Wikileaks on the air despite U.S. Court “shutdown” order.
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On Friday Feb. 15, 2008 Judge Jeffrey S. White of the U. S. District Court, Northern District of California, ordered Dynadot LLC, the Domain Name Registrar for Wikileaks.org, to “immediately disable the wikileaks.org domain name and account to prevent access to and any changes from being made to the domain name and account information.”1 Wikileaks is the anonymized network that, among other things, released the Operations Manual for Camp Delta, Guantánamo. |
A post in the wee hours of Saturday morning on Freedom4um noted the WikiLeaks either had Domain Name Service problems or was under a Temporary Restraining Order. Subsequent posters later in the morning confirmed that WikiLeaks was not accessible through its domain name wikileaks.org, but was accessible through some but not all of its Public Cover Names. Wired reported the story on Presidents Day [Monday Feb. 18, 2008].
I found out about this, NOT because Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society was practicing eternal vigilance. No, it was Havard’s Philosophy Librarian who still reads slashdot regularly who – in reporting on Google Knol – linked to slashdot. I followed the wrong link, scrolled to find Jason’s target, found this which points to an article by Apple employee #10 Robert X. Cringely.2
I do, at some point, want to get back to Jason’s Google Knol post, but the whole search business is such a can of worms. For example, what people with inside knowledge of Harvard’s deal with Google, went long on Google stock and shorted competitors? Does such conduct, if it occurred, “…conduce to the education of the English and Indian youth of this country, in knowledge and godliness…”? Maybe the answer will appear on WikiLeaks.
1This purported copy of the court order is being served up by WikiLeakS Christmas Island server. I suppose I could figure out how to confirm it’s authenticity, but the claim is there’s some law talent in the Berkman Center. Maybe they could do it more easily?
2He, among others, points out that the IP address [88.80.13.160] of the main U.S. site still works.
