New domain for Wikileads

Wikileads has moved. Please visit wikileads.net.

More info?

According to this post, Wikileaks is down because of China. Wikileaks posted more than 100 photos of the Tibetan protests. (Graphic photos. See them here. But be warned – they are really, really graphic.) China then initiated a DDOS attack, which overran Wikileaks’ server and shut the system down.

That is what one blogger said. I’m not sure how much sense this makes because, as far as I understand, Wikileaks maintains multiple servers. I am not a techie, so my thoughts on this could be completely off, but I’m at least a bit skeptical.

Still, that’s all I can find…

…and Wikileaks is still down.

Wikileaks is down…

…begging many questions.

Because it’s not just wikileaks.org that fails to load. It’s also wikileaks.cx, wikileaks.be and http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks, all of which worked after the Julius Baer injunction.

So who was the culprit? The British government, angry about the atomic bomb-related drawing? The Church of Scientology, trying to recoup some of its secret doctrines (and reap the associated profits)? Or is it something less sinister – an overloaded server or technical malfunction?

Right now it’s to be determined…

(If anyone knows what’s going on, please share the info!)

Wikileaks weekly news round-up

The US Army spies on soldier and military families’ blogs, according to a document released by Wikileaks on Thursday. But the document was also released by Wired News last May, so Wikileaks removed it from their site. (According to Wikileaks’ document submission guidelines, the site releases only fresh leaks, so if they make a mistake, they redirect credit to the original leakers.)

The battle between Scientology and Wikileaks escalated as Wikileaks released 18 more documents about the Church, revealing Scientology’s organizational structure and 2005 and 2006 UK tax returns.

Wikileaks also published an analysis of how Britain got the atomic bomb, and then forwarded to its listserve an email conversation between Wikileaks spokesman Jay Lim and Isabella McRae of the UK government’s Counter-Proliferation Department.

On March 19, McRae wrote:

Dear Wikileaks,

We have recently been alerted to the fact that you have put censored nuclear bomb designs on your website. Grateful if you could remove these as soon as possible, as I hope you agree that some censorship at least is in the public good. These designs could aid countries wishing to develop nuclear weapons, hence the desire to keep them out of the public domain. The page I am specifically referring to is: <http://wikileaks.org/wiki/First_atomic_bomb_diagram&gt;

Please let me know if you agree with me, and if you have decided to remove them.

(The referenced document is here.)

Lim’s response:

We take your concerns seriously.

However, the editors and a number of nuclear physicists are of the opinion, which is outlined in the article summary, that our release of the material will not contribute to the the proliferation of nuclear weapons. If our argument is in error we would be happy to be corrected by a detailed response.

The email exchange continued throughout the day on March 19, but ended without resolution, partly because the office responsible for explaining the issue to Wikileaks went on Easter break. As of April 8, the UK had yet to clarify their concerns enough for Wikileaks to take them seriously.

I can’t find the entire correspondence anywhere online, but Wikileaks’ letter to the press and Isabella McRae’s first letter are published here.

Wikileaks vs. Scientology: A lawyer for the Church of Scientology explains the church’s perspective

Wikileaks violated copyright law and, as a result, the Church of Scientology could lose money.

So said Bill Hart, a lawyer for the Church interviewed on BBC Radio 4 earlier today (the interview, abridged for broadcast, is about halfway through the show. For the interview in its entirety, click here).

Until a couple of weeks ago, only top-ranking Scientologists had access to the full Operating Thetan documents. The church has fought hard in the past to keep the documents secret.

Top-ranking Scientologists pay more than $350,000 to gain full access to the Operating Thetan documents, so the release of Operating Thetan could marginalize the Church’s ability to entice members into the classes and seminars required for full indoctrination.

“The further up you go in Scientology, the more you pay for this knowledge. And it can be quite a pricey business,” said the host of the radio show.

Financial matters are a consideration for the Church of Scientology, Hart said. Now that the documents are out, unaffiliated parties could use them for their own purposes – purposes not approved by the Church. Hart mentioned a group called Free Zone Scientologists who have established a sect of Scientology that doesn’t charge enlightenment fees.

The Church of Scientology has sued the Free Zoners, too.

Wikileaks announces RSS feeds

Two RSS feeds are now available from Wikileaks, one for press releases, reports and document releases, and another only for press releases and reports.

The award show

Wikileaks has been nominated for the Index on Censorship’s Economist New Media Award for Freedom of Expression. Index on Censorship’s site here. Press email reprinted below:

Wikileaks has been shorted listed, and will probably win the Economist
New Media Award / Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award.

Londoners may wish to attend the award ceremony on April 21, 6pm

Call 020 7278 2313 to reserve your 100-pound ticket. (That’s the currency. Not the weight.)

Wikileaks vs. Scientology (and a copyright primer)

It started when Wikileaks released the Operating Thetan documents – the Bibles of Scientology – on March 24. The entire 600-plus page documents had never before been published for public viewing, and not because of any oversight on the Church of Scientology’s part. The docs are highly classified. So classified that the Church has sued CNN and Time for releasing small parts of them in the past.

Now Wikileaks has been threatened with an injunction less than two months after narrowly escaping the last one. The Scientologists do not want their secrets made public.

This raises many questions. Legal questions. Ethical questions. Questions about what the Church of Scientology wants to hide from non-Scientologist eyes. All of these will be addressed in later posts. But first, a primer on copyright law, courtesy of the good folks at Disney.

Stay tuned for deeper analysis. For more background on the battle, Ken Lewis of m-net wrote a quality summary.

The lines

It’s a classic battle of Left vs. Right. On one side, the activists: the ACLU, the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (all of which filed briefs in the suit brought against Wikileaks by Swiss bank Julius Baer). These groups see Wikileaks as a key fighter in the war against corruption, secrecy and human rights abuses.

Opposing them are a few behemoths: corporations and governments concerned about privacy, accuracy and copyright law. And saving their asses. Wikileaks’ recent run-ins with the Church of Scientology, JP Morgan and the Chinese government show that not everyone sees the benefit of full public disclosure.

Then there are the moderates: skeptics, curious observers and fence-sitters who get the potential of Wikileaks but still are a bit wary. Wikileaks releases damning data that could cause unjust harm if the info is untrue, raising ethical and legal questions with no easy answer.

Still, the response to Wikileaks has been overwhelmingly positive. The five Wikileaks-related Facebook groups, the biggest of which has more than 800 members, all tout the site as a leader in global justice, and most Web chatter is supportive of the site and its mission.

Journalists have taken an interest, too – especially citizen journalists at sites like Current.com and Wikinews.org (Wikileaks actually has no legal relationship with Wikipedia. They just use the online encyclopedia’s format and share its participatory philosophy). The Wikinews blog also comments frequently on Wikileaks.

Last but not least, the technologists. Mainstream media bloggers like the New York Times’ Jonathan D. Glater, a reporter who contributes to the Times’ blog on technology and society, followed the  Julius Baer v. Wikileaks trial, and other tech types also picked up on the case and its implications.

Wikileaks buzz

This might be the only blog dedicated to discussing Wikileaks (at least in English). A year ago at least one other Wikileaks blog existed, but on March 7, 2007, its author seems to have given up.

That said, the blogosphere is moderately abuzz with posts about Wikileaks, or about documents released by the site. Gawker linked to a post on Slate’s Hot Document blog describing a State Department brochure about car bombs entitled (oh so professionally) “When Broken Down Vehicles Go Boom!” The Daily Kos followed the California trial brought against Wikileaks by Swiss bank Julius Baer, and also commented on Wikileaked documents that revealed insider trading by JP Morgan and dungeon-like conditions at Fallujah.

Hot Document and Wikileaks seem like a natural pairing. Hot Document bloggers analyze primary documents and post copies of them on the site, focusing mostly on docs that caused a major stir in the news. Recent posts include the Clintons’ 1040s; cached Web pages from Eliot Spitzer’s escort service, the Emperor’s Club; and excerpts from the 28-page American Gladiators application.

Even the Huffington Post has commented on the Wikileaks phenomenon, notably in Clay Shirky’s philosophical examination of the implications of the Julius Baer trial. He notes that the “mass amateurization” of media in the Internet age will hinder the legal system’s ability to “rein in certain kinds of speech with very little little legal leverage.”

Shirky is not the only commentator to wax philosophical on Wikileaks’ implications. Others have explored the site’s greater meaning for Web 2.0, for the life (or death) of the Internet, and, of course, for law and journalism

And then there’s the official Wikileaks line: less-than-PC, often snarky press releases describing Wikileaks’ battles against the various oppressors of the world (cults should know better than to mess with global protectors of freedom).

More press releases can be found on the homepage.