The Witch-hunt on Wikileaks

[Pi-Qui Baltink]

or how corruption and evil work together to bring down the truth

On Sunday 28 November Wikileaks began releasing the first of its 250,000 leaked US embassy cables. Almost immediately, a hacking

attack known as a "DDOS" – distributed denial of service – attack tried to knock it off the net. These are the attacks that have

followed in the succeeding days.
Sunday 28 November

• TECH: DDoS attack hits WikiLeaks as first set of US diplomatic cables is published.
Wednesday 1 December

• TECH: Tableau Software, which offers free software for data visualisation, removes the public views of graphics built using

information about the diplomatic cables. It is the first company to distance itself from Wikileaks, and admits that the reason was

pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent senator with ties to the Democratic party.

• POLITICS: Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security, calls for Wikileaks to be taken offline. "I call

on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks'

illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No

responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

• TECH Amazon removes Wikileaks's content from its EC2 cloud service, but later insists it did so because the content could cause

harm to people and did not belong to Wikileaks – and that it was not due to political pressure or the hacker attacks against the

site.
Friday 3 December

• TECH: Wikileaks.org ceases to work for web users after easyDNS.com, which had provided a free routing service translating the

human-readable address into a machine-readable form, ends support.

Wikileaks shifts to a backup domain registered in Switzerland but actually hosted in Sweden, at Wikileaks.ch, though the cables

are hosted in part by OVH, an internet provider in the north of France.

EasyDNS claims that the DDOS attacks against Wikileaks were disrupting its service provided to thousands of other customers. It

insists on its front page that it "The Company That Did NOT Take Down Wikileaks" beside a cartoon character showing a thumbs up.

• POLITICS: French industry minister Eric Besson writes to internet companies warning them there will be "consequences" for any

companies or organisations helping to keep WikiLeaks online in the country.
Saturday 4 December

• MONEY: PayPal, owned by US auction site eBay, permanently restricts account used by WikiLeaks due to a "violation of the PayPal

Acceptable Use Policy". A spokesman said the account was suspended because "[it] cannot be used for any activities that encourage,

promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."
You can still donate at Commerzbank Kassel in Germany or Landsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at the University

of Melbourne or at http://wikileaks.ch/support.html

• TECH: Switch, the Swiss registrar for Wikileaks.ch declines pressure from US and French authorities to remove the site or block

access to it.
Sunday 3 December

• TECH: The Pirate Party in Sweden says that it has taken over the hosting of the Cablegate directory of Wikileaks after the

server in France at OVH, which had been hosting the contents of the US diplomatic cables released so far, goes offline.
Monday 6 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Mastercard withdraws ability to make donations to Wikileaks. "MasterCard is taking action to ensure

that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," the credit card outfit says.

• TECH: Wikileaks' servers in Sweden attacked by distributed denial of service attack.

• MONEY: Postfinance, the Swiss postal system, strips WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of a key fundraising tool, accusing him of

lying and immediately shutting down one of his bank accounts. The bank says that Assange had "provided false information regarding

his place of residence during the account opening process."
Assange had told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident, a requirement of opening

such an account. Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty told The Associated Press the account was closed Monday afternoon and there

would be "no criminal consequences" for misleading authorities. "That's his money, he will get his money back," Josty said. "We

just close the account and that's it."
Tuesday 7 December

• MONEY: Credit card company Visa withdraws ability to make donations or payments to Wikileaks. "Visa Europe has taken action to

suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it

contravenes Visa operating rules," said a spokesman.