[governance] FW: [IP] Fwd: Wikileaks Domain Revoked?

Riaz K Tayob riaz.tayob at gmail.com
Sat Dec 4 17:32:17 EST 2010 

Is there now really a case for ruling the root in the US?

On 2010/12/04 10:50 PM, Ian Peter wrote:
> The real issue is that some governments around the world are trying to shut
> down an organization that helps whistleblowers publish information.
>
> In the absence of any policy regime covering such internet usage issues,
> corporations are bowing to government pressure and/or acting unilaterally to
> preserve government secrecy and the way things used to be before the digital
> age.
>
> This absence of a policy regime and any universally accepted principles is
> one of the internet governance issues we should raise in the current
> enquiries.
>
> .
>
> Ian Peter
>
>
>
>
>> From: "Carlos A. Afonso"<ca at cafonso.ca>
>> Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:35:35 -0200
>> To:<governance at lists.cpsr.org>, Ian Peter<ian.peter at ianpeter.com>
>> Cc: Lee W McKnight<lmcknigh at syr.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [governance] FW: [IP] Fwd: Wikileaks Domain Revoked?
>>
>> Yes, and we believe in fairy tales and in Santa Claus. :) I would like
>> to see in Wikileaks in the near future the exchange of "cables" between
>> Lieberman and Bezos :)
>>
>> --c.a.
>>
>> On 12/04/2010 06:24 PM, Ian Peter wrote:
>>> Sure, sure - and paypal just denied wikileaks donations on policy grounds,
>>> and everydns shut the site because of usage issues after a call from Joe
>>> Liebermann....
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: Lee W McKnight<lmcknigh at syr.edu>
>>>> Reply-To:<governance at lists.cpsr.org>, Lee W McKnight<lmcknigh at syr.edu>
>>>> Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 14:54:57 -0500
>>>> To: "governance at lists.cpsr.org"<governance at lists.cpsr.org>
>>>> Subject: [governance] FW: [IP] Fwd: Wikileaks Domain Revoked?
>>>>
>>>> Since we're talking Vittorio's holiday shopping...Amazon's denial re their
>>>> cessation of service w Wikileaks was not politics but for violating terms of
>>>> service, below.
>>>>
>>>> Lee
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: Dave Farber [dave at farber.net]
>>>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 4:11 AM
>>>> To: ip
>>>> Subject: [IP] Fwd: Wikileaks Domain Revoked?
>>>>
>>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>>
>>>> From: Sam<samwaltz.groups at gmail.com<mailto:samwaltz.groups at gmail.com>>
>>>> Date: December 3, 2010 9:18:23 PM EST
>>>> To: Dave Farber IP<dave at farber.net<mailto:dave at farber.net>>
>>>> Subject: Wikileaks Domain Revoked?
>>>>
>>>> This may be of interest to the list.
>>>>
>>>> Sam
>>>> https://www.mensa.org/user/6020
>>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-knocked-off-net-d
>>>> ns
>>>> -everydns
>>>>
>>>> WikiLeaks fights to stay online after US company withdraws domain name
>>>> Everydns.net<http://Everydns.net>   says attack against leaks site endangered
>>>> other
>>>> customers' service ­ effectively pushing site off the web
>>>> Charles Arthur and Josh Halliday
>>>> guardian.co.uk<http://guardian.co.uk>,     Friday 3 December 2010 07.54 GMT
>>>>
>>>> WikiLeaks was removed from its wikileaks.org<http://wikileaks.org>   address.
>>>> Photograph: Joe
>>>> Raedle/Getty Images
>>>> The US was today accused of opening up a dramatic new front against
>>>> WikiLeaks, effectively "killing" its web address just days after
>>>> Amazon pulled the site from its servers following political pressure.
>>>>
>>>> The whistleblowers' website went offline for the third time in a week
>>>> this morning, in the biggest threat to its online presence yet.
>>>>
>>>> Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland
>>>> security, earlier this week called for any organisation helping
>>>> sustain WikiLeaks to "immediately terminate" its relationship with
>>>> them.
>>>>
>>>> On Friday morning, WikiLeaks and the cache of secret diplomatic
>>>> documents that have proved to be a scourge for governments around the
>>>> world were only accessible through a string of digits known as a DNS
>>>> address. The site later re-emerged with a Swiss domain,
>>>> WikiLeaks.ch<http://WikiLeaks.ch>.
>>>>
>>>> Julian Assange this morning said the development is an example of the
>>>> "privatisation of state censorship" in the US and is a "serious
>>>> problem."
>>>>
>>>> "These attacks will not stop our mission, but should be setting off
>>>> alarm bells about the rule of law in the United States," he warned.
>>>>
>>>> The California-based internet hosting provider that dropped WikiLeaks
>>>> at 3am GMT on Friday (10PM EST Thursday), Everydns, says it did so to
>>>> prevent its other 500,000 customers of being affected by the intense
>>>> cyber attacks targeted at WikiLeaks.
>>>>
>>>> The site this morning said it had "move[d] to Switzerland", announcing
>>>> a new domain name ­ wikileaks.ch<http://wikileaks.ch>, with the Swiss
>>>> suffix.
>>>> However, the
>>>> new address still only points to an IP address, suggesting WikiLeaks
>>>> has been unable to quickly find a new hosting provider.
>>>>
>>>> The Wikileaks.ch<http://Wikileaks.ch>   domain name, which only surfaced on
>>>> Friday morning,
>>>> is being served by the Swiss Pirate Party. And the routing to it is
>>>> still being done by everydns.
>>>>
>>>> Late yesterday evening Tableau Software, a company which published
>>>> data visualisations, pulled one of its images picturing the WikiLeaks
>>>> diplomatic cables at the request of Senator Lieberman. Writing on the
>>>> company's blog, Elissa Fink said: "Our decision to remove the data
>>>> from our servers came in response to a public request by Senator Joe
>>>> Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, when he
>>>> called for organisations hosting WikiLeaks to terminate their
>>>> relationship with the website."
>>>>
>>>> Mark Stephens, the London-based lawyer acting on behalf of Assange,
>>>> wrote on Twitter after the shutdown: "Pressure appears to have been
>>>> applied to close the WikiLeaks domain name."
>>>>
>>>> Andre Rickardsson, an expert on computer security at Sweden's Bitsec
>>>> Consulting, told Reuters: "I don't believe for a second that this has
>>>> been done by everydns themselves. I think they've been under
>>>> pressure," he said, apparently referring to US authorities.
>>>>
>>>> A new Germany-based WikiLeaks domain ­
>>>> wikileaks.dd19.de<http://wikileaks.dd19.de>   ­ also
>>>> appeared on Friday morning, with its data apparently hosted in
>>>> California. People have also taken to setting up alternative domain
>>>> names that point to the WikiLeaks address. Robin Fenwick, a UK-based
>>>> web services director, this morning launched
>>>> Wikileeks.org.uk<http://Wikileeks.org.uk>   ­ a
>>>> "joke domain" that points to the WikiLeaks DNS address.
>>>>
>>>> In a statement on its website, the free everydns.net<http://everydns.net>
>>>> service said that
>>>> the "distributed denial of service" (DDOS) attacks by unknown hackers
>>>> ­ who are trying to knock WikiLeaks off the net ­ meant that the leaks
>>>> site was interfering with the service being provided to other users.
>>>> That in turn meant that WikiLeaks had broken
>>>> everydns.net<http://everydns.net>'s terms of
>>>> service, and it cut the site off at 3am GMT on Friday (10PM EST
>>>> Thursday).
>>>>
>>>> DNS services translate a website name, such as
>>>> guardian.co.uk<http://guardian.co.uk>, into
>>>> machine-readable "IP quads" ­ in that case 77.91.249.30, so that
>>>> http://77.91.249.30 will show the Guardian site. If the DNS fails, the
>>>> site is only reachable via IP address ­ but WikiLeaks has not yet
>>>> provided one via Twitter or other means.
>>>>
>>>> Everydns.net<http://Everydns.net>   said that the attacks ­ which have been
>>>> going on all
>>>> week, and led the site to temporarily host its services on Amazon's
>>>> more resilient EC2 "cloud computing" service ­ "threaten the stability
>>>> of the EveryDNS.net<http://EveryDNS.net>   infrastructure, which enables
>>>> access
>>>> to almost
>>>> 500,000 other websites".
>>>>
>>>> WikiLeaks was given 24 hours' notice of the termination, and everydns
>>>> said: "Any downtime of the wikileaks.org<http://wikileaks.org>   website has
>>>> resulted from its
>>>> failure to use another hosted DNS service provider."
>>>>
>>>> The move comes after several days of WikiLeaks coming under a
>>>> determined DDOS attack, apparently from hackers friendly to the point
>>>> of view of the US government, which has disparaged the site's leaking
>>>> of thousands of US diplomatic cables.
>>>>
>>>> US companies have also come under intense political pressure to remove
>>>> any connection to, or support for, WikiLeaks. Amazon ended its hosting
>>>> of the cables on its EC2 cloud computer service earlier this week, but
>>>> last night insisted in a blogpost that its decision was not due to
>>>> pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, who has called for the removal of
>>>> the data ­ and who has influenced at least one other US company to
>>>> withdraw support for WikiLeaks data.
>>>>
>>>> In a blogpost late on Thursday, Amazon said reports that government
>>>> inquiries prompted it to remove the data were "inaccurate".
>>>>
>>>> Amazon said:
>>>>
>>>> "[Amazon Web Services] does not pre-screen its customers, but it does
>>>> have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not
>>>> following them. There were several parts they were violating. For
>>>> example, our terms of service state that "you represent and warrant
>>>> that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the contentŠ
>>>> that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and
>>>> will not cause injury to any person or entity". It's clear that
>>>> WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this
>>>> classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary
>>>> volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing
>>>> could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that
>>>> they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy."
>>>>
>>>> It noted that:
>>>>
>>>> "When companies or people go about securing and storing large
>>>> quantities of data that isn't rightfully theirs, and publishing this
>>>> data without ensuring it won't injure others, it's a violation of our
>>>> terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere."
>>>>
>>>> But as commentators have pointed out, that stance is contradicted by
>>>> the fact that Amazon has previously hosted the "war logs" from
>>>> WikiLeaks which contained data about the US wars in Afghanistan and
>>>> Iraq.
>>>>
>>>> Connecting to WikiLeaks is presently not possible until it gets a new
>>>> DNS service. WikiLeaks itself said on Twitter that the ending of DNS
>>>> services was allegedly due to "claimed mass attacks" and called for
>>>> further donations to "keep us strong".
>>>>
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