Dumbstruck - Wikileaks, law, cyberware and politics (regulary updated)

Wikileaks as of 12/9/2010 has yet to be convicted of any crime by the US government.

Most reasonable folk can agree that the unauthorized release (leak) of sensitive information should be handled with care. The trouble is most folk are neither sensible, nor in agreement about what sensitive information is.

And the story continues to unfold...

Update on Legal Position
12/09/2010: "The U.S. government indicated 12/09/2010 that WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange could be in legal jeopardy for disclosing classified information because he is "not a journalist." When asked whether "traditional media" organizations that republish secret documents could be prosecuted, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that the administration applauds "the role of journalists in your daily pursuits." "In our view, Mr. Assange is not a journalist," Crowley added". Source here.

12/10/2010: "Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the man behind the publication of more than a 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, could soon be facing spying charges in the U.S. related to the Espionage Act, Assange's lawyer said today" Source: here

12/13/2010: The World War I Espionage Law criminalizes anyyone who possesses or transmits any "information relating to the national defense" which an individual has "reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation." The Espionage Act was not written to distinguish the leaker or the spy and the recipient. 

Streaming Reactions

The US government is rightfully so more than livid and is exploring the options. A slew of companies have pulled the plug on the Wikileaks organization from Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, EveryDNS.

Here is Amazon Web Services getting an earful from some of their customers for pulling the plug.

A new Wikileaks kid on the block is on tap reported by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported today. The new project: Openleaks is said to be online any time now. "The two organizations are similar in that aspect that both are focusing on providing means for whistleblowers to anonymously provide the public with information,” as stated by an insider.

The Politics: 
Varying positions continue to be voiced. One side of the debate foxnews and the other side... the atlantic

The Attacks and Counter Attacks
12/8/2010: Lets get this party started
Wikileaks plays it cool and diversifies -- real quick --spreading its documents on mirror sites, adding redundancy to "caller-id" DNS look-ups and a variety of things so it can take a licking and keep on ticking.

And things all of a sudden start to escalate into extremist and rash retaliation  Reuters: "More cyber attacks in retaliation for attempts to block the WikiLeaks website are likely in a "data war" to protect Internet freedom, a representative of one of the groups involved said Thursday"

12/9/2010: Operation Payback in the news.
"A collective of hackers who have set their sights on those companies that have denied service to WikiLeaks and its founder are now trying to take down Amazon.com. They announced via Twitter that they would begin their attack at 11 a.m. ET". Source: http://mashable.com/2010/12/09/operation-payback-amazo/

Espionage act 'Makes Felons of Us All' - legal experts

Quotes 
"To me, New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they've committed a crime, I think that bears very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department," IS Senator Joe Lieberman

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -1984, George Orwell 

I think in today's climate, telling the truth is classified as "terrorism"

 

"In our view, Mr. Assange is not a journalist" State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley

"Leaks of classified information to the press have only rarely been punished as crimes, and we are aware of no case in which a publisher of information obtained through unauthorized disclosure by a government employee has been prosecuted for publishing it," - Jennifer Elsea, a legal researcher for the US Congress

Techie Section
Its just like a video game: Operation Payback is asking its followers to download a piece of software called LOIC to fire off a distributed denial of service attack at targets. The question of course is “what IF I get caught”. Here is a snipped from from one of their FAQ’s. By the way V& stands for Van’d – as in when the FBI shows up at your house in Van:

• You probably won't. It's recommended that attack with over 9000 other anons while attacking alone pretty much means doing nothing. If you are a complete idio and LOIC a small server alone, there is a chance of getting V&. No one will bother let alone have the resources to deal with DDoS attacks that happens every minute around the world. Then theres always the botnet excuse. Just say your pc was infected by a botnet and you have since ran antivirus programs and what not to try to get rid of it. Or just say you have NFI what a DDoS is at all.