back to article US judge arranges summary execution of Wikileaks.org

The US arm of Wikileaks, a website that makes it easy for whistleblowers to leak documents, has been cut off after hosting evidence that claimed a bank located in the Cayman Islands engaged in money laundering and tax evasion. Dynadot, the US-based company that hosted Wikileaks' main site, not only severed wikileaks.org from …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Where there's smoke

    How ridiculous.

    There is little more the bank could do too convince people of its guilt.

    Hilarious. I hope they get busted.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Wikileaks

    .com wikileaks.edu wikileaks.net wikileaks.biz wikileaks.us come on what kind of lame censorship is this if they run out of those you change the spelling slightly wiki-leaks wikileak leakwiki (which by the way makes more sense). Ask a couple of reporters/submitters at a few of the more subversive (and therefore influential) websites The Register, Wired, Slashdot (careful), nicely to link to the new one and by next week they know where you are, never completely trust a web host always register your domain with a third party. Have a short list of web hosts that are run by people who host a lot of pr0n sites, I do they tend to be very reluctant, not bullet proof, but someone better show up with a badge and a gun before they do anything or they lose all their business (to the Cayman Islands weirdly enough). If they do all these things and the overseas sites I don't see how anyone could shut them down. I really don't care that much about money laundering but keeping available is a topic near and dear. Never let them shut you down, nothing ever dies on the internet.

  3. lglethal Silver badge
    Dead Vulture

    Welcome to the new world order

    Where freedom of speech, honesty, integrity and refusing to follow the company/government line when said company/government line is illegal/immoral are now crimes to be punished and censored at every opportunity.

    Welcome to 1984...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    No such thing as bad publicity

    So a Cayman island bank that nobody had heard of and nobody cared about is now news across the web.

    Was this an advertising stunt for their tax liability management' services.

  5. Steve Roper
    Thumb Down

    Anonymity?

    Everyone should know by now that there's no such thing as anonymity or privacy in the Western Tyrannies (US, UK, Australia, Canada, NZ). Smart whistleblowers will have used proxies or the Tor network to post their documents, then changed their names and moved to a different country, preferably one that doesn't think much of the Tyrannies.

    What this shows is that whistleblowing is fine as long as you don't endanger the interests of the uber-elite. If the Cayman bank is guilty as charged, then there's obviously some high-powered godlings running slush funds through there. If they're not, then this would have been a straightforward libel case. Since there's no mention of libel... hmmmmm...

    Not posting AC because there's no point in trying.

  6. steve
    Flame

    Not Down

    Even though this prevents the wikileaks.org link from working, it doesn't actually take down the site: everything is up and running at 88.80.13.160 or one of wikileaks mirrors wikileaks.cx

  7. Dalen
    Black Helicopters

    One thing I want to know

    Why doesn't Wikileaks have the Halloween Documents?

  8. Dr Patrick J R Harkin
    Coat

    Thing is...

    I have documentary proof showing who started that fire, but nowhere to post it...

  9. Karl Lattimer

    shock horror

    bank in cayman islands involved in money laundering! WOW! THIS IS REAL NEWS!

    /sarcasm

  10. John Imrie
    Flame

    @Where there's smoke

    Where there's smoke there is a BOFH plotting revenge.

    The flame Icon for smoke, fire ... humm may be I should have used the coat icon instead.

  11. Dave
    Black Helicopters

    Streisand Effect

    Haven't these guys ever heard of the Streisand Effect?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_Effect

    Some fool has attempted to protect some information that very few people were actually interested in, and by doing so has put the spotlight on themselves, given publicity to a web-site that comparitively few people knew about and open a whole can of worms.

    A practice that everyone knew was going on (Does anyone think Cayman Island banks are used primarily for their network of ATM/Cashpoint machines?), but quietly ignored, has been brought to the worlds attention, along with enough rumour and speculation.

    The Internet is a Gweat and Tewwible Weapon, and it fires Streisand Effect bullets, like a mad Dr Strangeparishiltonlove's Doomsday machine. It was designed by the military to be self-healing, dynamically routing, and all but impervious to anything short of an extinction level event. It's been given to civilians and they are embracing it, for its freedom of communication and its pictures of naked people.

    It also, like, makes me, like, giggle to y'know, like, watch The Man, like, squirm.

  12. Svein Skogen
    Happy

    Some Questions

    1. Cannot wikileaks sue their isp (and the guy that rolled over personally) for breach of contract, and then for damages? They should be able to pretty much make an example of said ISP, and make sure that this ISP A) goes out of business, B) the guy rolling over needs to sell his suits.

    2. Cannot wikileaks please post the name of the judge who so poorly hid his desire to have no eyes going over Cayman Banking details. Who knows, there may be some or other reason he was so eager to censor such a site.

    3. For what I see, this mr Baer, is personally responsible for the taxes he's helped evade, and as such, I wonder how he can have sent any money into the USA that didn't immediately get confiscated by the IRS. Oh, he has so much power he doesn't NEED to follow rules, I forgot.

    4. Please check if this is another of the banks being involved with Prescott Bush'es move of money before he was caught red-handed in 1942.

    //Svein

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Brrrr

    Well, at least the Julius Bär parent company is not exactly an unknown, indeed it is one of the largest private banking outfits. Going into black helicopter mode, one would imagine Judge White to get a phone call from "the upper floors/undisclosed location" to expedite his ... decision and send the domain to the equivalent of Guantanamo. After all, why have a kleptocracy when you can't use it?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Steve Roper

    Exactly what brings you to categorise New Zealand as a 'Western Tyrrany'??

  15. Someone

    Re: Anonymity?

    Adding to what Steve Roper has said about the use of Tor, remember that exit nodes can still see what your doing. Always use a connection that’s secure end-to-end. You can use HTTPS by adding “secure.” to any of the Wikileaks domain names (removing any “www.” first), eg.

    secure.wikileaks.be

    secure.wikileaks.cx

    secure.wikileaks.es

    secure.wikileaks.in

    secure.wikileaks.la

    secure.wikileaks.org.uk

    secure.wikileaks.tl

    secure.wikileaks.ws

    (Unfortunately, the certificate was for the original Wikileaks.org. Also, unfortunately, some of the links that point within the site itself are not to secure pages. This seems to be because the links are using the various different domain names.)

    ((Why is there no https://www.theregister.co.uk/ ?))

  16. Someone

    More cover domain names

    Spyblog have a long list of cover domain names.

    https://s.p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/wikileak/2008/02/wikileaksorg_dns_problems_partly_censored_by_temporary_restraining_order.html

    Of course, there’s a similar long list on Wikileaks itself, but that’s only helpful if you can get there already.

  17. mark11727
    Black Helicopters

    Or you can try this (it worked yesterday...)

    http://88.80.13.160/

  18. Steve

    @ @ Steve Roper

    Well they are part of the Echelon project and the Maoris have been shat on in a similar manner to the Australian Aboriginees.

    And everywhere's west of somewhere.

  19. Bronek Kozicki

    @Svein Skogen

    Not ISP but registrar. Still, given court order in jurisdiction where registrar happens to operate, they have no choice but obey.

  20. Andrew Norton
    Thumb Up

    More mirrors

    heck, just in the last 3-4 hours, at least two more mirrors ( http://spontaneousdancing.net/wikileaks/ and http://www.pledgebank.com/wikileaksmirror ) have sprung up.

    It's the old hydra effect....

    Andrew Norton

    Pirate Party of the US

    http://pirate-party.us

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Er, Steve....

    My friend, I'm not sure where you get your facts from but as a NZer with no sense of patriotism whatsoever, I still have to assure you you're wrong.

    Australia:

    * Forcibly removed aboriginal children from their familes until the 60's

    * Still enforce dry areas where they're not allowed to buy alcohol.

    * Received an apology from the government for the former a scant 2 days ago.

    NZ:

    * Crown signed treaty with the Maori (regardless of how fair it was, it was an unusual step for a colonising power)

    * Maori represented in parliament since 1867. Currently 18% of MPs are Maori including the Minister for Foreign Affairs, vs. 15% of the population.

    * Maori taught in school, and has been since I were a lad in the late 70's. Maori an official language and appears on all government communication.

    * Large areas of land and rights to fisheries have been returned to Maori ownership through the Waitangi Tribunal. Unlike Oz, the land is not uninhabitable desert, and in many cases the businesses are well managed and profitable.

    I'll slag off NZ for a lot of things, but not race relations. I'm in Oz at the moment and I'm pretty horrified, frankly. As my South African friend says, the only difference between here and there is there the blacks make up 90% of the country and they apologised years ago.

  22. Joe M

    The Swiss at it again

    Whenever a U.S. institution is caught doing something repugnant, an almost inevitable torrent of anti-American abuse follows. The Germans and Japanese fare little better.

    Yet the Swiss, one of the most odious people in the world with an almost palpable lack of ethics, who have been laundering blood money from all parts of the globe for centuries, seem to get away with murder.

    I am sure that in the twisted world of the Zurich gnomes, the public airing of their dirty laundry is far more shocking than the myriad international crimes which are thus exposed. After all it might stop them from making more money, Heaven forbid!

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    Any one of the Wiki leak tendrils or perhaps YouTube?

    The YouTube link will be copied by all and sundry and put on mainstream news then.

    Put it on YouTube.

  24. heystoopid
    Coat

    Updated funny ha ha

    Update Switzerland actually signed off a US Free Trade Agreement in 2006/7 at the same time as Japan so as to protect each other countries IP rights and the other usual crap that goes with it !

    Thus the Swiss Bankers may through their US authorised agents apply under the reciprocal rights sub clause for a 1998 BONO DMCA take down notice to remove only the offending copyright documents at any US Federal Court , who then issues the appropriate documentation to the offending party after a hearing into the affair is conducted within the guidelines as laid in in the rule book and the limits of the law in question no more no less !

    However , they cannot remove copies of open court hearing documents or information that both parties have tended as evidence and/ or are using in any civil case as they are now classified as open court documents for all to see, nor are they entitled to remove open comments from public officials !

    If you look very carefully at the Judge Jeff White and his resume the bulk of his legal career was that of a teacher of legal theory and that of court presentation(AKA stage managing on his own terms and prejudices to real events) and also a consultant of some sort to a large legal firm prior to GW Bush appointing him to the bench in 2002!

    The US Federal Court System is broken down by type , one very special secret rubber stamp court and further with districts to oversee appeals from judgements handed down by Federal Judges and Magistrates within specific areas , and then ultimately the Supreme Justices are the definitive top of the tree , and whose judgements then become the bench marks of the land !

    Surprisingly the Federal Appeal District ,of which California forms part of , is one the more liberal and more active in overturning poor judgement by fellow Federal Judges(the US States have their own separate judicial systems with an appeal oversight so you can see the US Judicial system is a nightmare as we have state law/federal law/grey area in between law )

    Prior to this fiasco a number of emails were sent to wiki however they failed at all times to specify which documents were copyright and those which were open court documents merely demanded the removal of all reference to the bankers which also included open newspaper research articles printing quotes from US government officials and no other information was provided !

    Now the good judge conducted a questionable court hearing behind closed doors failing to allow due process and the other party full access to appropriate legal advisors and summarily truncated their legal right of reply and then issued a summary notice which exceeded the bounds as set out in the 1998 DMCA Act as one can only remove the offending documents and not the entire website with unrelated documents to the action in question , as that is an absolute breech of free speech period !

    This of course raises a big can of worms and of course Wiki as it is set up has a variety of servers and mirrors in various countries plus he appears not very computer literate and also overlooked or failed to understand the function of Google Caches or how the intertubes function , for short of a total system shut down the data that circles the tubes of the world has a life independent of it's point of origin quite literally !

    I am sure the legal consultants and the owners of this site having finally got hold of what appears to be a very faulty summary execution judgement DMCA notice , taking it apart line by line , with numerous procedural errors and hearing mistakes and replete with assorted case law references will be appealing his unusual judgement as we speak with just cause !

    I'll get my coat

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