Wikileaks founder Julian Assange arrested in the UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11937110

Is Tumblr back up?  That's all that matters....

This I will be watching with interest...

As the report says: 

"Scotland Yard said Mr Assange was arrested by appointment at a London police station at 0930 GMT."

which means he gave himself up... this is on the 8th paragraph and under the photo is the caption

"Julian Assange surrendered himself to police in London".

Yet the article leads with

"The founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by police in London."

But this is now turning into a tit for tat digital war already that no one will win. and there will be lots of innocent casualties.

PostFinance's tech team Vs. Serious "p* off" hackers. I don't rate the banks chances.

"The hacker group, ”anonymous” has called for attacks on both PostFinance and PayPal, in what it has called “Operation Payback” for groups which are against digital piracy."  

Sorry Translator, I am not defending the actions of either group that started the DDoS attacks but that comment is inaccurate, it's not to do with defending piracy. Lets not confuse this matter any further than it is already.

A member of Anonymous who calls himself Coldblood told the BBC that "multiple things are being done".

"Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets," he said.

"As an organisation we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means." -source BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11935539

This is in response to the decisions of varied companies to either pull hosting, income channels and DNS services, and as the site was hit by DDoS attacks after they released they latest bout of sensitive information this has been the chosen form of retaliation.

"Wikileaks has been hit by a series of denial-of-service attacks, following the release of a quarter of a million US embassy cables."

If not I am next as over the years I have published many online documents about why you shouldn't pirate.

However the reason for the attack on PostFinance was:

"The Swiss bank, PostFinance has closed the account of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

In all cases, the companies have insisted their decisions are not politically motivated.

PayPal said Wikileaks' account had violated its terms of services.

PostFinance, meanwhile, claimed Assange had provided false information when opening his account."

All this I believe has happened in the last week - arrested, bank accounts frozen, DDoS attacks, DNS refusal, plus much more, if these are all unrelated Assange is having one hell of a bad week. 

Virtually all press groups have released leaks at sometime and many of these leaks have been dangerous - I am not defending them - but surely if we are going to compare wikileaks to Al-Queda what about the BBC when they publish a leaked document?

Who decides when a document is dangerous? Or should we just agree on an international law that publishing data owned by some else without permission is copyright theft? This is one of those tricky debates and falls into the the camp of "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter"

But to wrap this up - Hackers attack a Swiss bank in defence of Assange and yet...

"Wikileaks was forced to switch to a Swiss host server after several US internet service providers refused to handle it."

I can't really consider that the hackers thought out this attack very well, it's a bit like biting the hand that feeds you.

So this I will be watching with interest...

Anonymous is a group of individuals without any hierarchy or leadership who attack different entitities to demonstrate against US Governments failing attemps to suppress freedom of speech and practice censorship. This time DDoS attacks are because of this, but usually they have been agains RIAA etc. piracy attacking entities.

And no worries if the attacks are on Switzerland because information have been replicated to mirror sites. At some point of the morning I saw something like 400 replicas already.

http://bubbloy.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/twitter-is-censoring-the-discussion-of-wikileaks/

Cannot understand the fact why US is taking actions to censorship Internet when they should be very well aware it cannot be done. Guess they try to hang on with the sinking ship.

And something to make this post as funny in form of talk about the importance of free Internet

Or what say U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton about free information:

"On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it."

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full

@Pepso

You raise some important points...the US can't simply complain about China, even though I am not always in favor of highly classified government information being publicly disclosed.

That being said, the hackers are, indeed, protesting against Swiss PostFinance because they closed Assange's account, stating that he lied about Swiss residency.

In fact, I am wondering how he got to open the account without a residency permit. 

Will be interesting to see how things shape up... Will Assange be granted bail or will  he be determined a flight risk?  Will Switzerland give Assange asylum?  Stay tuned...

It is very easy to open an account with the postfinance even though you have no address. They ask you if you can provide the address of a friend and that's it. They don't even care if it is your real address... I experimented it, they didn't even want the italian address. So it is funny that they said it is the reason why they are closing the bank account.   : )))

funny, they asked me for my permit and made a copy of it...

Assange denied bail...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11937110

Did you tell them off and wind them up?

My partner opened with hers with her Bazooka Joe identity card...

Only kidding she used her Spanish Passport, same thing really .

Regardless - Amazon, Paypal & PostFinance are part of trying to shut down "Wikileaks" or at least trying to distance themselves from the organisation.

The way this is being handled reminds me a bit of Capone.

Not that I am arguing on the side of Wikilinks either. 

The fact is there is a MASSIVE difference between sharing public information and your opinions to "leak" I can think of 4 reasons why leaks are bad news regardless of who reports them, and as I stated before the news is full of "leaks", Wikileaks just took this to the next level.

1 - Can put lives or businesses in danger

2 - Strains public and international relations, in the world we are living in do we really want to create more problems? 

3 - "Leaks" are not official, they are rumours and discussions, by the time they get released (if ever) they often don't resemble the original "leak", they are in a word unreliable - Conversations likewise are just the privately expressed opinions of the participants- not government released view points.

4 - We all have secrets and need them to function, for instance your pin number for your bank card the code for your alarm...

Even when "leaks" are correct they aren't ready for release or even vaguely what you would normally say in public. For instance I once had a conversation with a client he was a manager for business that was 1 part of 3 companies. I was redesigning all 3 businesses websites, another of the managers was holding up the project by being difficult.

During a phone conversation we discussed this manager:

Myself and the Client both had to explain ourselves to the owner of the company. My client put it simply: The other manager had no right to be listening to what was a private conversation, and then less right to report it- it was a breach of privacy. He then stated however he stood by what he said and that the other manager was a D*#%head.

The next I went to see the offended manager, apologised and then called him a D*#%head once again - this time with a big grin on my face and infront of the whole office. Strangely we had a very good working relationship after that.

It turned out OK that time, but that overheard and reported conversation could just have easily cost me many months of work.

We all need our privacy - even if only to vent.

The questions is - is the real problem "Wikileaks"? or the people doing the leaking?

And is the solution - Arresting somebody over an unrelated matter, causing businesses to distance themselves and DDoS attacks?

All anybody has done so far is polarise the hacking community behind Assange. Even if he is sent to jail, even if he is guilty, it won't stop what h has started.

The other question is - does a leak count as distributing stolen material?

Don't know the answer to that question yet... Of course,  the soldier who stole the classified documents will probably end up breaking rocks at Fort Levenworth  for the rest of his natural life.

As for  Assange, it is unclear whether he could be prosecuted under  US espionage laws, as he was not a spy nor was he a USG official under legal obligation  to protect classified information.  However, there may be other laws on the  books under  which Assange might be tried in  the US.

The link below discusses the evolution of the rape charges.  Of course, one  might ask how many alleged rapists in the UK legal system are held in remand because they are deemed to be a flight risk?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/07/rape-claims-julian-assange

@Chris (Little)Rock:

"Did you tell them off and wind them up?"

Nah, didn't  tell them off about asking for my permit to open an account.  SwissPost is one of my favorite Swiss institutions!  If only because it answers letters from  kids who write to Santa/Little Baby Jesus in Heaven...

Hell, you should see what it takes to open an account in the US since the so-called Patriot Act after 9/11.   Some places require a thumbprint, 2 forms of identification, blah, blah, blah... And you don't even get a free toaster! 

Yep can't agree more about SwissPost.

As for the Assange charges - I am in no way saying he didn't do it.

You and I don't know, however a lot of people will dismiss it and say that its all about the Wikileaks scandal, its a conspiracy... yah dah yah dah...

The whole thing has spiralled out of control very quickly. 

If he is proved innocent he will be "the guy who took on the estabilshment and won". If he loses he will be a martyr. Either way just like there are vast amounts of mirror sites up now as the issue hasn't been "wikileaks" it means that we will start to see new sites based on the idea.

Social networking after all wasn't started by Facebook, hell we are on a social networking site, "Wikileaks" unless some legal way of stopping it is devised will be the first of many.

The internet is full of half baked ideas and conspiracy already do we want to encourage more? People will start to quote "Wikileaks" like they quote "wikipedia" soon.