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#2
12-08-2010, 12:30 PM
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Texan company with US/Afghan contract pimped little boys to stoned Afghan cops. US Diplomats covered it up.
Viewing cable 09KABUL1651, 06/23/09 MEETING, ASSISTANT AMB MUSSOMELI AND MOI Code:
Content, Pictures and Download links visible to registered users only. REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members. SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR SRAP, SCA/A, INL, EUR/RPM STATE PASS TO NSC FOR WOOD OSD FOR FLOURNOY CENTCOM FOR CG CJTF-82, POLAD, JICENT KABUL FOR COS USFOR-A EO 12958 DECL: 06/23/2019 TAGS PREL, PGOV, MARR, MASS, AF SUBJECT: 06/23/09 MEETING, ASSISTANT AMB MUSSOMELI AND MOI MINISTER ATMAR: KUNDUZ DYNCORP PROBLEM, TRANSPORT FOR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES AND OTHER TOPICS REF: KABUL 1480 Classified By: POLMIL COUNSELOR ROBERT CLARKE FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND ( D) ?1. (C) SUMMARY: Assistant Ambassador Mussomeli discussed a range of issues with Minister of Interior (MoI) Hanif Atmar on June 23. On the Kunduz Regional Training Center (RTC) DynCorp event of April 11 (reftel), Atmar reiterated his insistence that the U.S. try to quash any news article on the incident or circulation of a video connected with it. He continued to predict that publicity would ?endanger lives.? He disclosed that he has arrested two Afghan police and nine other Afghans as part of an MoI investigation into Afghans who facilitated this crime of ?purchasing a service from a child.? He pressed for CSTC-A to be given full control over the police training program, including contractors. Mussomeli counseled that an overreaction by the Afghan goverment (GIRoA) would only increase chances for the greater publicity the MoI is trying to forestall. ?2. (C) On armored vehicles and air transport for presidential candidates, Atmar pitched strongly to have the GIRoA decide which candidates were under threat and to retain control of allocation of these assets. He agreed with the principle of a level playing field for candidates but argued that ?direct support by foreigners? demonstrated a lack of confidence in GIRoA. If GIRoA failed to be fair, international assets and plans in reserve could be used. On another elections-related issue, Atmar claimed that two Helmand would-be provincial candidates (and key Karzai supporters) disqualified under DIAG rules had actually possessed weapons as part of a GIRoA contract to provide security for contractors. ?3. (C) Atmar also was enthusiastic about working out arrangements with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) in RC-South to partner with the Afghan Border Police (ABP) on training and joint operations to extend GIRoA governance south. He is considering giving BG Melham, a highly regarded Afghan officer, responsibility for ABP in Nimruz and Helmand provinces. END SUMMARY. KUNDUZ RTC DYNCORP UPDATE ?4. (C) On June 23, Assistant Ambassador Mussomeli met with MOI Minister Hanif Atmar on a number of issues, beginning with the April 11 Kunduz RTC DynCorp investigation. Amb Mussomeli opened that the incident deeply upset us and we took strong steps in response. An investigation is on-going, disciplinary actions were taken against DynCorp leaders in Afghanistan, we are also aware of proposals for new procedures, such as stationing a military officer at RTCs, that have been introduced for consideration. (Note: Placing military officers to oversee contractor operations at RTCs is not legally possible under the currentDynCorp contract.) Beyond remedial actions taken, we still hope the matter will not be blown out of proportion, an outcome which would not be good for either the U.S. or Afghanistan. A widely-anticipated newspaper article on the Kunduz scandal has not appeared but, if there is too much noise that may prompt the journalist to publish. ?5. (C) Atmar said he insisted the journalist be told that publication would endanger lives. His request was that the U.S. quash the article and release of the video. Amb Mussomeli responded that going to the journalist would give her the sense that there is a more terrible story to report. Atmar then disclosed the arrest of two Afghan National Police (ANP) and nine other Afghans (including RTC language assistants) as part of an MoI investigation into Afghan ?facilitators? of the event. The crime he was pursuing was ?purchasing a service from a child,? which in Afghanistan is illegal under both Sharia law and the civil code, and against the ANP Code of Conduct for police officers who might be involved. He said he would use the civil code and that, in this case, the institution of the ANP will be protected, but he worried about the image of foreign mentors. Atmar said that President Karzai had told him that his (Atmar?s) ?prestige? was in play in management of the Kunduz DynCorp matter and another recent event in which Blackwater contractors mistakenly killed several Afghan citizens. The President had asked him ?Where is the justice?? ?6. (C) Atmar said there was a larger issue to consider. He KABUL 00001651 002 OF 003 understood that within DynCorp there were many ?wonderful? people working hard, and he was keen to see proper action taken to protect them; but, these contractor companies do not have many friends. He was aware that many questions about them go to SRAP Holbrooke and, in Afghanistan, there is increasing public skepticism about contractors. On the other hand, the conduct of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) is disciplined. Looking at these facts, he said, he wanted CSTC-A in charge. He wanted the ANP to become a model security institution just like the Afghan National Army (ANA) and National Directorate for Security (NDS), and the contractors were not producing what was desired. He suggested that the U.S. establish and independent commission to review the mentor situation, an idea he said Ambassador Eikenberry had first raised. Atmar added that he also wanted tighter control over Afghan employees. He was convinced that the Kunduz incident, and other events where mentors had obtained drugs, could not have happened without Afghan participation. ARMORED VEHICLES (AND AIR TRANSPORT) FOR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ?7. (C) Atmar expressed strong opinions about the use of armored vehicles for travel by presidential candidates that he has requested be provided to MoI by the U.S. and UK. He said it was up to MoI to decide whether a candidate was under threat or not. Atmar opined that it should be an MoD responsibility to provide air transport for presidential candidates. Amb Mussomeli explained that we want a level playing field, which Atmar agreed was necessary. However, Atmar said there were two important considerations: 1) some of the electorate will view that the candidates are controlled by foreigners if provided non-GIRoA transport; and 2) bypassing the MoI or MoD with ?direct support by foreigners? demonstrated a lack of confidence in the Afghanistan government. When Amb Mussomeli said MOD lacked adequate aircraft to cover all candidates, Atmar responded that MoD could ask ISAF for help but should retain control of the travel. Amb Mussomeli pointed out that some reasonably worried that such a plan will falter or will not be fairly implemented. Atmar answered ?Just give us a chance. If we fail, then you have your own planes and plans in reserve.? DIAG-DISQUALIFIED CANDIDATES IN HELMAND ?8. (C) In a discussion on two would-be provincial election candidates in Helmand who were disqualified by the Disbandment of Illegally Armed Groups (DIAG) program, Atmar said he had looked into requests to stand firm against their reinstatement, but it was a ?big, contentious issue that is not explainable to President Karzai.? Atmar said that the only reason these two candidates were barred was for having weapons, apparently against DIAG rules. In fact, he said, they were ?contracted by the state? to have those weapons in order to provide security for contractors. He acknowledged that the ?contract? had not been properly registered, and suggested that the GIRoA would take care of the registration. AFGHAN BORDER POLICE (ABP) AND PARTNERING WITH THE MARINES IN RC-SOUTH ?9. (C) Atmar enthusiastically proposed an MOI meeting with the leadership of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) and CSTC-A to work out arrangements for good partnering, training, and joint operations with Afghan security forces in RC-South. The MEB would like two ABP companies (approximately 250 police) currently located near Lashkar Gah to move south, and to be mobile enough to move further south when opportunities arise. The MEB would like a customs officer to be attached to these ABP companies so that the reach of GIRoA governance can be extended when insurgent-controlled or dominated territory is opened. Atmar stopped short of making a final promise to give a highly-regarded Afghan officer, BG Melham (whom he personally respects), responsibility for the ABP in Nimruz and Helmand provinces, but he was aware of concerns about the current responsible officer (BG Noorzai). KABUL INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL (ISK) ?10. (U) Amb Mussomeli expressed concern over a plan by a District Police Chief to remove security barriers at ISK (an primary and secondary school partially dependent on USAID and other Mission funding support) that keep the road closed to KABUL 00001651 003 OF 003 normal traffic. Removing the barriers could endanger the kids and teachers who walk between two compounds. Atmar said that he was very familiar with ISK and ?no barriers would be touched,? although he added that perhaps an arrangement could be made to unblock the road and have the ISK security personnel search vehicles. EIKENBERRY Code:
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#3
12-08-2010, 12:39 PM
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PayPal Admits State Department Pressure Caused It To Block WikiLeaks
 Several days ago, PayPal, an online payment company, blocked the account WikiLeaks had been using to collect donations. Speaking at the Le Web conference in Paris, PayPal's Osama Bedier, VP of platform, mobile and new ventures, shed light on PayPal's decision to freeze the WikiLeaks account and admitted that the U.S. State Department played a role in the company's blocking of the account. "[The] State Dept told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward," Bedier said at Le Web. "We [...] comply with regulations around the world, making sure that we protect our brand." He added, according to Mashable, "We have an acceptable use policy group [...] to make sure that our customers are protected." Bedier later clarified that the State Department did not address PayPal directly, but wrote a letter to WikiLeaks explaining that the organization's actions were illegal. It was this letter that prompted PayPal to act. "As long as WikiLeaks holds such material, the violation of the law is ongoing," the State Department said in the correspondence. After WikiLeaks' account was first frozen, PayPal published a blog post explaining the block and noting that WikiLeaks had violated PayPal's "Acceptable Use Policy," which "states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." Earlier today, MasterCard's website was taken down as "payback" after MasterCard dropped WikiLeaks. Bedier was asked whether PayPal fears a similar reprisal. Story continues below Advertisement "One of the signs that you're a successful payments company is that hackers start to target you, this case isn't anything different," he replied. Code:
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#4
12-08-2010, 12:41 PM
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‘All-out cyber war’ erupts over WikiLeaks: ‘Anonymous’ hackers take MasterCard offline
 Sites for Visa, PayPal, Sen. Lieberman also targeted UPDATE: MasterCard confirms service interruption for cardholders MasterCard Worldwide confirmed on Wednesday morning that the "MasterCard Directory Server" had gone down and that cardholders were experiencing service interruptions. The revelation was made as a massive denial of service attack was staged against MasterCard, ostensibly for refusing further payments to secrets outlet WikiLeaks. "Please be advised that MasterCard SecureCode Support has detected a service disruption to the MasterCard Directory Server," MasterCard said. "The Directory Server service has been failed over to a secondary site however customers may still be experiencing intermittent connectivity issues. More information on the estimated time of recovery will be shared in due course." An earlier report follows... Yesterday, MasterCard Worldwide became the latest financial institution to face the wrath of online hackers acting to avenge secrets outlet WikiLeaks over the credit card provider's declaration that the site was engaged in "illegal" activities. Not 36 hours after MasterCard froze payments to WikiLeaks, their website was down as hackers with the group "Anonymous" launched a new wave of cyberattacks. The company said its customers could still use their credit cards for purchases, but the PayPoint retail network told a BBC reporter that MasterCard's "SecureCode" service had been taken down, interrupting service all over. The hackers also claimed responsibility for taking down the website for Swiss bank PostFinance, after it froze an account with over €31,000 set aside for site founder Julian Assange's legal defense. Assange was arrested in London yesterday on an Interpol warrant out of Sweden, where he's wanted for questioning in an investigation of sexual assault. "Anonymous" has dubbed their cyber warfare campaign "Operation Payback," threatening to "fire" on any entity that attempts to censor WikiLeaks. Service to mastercard.com was unavailable at time of this writing. The website for the Swedish prosecutor's office was also offline, as was a site for the lawyer representing Assange's accusers. Secure Computing Magazine called what's happening "an all-out cyber war," noting that massive botnets were attacking each other by mid-Wednesday morning as even the 'Anonymous' group had come under fire from another group of hackers that sought to defend US interests. That group, which was successful in taking WikiLeaks offline in late November, was also thought to be behind attacks on the 'Anonymous' website, anonops.net, which was still online at time of this writing. A "botnet" is Internet slang for a massive shadow network of computers that have been unknowingly hijacked by malicious software. They are typically used for nefarious purposes, such as distributed denial of service attacks. Credit card processor Visa also suspended payments to WikiLeaks on Tuesday morning, but its website was functional at time of this story's publication. It too was expected to come under denial of service attacks. "Operation Payback" also promised to attack PayPal, the online payment service that last week cut off WikiLeaks and froze over $60,000 in electronic donations, but their site was still online Wednesday morning. Topics trending on Twitter suggested an attack may also target the micro-blogging site. Others to suffer downtime this week include PayPal's blog, EveryDNS -- the domain name service provider that pulled WikiLeaks off it's .org address -- and Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) .gov website. Lieberman's staff was responsible for prompting Amazon.com to take WikiLeaks off its US-based cloud servers. Researchers with Panda Security have been tracking the wave of attacks, blow-for-blow. In recent days, the online to-do over WikiLeaks has been called the world's "first serious infowar" and a "war for control of the Internet." "What is this all about? And what does it have to do with censorship and Operation Payback?" 'Anonymous' asks on their website. "While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons. We want transparency and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and are unable to express our opinions and ideas. "We can not let this happen. This is why our intention is to find out who is responsible for this failed attempt at censorship. This is why we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy." Code:
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#5
12-08-2010, 12:45 PM
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This Backlash Against WikiLeaks Is Bogus And Outrageous -- What Happened To Freedom Of The Press?
 Oh, the outrage! Julian Assange should be "hunted down" and killed for revealing American government secrets. WikiLeaks is "illegal." Julian Assange has destroyed America's diplomatic efforts to make the world a better place. WikiLeaks is a "terrorist organization." Julian Assange is (basically) killing innocent people to further his own evil aims. All this because someone has published some mildly embarrassing information that some people wish hadn't been published. It's funny how it's all fine and good for the media to publish confidential information that embarrasses people that everyone hates (greedy corporate executives, for example). But when it comes to patriotic American diplomats or soldiers... Remember the Pentagon Papers? Aren't you glad the New York Times had the balls to publish them? So are we. And the same with just about everything else that has ever been published that some powerful people didn't want published. But now WikiLeaks has apparently crossed some Maginot line that now threatens our national security. We are now being told that, thanks to the evil Julian Assange, some American diplomats no longer allow notepads in meetings, for fear that WikiLeaks will eventually publish them. This, we are told, is hurting America's efforts to make the world a better place. Bullsh*t. Unless what is being discussed in those meetings is something that can't withstand public scrutiny (secret cash payoffs, bribes, assassination plots, etc.), our diplomats should have no fear of being "exposed." As almost everyone noted when those cables were published, there wasn't really anything in them that was particularly shocking or embarrassing. Our diplomats apparently weren't doing sleazy, criminal things to advance our interests. They apparently weren't lying to the public or our allies. They apparently weren't paying mercenaries to kill leaders we don't like. Etc. Overall, it was a good spot check--a sort of surprise DUI roadblock on a Saturday night, just to make sure that there aren't some folks in this country who consider themselves above the law. If our diplomats recognize that they might be held accountable for their actions--and conduct themselves accordingly--we'll all be better off. And the same goes for everyone else that WikiLeaks is "exposing" (including the military). So enough with this gnashing of teeth about how WikiLeaks must be stopped. WikiLeaks is just the messenger here, not the agent. WikiLeaks is just doing what everyone in the press always says is the reason we should have press: Digging up information that powerful people don't want you to know. (And the fact that it's doing this much better than the press is probably responsible for much of the outrage...). Code:
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#6
12-08-2010, 12:47 PM
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United States - Visa and Mastercard beneficiaries of State Department lobbying effort
WikiLeaks Staff, 8 December 2010, 14.00 GMT Visa and Mastercard both received lobbying support from the Department of State under President Obama, the latest Cablegate release reveals. A cable from the Moscow embassy, dated 1st February 2010, details a new Russian card processing law which the embassy said would ?disadvantage U.S businesses?, and urged senior US officials to take action. (click here). ?This draft law continues to disadvantage U.S. payment card market leaders Visa and MasterCard, whether they join the National Payment Card System or not,? it said. Russia was considering whether to implement a new system of card payments (called NPCS), which would create a new payment processor run by Russia?s state banks. This would then handle all processing for domestic banking in the country. ?The fees for these services are estimated at Rb 120 billion ($4 billion) annually...the vast majority of Visa?s business in Russia is done with cards issued and used in Russia; with earnings from processing going to NPCS, Visa would no longer profit from these transactions.? When discussing possible causes of the restrictive legislation, a senior Visa employee in the country told embassy officials he believed the move was due to Russian suspicions that Visa and Mastercard passed information to the US government. ?[Redacted] believes that, at least at the Deputy Minister level, MinFin?s hands are tied. Implying that Russian security services were behind this decision, [redacted] said, ?There is some se-cret (government) order that no one has seen, but everyone has to abide by it." ?As described reftel, credit card company and bank representatives have told us that GOR (government of Russia) officials apparently assume that US payment systems routinely share data associated with payment transactions by Russian cardholders with intelligence services in the US and elsewhere.? The embassy?s economic officer, Matthias Mitman, concluded his cable by calling for action. ?While the draft legislation has yet to be submitted to the Duma and can still be amended, post will continue to raise our concerns with senior GOR officials,? he said. ?We recommend that senior USG officials also take advantage of meetings with their Russian counterparts, including through the Bilateral Presidential Commission, to press the GOR to change the draft text to ensure U.S. payment companies are not adversely affected.? Code:
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#7
12-08-2010, 12:49 PM
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 WikiLeaks cables: US 'lobbied Russia on behalf of Visa and MasterCard' US diplomats intervened to try to amend draft law so that it would not 'disadvantage' US credit card firms, cable says  The US lobbied Russia this year on behalf of Visa and MasterCard in an attempt to ensure the payment companies were not "adversely affected" by new legislation, according to American diplomats in Moscow. A state department cable released this afternoon by WikiLeaks reveals that US diplomats intervened to try to amend a draft law going through Russia's Duma. Their explicit aim was to ensure the new law did not "disadvantage" the two US firms, the cable states. The revelation comes a day after Visa ? apparently acting under intense pressure from Washington ? announced it was suspending all payments to WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website. Visa was following MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon, all of which have severed ties with the site and its founder Julian Assange in the last few days. The companies have justified their decision to stop donations on the grounds that WikiLeaks is acting "illegally". Each has quickly become the target of sustained online revenge attacks by disgruntled hackers, with mastercard.com paralysed today. The cable, dated 1 February 2010, states that the Obama administration took up the companies' plight with senior Russian government officials. Earlier this year Moscow unveiled plans to create a new National Payment Card System (NPCS) that would collect all credit card fees on domestic transactions ? depriving Visa and MasterCard of a major chunk of revenue. A consortium of state-owned Russian banks would administer the system and collect processing fees "estimated at $4 billion a year", the cable claims. Additionally, sending payment data abroad would be forbidden under the law going through Russia's rubberstamp lower house of parliament ? another potential blow to the US credit card companies. In the cable Matthias Mitman, a US diplomat specialising in economic affairs, and based at the Moscow embassy, urged Obama's presidential commission on Russia to take up the issue. Obama agreed to found a new bilateral commission with the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, as part of the reset in US-Russian relations. Mitman comments: "This draft law continues to disadvantage US payment card market leaders Visa and MasterCard, whether they join the National Payment Card System (NPCS) or not. If they join, the NPCS operator will collect the fees, leaving them to collect processing fees only when card-holders travel abroad ? a tiny section of the market. "If they do not join but choose to compete with NPCS cards, they will have to set up payment processing centers in Russia, a very large investment in itself, and compete against a system likely backed by the largest Russian state banks." The answer, Mitman suggests, is for the Obama administration to actively bat for Visa and MasterCard. "While the draft legislation has yet to be submitted to the Duma and can still be amended, post will continue to raise our concerns with senior GOR officials. "We recommend that senior USG officials also take advantage of meetings with their Russian counterparts, including through the Bilateral Presidential Commission, to press the GOR to change the draft text to ensure US payment companies are not adversely affected." Code:
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#8
12-08-2010, 12:51 PM
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__________________
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#9
12-08-2010, 12:53 PM
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Wikileaks Cable Shows US Involvement in Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts
 A yet to be released cable from the US Embassy in Stockholm will reveal that the United States Government was very concerned about file-sharing related issues in Sweden. The US Embassy actively worked with the Swedish authorities to reduce file-sharing related threats, which included The Pirate Bay which was raided in 2006 following US pressure. It is no secret that the US Government has been actively involved in copyright enforcement in other countries, including Sweden. After the raid on The Pirate Bay’s servers in 2006, it became clear that the US had threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s black list if they refused to deal with the Pirate Bay problem. But that was not the end of the ‘collaboration’ between the US and Sweden on this front. According to an unreleased US Embassy cable in possession of Swedish Television, the US pressure on Sweden to deal with file-sharing issues continued in the years that followed. In the cable, which dates back to 2008, the US Embassy presented a list of six items that they wanted to see addressed, all related to online copyright infringement. A year later, five of these six items were indeed turned into action, including the appointment of more copyright police and prosecutors, backed up by educational anti-piracy campaigns. Of course, the Pirate Bay wasn’t left unmentioned in this cable either. The cable writer mentions that it was hard for the Embassy to get openly involved in piracy related issues, because most of the press coverage was unfavorable towards the copyright industry. “After the raid on The Pirate Bay on May 31, 2006, the issue of internet piracy was fiercely debated in Sweden. Press coverage was largely, and still is, unfavorable to the positions taken by the rights-holders and the United States Government,” the cable reads. “The Pirate Bay raid was portrayed as the Government of Sweden caving in to United States Government pressure. This delicate situation made it difficult, if not counter-productive, for the Embassy to play a public role in IPR issues,” it adds.  In a response to the revelations, Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask denied that Sweden ever responded to pressure from the US Government. She hinted that the cable writer was making these remarks just to get a better payday. Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde was surprised about the leaked cable, although the fact that the US put pressure on the Swedish Government was not that new to him. “We all knew for a long while that the US was behind the raid and pressured Sweden, but that they’re still doing it was news to us,” Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “And that the Minster of Justice just says that the cable writer is lying ‘to get a higher salary’ shows that she doesn’t even care if her government is corrupt.” The cable in question has not been published by Wikileaks yet, but is expected to be released in the near future. This, and other cables, are likely to add more insight into the backroom deals related to file-sharing and copyright issues. Code:
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#10
12-08-2010, 12:59 PM
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Online, the censors are scoring big wins
Attacks on WikiLeaks are part of an attack on free speech, aided by the companies that make up the Web's backbone  The WikiLeaks affair is highlighting the Internet's soft underbelly: the intermediaries on which we all rely to store our information and make it available. We are learning, to our dismay, that we cannot trust them. Combine that with increasing government intervention, we're also learning that the Internet is somewhat easier to censor than we'd assumed. This should worry anyone who believes that we're going to move our data and online lives into the fabled "cloud" -- the diffused online array of hardware and services where, proponents say, we can do our online work, play and commerce without the need for storing data on our own personal computers. Trusting the cloud is becoming an act of faith, and it's time to question that faith. And the situation should absolutely chill everyone who believes in free speech -- and especially the people who call themselves journalists. Sadly, however, too many of them have been cheering on people who want to make WikiLeaks disappear. Do they realize that it could be their own turn someday? WikiLeaks has been under attack all week from governments that want to hide their misdeeds, not just legitimate secrets. That's unsurprising, to put it mildly, despite the hypocrisy of official Washington's loathing of Internet blocking in other countries while it works so hard to make it happen here. The government and other anti-WikiLeaks forces don't have even the thinnest legal case for taking WikiLeaks off the Internet, however -- much less the news organizations, here and abroad, that are discussing the leaked diplomatic cables contained in the latest trove -- and they know it. So they're attacking the intermediaries, and they're getting results. WikiLeaks had put some of its trove on Amazon.com's "Web services" servers -- a system designed in part to help third-party websites meet extraordinary demand. But as the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, WikiLeaks Code:
Content, Pictures and Download links visible to registered users only. REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members. That's Strike 1 to our faith in the Internet. We are all, to one degree or another, forced to rely on the good will of larger enterprises that host and serve the media we create online. So when a company as big as Amazon -- and it's huge in the Web services arena -- yanks down content this way, it is demonstrating that we cannot fully trust it with our content, either. And if Amazon, a powerful enterprise, can be bullied, which one can't? Strike 2 came with the news that EveryDNS -- a company that helps Internet users find specific Web addresses via the Domain Name System. -- had booted WikiLeaks off its service. An analogy: Suppose your local library removed the card for a book you wanted from its catalog. The only way you could find the book would be to look through all the shelves. This is roughly what EveryDNS did. Strike 3? Look at what the U.S. government has done in several recent cases involving alleged copyright infringement and other violations of intellectual property laws. Notably, the Department of Homeland Security seized 82 domain names based on allegations -- with no notice to the domain holders and no proof beyond persuading a judge to sign a take-down order. This was accomplished even without the help of a proposed law, making its way through Congress, that would give the government the right to take down sites based, again, on allegations. Between what's already happened and the floodgates that would open with such a law, sensible people are terrified about the censorship power here. You would imagine this would spur America's journalists to raise the roof. Free speech is in jeopardy, and the people who should be protecting it with the most tenacity are talking about Julian Assange's weirdness. UPDATE: The Library of Congress has blocked access to the WikiLeaks site from its computers, saying in a statement quoted by Talking Points Memo: Code:
Content, Pictures and Download links visible to registered users only. REGISTER NOW to access all areas that are invisible to non-members. Such knee-jerk responses from people who should know better are beyond disappointing. Does the Librarian of Congress know about this? If he does, and if he supported the decision, he's disgraced his profession and institution. (Note: I'm an Amazon sharedholder and a supporter of the EFF. To that end, I donated some Amazon shares this week to the EFF, which I'm convinced at this point has a greater appreciation of free speech than does Amazon.) Code:
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