corporate Accountability, Food & Drug Safety, and Federal Employee/National Security programs. GAP is the nation's leading whistleblower protection organization.

Again, as with our criticism of the Knight Foundation local media funding application, we are not sure how offering such a website plugin would prevent the people who very publicly offer it , from being targeted by lawyers or government agencies in their local jurisdictions, who tend to use legalistic wording like "publishes or causes to be published", even if they are effectively powerless over WikiLeakS.org itself.

However, the most interesting part of the WikiLeakS.org talk, was their report on the their trip to Iceland in November.

Julian and Daniel managed to get themselves onto the Icelandic political mainstream media, to talk about the WikiLeakS.org project, because, at the end of August 2009, WikiLeakS.org published the loan book of the failed Kaupthing Bank.

The whistleblower leak allowed the Icelandic public to see where the missing billions were initially siphoned off to, immediately prior to this bank's collapse.The failure of this bank, helped to destroy the current Icelandic economy, and precipitated hitherto unheard of riots in the streets of Reykjavik, and a change in government.

Iceland is trying to restructure its debt laden economy, to take advantage of its almost limitless cheap electricity from green hydro electric and geo-thermal sources, and its small but highly computer literate population of about 300,000 people, and its mid -Atlantic time zone location, by hosting some large computer and internet hosting data centres.

The WikiLeakS.org team suggested that Icelandic legislators should take this opportunity to pass the best free speech, whistleblower protection, personal privacy, data protection, copyright and libel laws etc., modeled on best practice around the world, to allow Iceland to become a Publication Data Haven.

This idea seems to have impressed some Icelandic legislators, who seem to be preparing some legislation for consideration by the end of this month January 2010 (another advantage of a small state).

Daniel and Julian are rightly sceptical that such plans might succeed , if the Icelandic politicians wait until after Iceland attempts to join the European Union, as there are a lot of vested interests, lobbyists and bureaucrats who would oppose such laws.

The incompetent UK Labour Government, which failed to regulate UK banks and financial institutions, and which precipitated the Icelandic banking collapse , by seizing Icelandic financial assets, in the most insulting way possible, by abusing anti-terrorism money laundering legislation, (see Icelanders are NOT terrorists!) together with the governments of the Netherlands and Denmark etc,, are using the carrot of European Union membership, to pressure / blackmail the Icelanders into promising to pay the debts of this and other failed Icelandic banks, to the often greedy or incompetent investors from those countries, who should have been aware of the commercial risks associated with the "too good to be true" high interest rates being offered. The Government / Bank failures in the UK or the Netherlands etc. were much larger than the Icelandic ones, but did not affect all of their financial sector in the same way.

Also of interest to WikilLeakS.org whistleblowers and journalists etc.is the presentation by Roger Dingledine.showing how the Tor anonymity cloud helped in last year's increases in censorship of the internet by the control freaks currently in power in Iran and China etc.

3567 Tor and censorship: lessons learned mp4 iProd mp3 ogg

Roger appealed to his audience of Tor users, to please set up some more voluntary Tor Bridge Relays, which do not appear in the main, easily censored or blocked, public Tor Directory.

Note also Roger's hint about the current uncensorability of IPv6 connections.

This blog has had the expected surge in traffic, as WikiLeakS.org failed to cope with the demand for the second alleged "BNP Membership list".

People from organisations such as the UK Ministry of Defence, from Boldon James a Qinetiq subsidiary specialising in secure messaging systems for the military and intelligence agencies, Grampian Fire Service, several UK Universities. Gloucestershire County Council, the University of Oxford, University College London, University of York, Leeds Metropolitan University etc (a sad reflection on the poor internet research skills of some university students, academics or administrators), have all attempted to search for this "BNP Membership List" here on this blog (obviously without success), presumably whilst the WIkiLeakS.org website has been overwhelmed by demand There have been multiple attempts to search for this from Pakistan.

As with the previous list, there will be several fake or erroneous entries, which the armchair "anti-fascism" campaigners will abuse to besmirch innocent people as "racists". Why should innocent people's personal details be spread over the internet like this ?

There were plenty of reports about such abuses after WikiLeakS.org published the first leaked list, but they have persisted in doing so again, and have hyped up mainstream media interest in the "story".

What happens when other alleged lists of political or religious groups are published on WikiLeakS.org , in contravention of the principles of Data Protection as applied to Sensitive Personal Data ?

What happens when such lists are used by extremists or the mentally unstable to target people for harassment or death threats ?

Will WikiLeakS.org publish lists of political opponents and dissidents in other countries apart from in the United Kingdom ?

How would publishing the name, address, telephone and other details of say Chinese, Burmese, Iranian, Cuban, Kenyan or Zimbabwean etc.political opponents to the ruling regimes be any morally different to publishing these BNP lists ?

This "collateral damage" against innocent, law abiding people, destroys any kudos which WikiLeaKs.org may have merited through its publication of the Trafigura / Carter-Ruck "super injunctions" and the the Minton report.

It looks as if the WikiLeakS.org core team journalists and activists might perhaps have succeeded in getting their first mainstream media customer, for the method of funding which Julian Assange proposed i.e. "exclusive" access to a leaked document, ahead of its publication on WIkiLeakS.org.

BNP hit by second leak of 'members database'

Robert Booth, Helen Pidd and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 October 2009 21.36 BST

The BNP is bracing itself for potentially fresh embarrassment tomorrow when details of the party's rank and file UK membership are expected to be posted on the internet.

The list, which purports to be a snapshot of the party's support in April this year, includes the names, addresses, postcodes and telephone numbers of people who have signed up to the far-right group, including the grade of membership assigned by the party - standard, family, family plus, gold, OAP, and unwaged.

This list was leaked to a website, which insisted today that it was genuine, and that it intended to publish the information tomorrow.

Not how this article does not mention WikiLeakS.org, even though:

The Guardian has seen the list, but could not verify its authenticity.

As Julian has rightly pointed out, giving stuff for free to the lazy or heavily under resourced or legally gagged mainstream media, by simply publishing it online does not get it reported or analysed or discussed by the mainstream media or the blogosphere or the twitterverse.

WikiLeakS.org or most probably Julian himself, in fact have to hawk the "story" around various mainstream "News" outlets, who are extremely reluctant to ever mention WikiLeaks.org as the indirect source, and almost never report the http://WikiLeakS.org URL, let alone a specific link to the actual article or leaked document itself.

The mainstream media do pay for stories, but only for "exclusives", which theeir commercial rivals then happily steal of each other, often without attribution, so this is , in one sense, entirely logical and predictable.

However, usually, a mainstream media organisation is dealing directly with a whistleblower or with an agent or middleman, who, although they might not know, or might claim not to know who the actual whistleblower is, has been empowered by the whistleblower to negotiate financially or otherwise with the mainstream media organisation.

This is not the case with WIkiLeakS.org.

Nowhere during the WikiLeakS.org document submission work-flow is there any mention that the leak which you are proving for free, is going to be arbitrarily delayed from online publication by WikiLeaks.org.for financial reasons, or for their own political agenda.

The ability to set a delay or a random delay between actual leaked document submission and online publication is an important optional feature of the technology. Used properly, it can add "Plausible Deniability", or strengthen the alibi of a whistleblower at risk of exposure. Obviously not every whistleblower needs or uses this feature.

However, it is not morally right, for WikiLeakS.org to arbitrarily take over the timing and release of a whistleblower document, simply to give itself "exclusives", which it has not itself paid for, but which it hopes to get money from a mainstream media partner, or which suit the political activists' own hidden agendas.

At the very least, they should obtain the prior, informed consent from the whistleblower specifically allowing WikiLeaks.org to act as more than just politically neutral technology assisted publishers, and more as a Public Relations agency on their behalf.

Since there is no longer any private and secure method of communicating with the WikiLeakS.org team, after they abandoned their use of PGP Encryption for email privacy or for digital signatures, there is no way for a whistleblower to negotiate the terms of how WikiLeaKs.org intends to promote the story to the mainstream media.

One of the WikiLeakS.org cover domain names, is wikileaks.de.

This a German domain name, registered to a 32 year old student called Theodor Reppe, who lives near Jena, near Dresden.

Yesterday, his home was raided by the German Police, apparently only because of his supposed connection with the WikiLeakS.org servers, over which he obviously has no control.

Hausdurchsuchung bei WikiLeaks.de Domaininhaber

March 24, 2009

EDITORIAL (Wikileaks)

Um kurz nach 21 Uhr wurden am heutigen Dienstag den 24. Maerz 2009 die Wohnorte von Theodor Reppe, dem Domaininhabers von Wikileaks.de durch die saechsische Polizei, vertreten durch sieben Polizeibeamte in Dresden und vier Beamte in Zivil in Jena, durchsucht. Grund fuer die Durchsuchung sind laut Protokoll die "Verbreitung pornographischer Schriften" und das "Auffinden von Beweismitteln" in diesem Zusammenhang. Die Durchsuchung erfolgte aufgrund seines Status als Domaininhaber der Wikileaks.de Domain.

Die Polizei wollte dem Durchsuchten gegenueber keine weitere Angaben machen und es wurde kein Kontakt zu Wikileaks aufgenommen.

[...]

You can download a (.pdf) of one of the Police Search forms / receipts, which mentions a laptop computer, from Wikileaks.de police raid documentation, 24 Mar 2009

The assumption being made is that this raid has something to do with the recent publication of Australian or Thai or other countries alleged internet censorship lists, which although they mostly contain links to porn websites, are also being perverted for political censorship purposes as well.

However, since WikiLeakS.org are saying that they were not actually contacted about the raid, it may perhaps also have something to do with the legal dispute between WikiLeakS.org and the German Federal Foreign Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)

Alternatively, the German Police in Jena and Dresden could just be inept and ignorant of the fact that the actual WikiLeakS.org web servers are physically, logically and legally in Sweden, not in Germany.

We hope that people rally to support Theodor Reppe, since he also runs the high bandwidth https://morphium.info anonymising web proxy server and the morphiumPherrex Tor Exit node and Directory server (91.143.81.107 pherrex.tor.morphium.info), which you may have used knowingly or, more likely, unknowingly, to help to protect your own privacy and security.

Both of these systems are still currently in operation, but some people will now no longer trust them, as they may have been contaminated by the Police, although, for, say a Chinese dissident trying to access the censored BBC Chinese language news website in the UK, that should not make much difference.

The wikileaks.DE domain name (which resolves to IP address 88.80.6.179) is still currently pointing to a webserver at the same Swedish co-hosting facility (PRQ.net) as the main wikileaks.org website (88.80.13.160), but this is on a different subnet.

We hope that the WikiLeakS.org legal team provides Theodor Reppe with all the necessary legal support and media publicity in Germany - he deserves at least as much of their support as any whistleblower does.

The WikiLeakS.org "uncensorable anonymous whistleblower website" domain name appears to have expired at Dynadot.com

  • Is this part of the process transferring it away to another Domain Name Registrar ?

  • Is this administrative incompetence by the Wikileaks team in not paying the annual fee of $9.25 on time ?

  • Is this incompetence or malice by the Dynadot.com domain name registrar company in not allowing Wikileaks to renew the domain name ?

  • Or does this means that another Court injunction has been served (see the Bank Julius Baer court case) ?

Domain ID:D130035267-LROR
Domain Name:WIKILEAKS.ORG
Created On:04-Oct-2006 05:54:19 UTC
Last Updated On:04-Oct-2008 13:13:34 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2008 05:54:19 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Dynadot, LLC (R1266-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:CE-13000
Registrant Name:Pending Renewal or Deletion
Registrant Street1:PO Box 701
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:San Mateo
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:94401
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.6505851961
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:expired@dynadot.com
Admin ID:CE-13000
Admin Name:Pending Renewal or Deletion
Admin Street1:PO Box 701
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:San Mateo
Admin State/Province:CA
Admin Postal Code:94401
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.6505851961
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:expired@dynadot.com
Tech ID:CE-13000
Tech Name:Pending Renewal or Deletion
Tech Street1:PO Box 701
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:San Mateo
Tech State/Province:CA
Tech Postal Code:94401
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.6505851961
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:expired@dynadot.com
Name Server:NS1.DYNADOT.COM
Name Server:NS2.DYNADOT.COM

Obviously WikiLeaks.org is no longer pointing at the reverse web proxy server front end in Sweden at http://88.80.13.160 or https://88.80.13.160

You should try some of the other "Cover Name" domain names

Remember that there are no leaked documents on this technical and ethical issues discussion blog here at WikiLeak.org (with the "S")., which is not part of the WikiLeakS.org project, and is not one of their "Cover Names" either.

Update:

The WikiLeakS.org domain name seems to be coming back to again, slowly, but until the DNS propagation is complete, it will still not point to IP address 88.80.13.160 for everybody.


Domain ID:D130035267-LROR
Domain Name:WIKILEAKS.ORG
Created On:04-Oct-2006 05:54:19 UTC
Last Updated On:04-Oct-2008 18:37:51 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2018 05:54:19 UTC

Sponsoring Registrar:Dynadot, LLC (R1266-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:RENEWPERIOD
Registrant ID:CP-13000
Registrant Name:John Shipton c/o Dynadot Privacy
Registrant Street1:PO Box 701
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:San Mateo
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:94401
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.6505851961
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:privacy@dynadot.com
Admin ID:CP-13000
Admin Name:John Shipton c/o Dynadot Privacy
Admin Street1:PO Box 701
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:San Mateo
Admin State/Province:CA
Admin Postal Code:94401
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.6505851961
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:privacy@dynadot.com
Tech ID:CP-13000
Tech Name:John Shipton c/o Dynadot Privacy
Tech Street1:PO Box 701
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:San Mateo
Tech State/Province:CA
Tech Postal Code:94401
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.6505851961
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:privacy@dynadot.com
Name Server:NS1.EVERYDNS.NET
Name Server:NS2.EVERYDNS.NET
Name Server:NS3.EVERYDNS.NET
Name Server:NS4.EVERYDNS.NET

Following the Judge's ruling last week, the case in the California Northern District Federal Court against WikiLeakS.org has now been dropped.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have a copy of the Plaintiff's Notice of Dismissal (.pdf 4 pages) whereby William J. Briggs II, a junior lawyer from Lavely & Singer files a Voluntary Motion of Dismissal without prejudice on behalf of the Swiss bank Bank Julius Baer and their Cayman Islands tax haven subsidiary Julius Baer Bank Trust Co. Ltd in their ill advised public relations disaster against Wikileaks.org, their domain name registrar Dynadot LLC, and the 10 unnamed John Does.

TO ALL PARTIES AND THEIR COUNSEL OF RECORD:

PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that Plaintiffs BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD and JULIUS BAER BANK AND TRUST CO. LTD (“Plaintiffs”) hereby
voluntarily dismisses, without prejudice, the above captioned action in its entirety, whereby Plaintiffs may, at their option, later pursue their claims, including in an alternate court, jurisdiction or venue.

See the rest of the EFF's copies of the Court documents: Bank Julius Baer& co. v Wikileaks

By dropping the case, after the strong hints from the Judge to think again, now that the "cat is out of the bag" in regard to the alleged documents which have been published via WikiLeakS.org, the remaining Motions to Intervene by various media and civil liberties organisations and individuals will not now be heard, .

Lavely & Singer, based in Century City, near Hollywood, claim to be "one of the world's premiere talent-side entertainment litigation firms", which may well be true.
However, their legalistic bullying tactics and failure to understand, or deliberate misrepresentation of the internet's technical infrastructure, has rebounded on their clients Bank Julius Bär.

Rightly or wrongly now, for many people, and for search engine queries into the future, Bank Julius Baer is associated with with illegal tax evasion and money laundering.

"Bad publicity" might be better than "no publicity" for Hollywood media celebrity wannabes, but that should be an anathema for a Swiss Bank whose business model is supposedly to provide confidential, trust based private banking and investment "wealth management" services for the very rich.

Plaintiffs may, at their option, later pursue their claims, including in an alternate court, jurisdiction or venue.

Surely the Gnomes of Zürich cannot be so stupid as to commit commercial suicide, by continuing to employ "media celebrity attack dog" lawyers ?

This case also highlights some more Questions about the WikiLeakS.org project:

About this blog

This blog here at WikiLeak.org (no "S") discusses the ethical and technical issues raised by the WikiLeakS.org project, which is trying to be a resource for whistleblower leaks, by providing "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis".

These are bold and controversial aims and claims, with both pros and cons, especially for something which crosses international boundaries and legal jurisdictions.

This blog is not part of the WikiLeakS.org project, and there really are no copies of leaked documents or files being mirrored here.

Email Contact

Please feel free to email us your views about this website or news about the issues it tries to comment on:

email: blog@WikiLeak[dot]org

Before you send an email to this address, remember that this blog is independent of the WikiLeakS.org project.

If you have confidential information that you want to share with us, please make use of our PGP public encryption key or an email account based overseas e.g. Hushmail or Protonmail etc. accessible via the Tor anonymity cloud.

LeakDirectory.org

Now that the WikiLeakS.org project is defunct, so far as new whistleblower are concerned, what are the alternatives ?

The LeakDirectory.org wiki page lists links and anonymity analyses of some of the many post-wikileaks projects.

There are also links to better funded "official" whistlblowing crime or national security reporting tip off websites or mainstream media websites. These should, in theory, be even better at protecting the anonymity and security of their informants, than wikileaks, but that is not always so.

New whistleblower website operators or new potential whistleblowers should carefully evaluate the best techniques (or common mistakes) from around the world and make their personal risk assessments accordingly.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

The WikiLeakS.org Submissions web page provides some methods for sending them leaked documents, with varying degrees of anonymity and security. Anybody planning to do this for real, should also read some of the other guides and advice to political activists and dissidents:

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

Digital Security & Privacy for Human Rights Defenders manual, by Irish NGO Frontline Defenders.

Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide (.pdf - 31 pages), by the Citizenlab at the University of Toronto.

Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents - March 2008 version - (2.2 Mb - 80 pages .pdf) by Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Guide to Covering the Beijing Olympics by Human Rights Watch.

A Practical Security Handbook for Activists and Campaigns (v 2.6) (.doc - 62 pages), by experienced UK direct action political activists

Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress & Tor - useful step by step guide with software configuration screenshots by Ethan Zuckerman at Global Voices Advocacy. (updated March 10th 2009 with the latest Tor / Vidalia bundle details)

WikiLeakS Links

The WikiLeakS.org Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

WikiLeakS Twitter feeds

The WikiLeakS.org website does not stay online all of the time, especially when there is a surge of traffic caused by mainstream media coverage of a particularly newsworthy leak.

Recently, they have been using their new Twitter feeds, to selectively publicise leaked documents to the media, and also to report on the status of routing or traffic congestion problems affecting the main website in Stockholm, Sweden.

N.B.the words "security" or "anonymity" and "Twitter" are mutually exclusive:

WikiLeakS.org Twitter feed via SSL encrypted session: https://twitter.com/wikileaks

WikiLeakS.org unencrypted Twitter feed http://twitter.com/wikileaks

Internet Censorship

OpenNet Initiative - researches and measures the extent of actual state level censorship of the internet. Features a blocked web URL checker and censorship map.

Temporary Autonomous Zone

Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) by Hakim Bey (Peter Lambourn Wilson)

Cyberpunk author William Gibson

Campaign Button Links

Watching Them, Watching Us, UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign
UK Public CCTV Surveillance Regulation Campaign

NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card
NO2ID Campaign - cross party opposition to the NuLabour Compulsory Biometric ID Card and National Identity Register centralised database.

Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.
Gary McKinnon is facing extradition to the USA under the controversial Extradition Act 2003, without any prima facie evidence or charges brought against him in a UK court. Try him here in the UK, under UK law.

FreeFarid_150.jpg
FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Peaceful resistance to the curtailment of our rights to Free Assembly and Free Speech in the SOCPA Designated Area around Parliament Square and beyond

Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans
Data Retention is No Solution Petition to the European Commission and European Parliament against their vague Data Retention plans.

Save Parliament: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)
Save Parliament - Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill (and other issues)

Open_Rights_Group.png
Open Rights Group

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network
Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Tor - the onion routing network
Anonymous Blogging with Wordpress and Tor - useful Guide published by Global Voices Advocacy with step by step software configuration screenshots (updated March 10th 2009).

irrepressible_banner_03.gif
Amnesty International's irrepressible.info campaign

anoniblog_150.png
BlogSafer - wiki with multilingual guides to anonymous blogging

ngoiab_150.png
NGO in a box - Security Edition privacy and security software tools

homeofficewatch_150.jpg
Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."

rsf_logo_150.gif
Reporters Without Borders - Reporters Sans Frontières - campaign for journalists 'and bloggers' freedom in repressive countries and war zones.

committee_to_protect_bloggers_150.gif
Committee to Protect Bloggers - "devoted to the protection of bloggers worldwide with a focus on highlighting the plight of bloggers threatened and imprisoned by their government."

wikileaks_logo_low.jpg
Wikileaks.org - the controversial "uncensorable, anonymous whistleblowing" website based currently in Sweden.

Syndicate this site (XML):

Recent Comments

  • James Hyams: I'm writing a thesis on Public Trust in WikiLeaks, the read more
  • rich kaplan: Hello Wikeleaks vrew. In Turkey , the islamist goverment just read more
  • wikileak: Cryptome have a few more extracts from this book http://cryptome.org/0003/ddb-book/ddb-book.htm read more
  • wikileak: OpenLeaks.org have now launched their website with some details of read more
  • wikileak: Bahnhof Internet seem to be hosting two Wikileaks servers in read more
  • teresa: I THANK THEY JUST TO SHUT HIM UP. THEY THINK read more
  • wikileak: Clay Shirky has posted a rough transcript of Daniel Domscheit-Berg's read more
  • wikileak: @ N - you can still see the "1.2 million read more
  • N: @wikileak - Exactly, these cables are _from_ the United States, read more
  • wikileak: Openleaks.org is now displaying this meassage: Coming soon! While we read more

April 2019

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30