December 22

I have come up with a theory about governments and WikiLeaks and how it's all connected and stuff. And it all connects to the Bowling For Soup song, "High School Never Ends." While listening to this song rather late at night, I came up with this.
Governments are like high schools. The only thing that keeps everyone from completely losing it is lies. Lies hold everything up, but lies cause problems too. Usually it's just little things. These are minor leaks. But, there are also the more major problems. The information that when it gets out, can destroy friendships, relationships, trust, etc. These are our major leaks. But the main thing is that most of this will get out at some point. Yet people still do it. It might take days, months, or years to get out, but in the end Sally will find out that Bob is cheating, and the people will find out that governments are just as fucked up as we always thought they were. If the information is passed along to anyone besides yourself, it will get out. Secrets are meant to be broken. The truth is meant to be out.

Or Julian Assange could be Jesus. Which, as ridiculous as it sounds, is almost the tiniest bit plausible when you realize how true everything that is being said is.

We're at day 24 of Cablegate. At 0.7% of the way through, things are already falling apart.

December 20

The author of "The Pedophiles Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct", Phillip Greaves, was arrested in Pueblo, Colarado. Last month, he made news when sparking a debate about free speech and how far it really stretches. His book graphically tells two stories about adults engaging in sexual acts with children, causing it to be removed from Amazon. He was arrested although there has been no allegation that Greaves ever had any illegal sexual contact with a minor.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BJ59120101220

Funny how Amazon just hates everyone.


And apparently YouTube has a policy against "shocking and disgusting content." Quite literally five minutes after I watched a video (Tell us USA, Who is the Terrorist?) on the AnonOps blog, it was removed after violating YouTube's terms of service. I'm not quite sure what exactly qualifies as "shocking", but I guess free speech does. http://anonops.blogspot.com

And Rap News is back with "Rap News 6 - Wikileaks' Cablegate: The Truth is Out There".

WikiLeaks mirrors are down to 1,424 sites as of Decmber 20, 10:07 GMT. Over 700 sites have been removed since the last update.

This is only related in the way that it is connected to Julian Assange, but: 10 Days in Sweden: The Full Allegations Against Julian Assange

wikileaks.info

http://cryptome.org/0003/wl-info-warning.htm

Wikileaks.info Warning

From: Joly MacFie <joly[at]punkcast.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 2010 02:14:25 -0500
To: nettime-l[at]kein.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Wikileaks and spam

And then a comeback from Spamhaus, itself now under ddos attack..

> As many of you know, both Trend Micro and Spamhaus have published
> warnings about a Wikileaks mirror site 'wikileaks.info' which is
> run by the person or persons behind 'AnonOps' from an IP address of
> a Russian dedicated cybercrime host (Heihachi) on which there is
> nothing but malware and other cybercrime. Innocent people seeking to
> read or download Wikileaks documents are being directed to the rogue
> wikileaks.info server and into the hands of the crime gangs located
> there.
>
> For trying to warn about the crime gangs located at the
> wikileaks.info mirror IP, Spamhaus is now under ddos by AnonOps. The
> criminals there do not like our free speech at all.
>
> As our site can't be reached now, you can not read our article 
> on this, and we can not continue to warn Wikileaks users not to 
> load things from the Heihachi IP. If you know journalists who would 
> get this message out to Wikileaks users, please forward this 
> message (entire) to them.

The anonymous folks at AnonOps did not like our article update, here's
what we said and what brought the ddos on us:

----

In a statement released today on wikileaks.info entitled "Spamhaus'
False Allegations Against wikileaks.info", the person running the
wikileaks.info site (which is not connected with Julian Assange or
the real Wikileaks organization) called Spamhaus's information on his
infamous cybercrime host "false" and "none of our business" and called
on people to contact Spamhaus and "voice your opinion". Consequently
Spamhaus has now received a number of emails some asking if we "want
to be next", some telling us to stop blacklisting Wikileaks (obviously
they don't understand that we never did) and others claiming we are "a
pawn of US Government Agencies".

None of the people who contacted us realised that the "Wikileaks press
release" published on wikileaks.info was not written by Wikileaks and
not issued by Wikileaks - but by the person running the wikileaks.info
site only - the very site we are warning about. The site data,
disks, connections and visitor traffic, are all under the control of
the Heihachi cybercrime gang. There are more than 40 criminal-run
sites operating on the same IP address as wikileaks.info, including
carder-elite.biz,h4ck3rz.biz, elite-crew.net, and bank phishes
paypal-securitycenter.com and postbank-kontodirekt.com.

Because they are using a Wikileaks logo, many people thought
that the "press release" was issued "by Wikileaks". In fact
there has been no press release about this by Wikileaks and
none of the official Wikileaks mirrors sites even recognise
thewikileaks.info mirror. We wonder how long it will be before
Wikileaks supporters wake up and start to question whywikileaks.info
is not on the list of real Wikileaks mirrors at <a href="

http://wikileaks.ch/mirrors.html">wikileaks.ch</a>.

Currently wikileaks.info is serving highly sensitive leaked documents
to the world, from a server fully controlled by Russian malware
cybercriminals, to an audience that faithfully believes anything with
a 'Wikileaks' logo on it.

Spamhaus continues to warn Wikileaks readers to make sure they are
viewing and downloading documents only from an official Wikileaks
mirror site. We're not saying "don't go to Wikileaks" we're saying
"Use the wikileaks.ch server instead".

----

Steve Linford
The Spamhaus Project
http://www.spamhaus.org

Meanwhile http://wikileaks.org does indeed resolve to

http://mirror.wikileaks.info

<http://mirror.wikileaks.info>j

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
---------------------------------------------------------------

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime[at]kein.org

Cryptome:
As others have noted, any of the Wikileaks mirrors can be used to siphon data of their IPs, operators and users, as can Wikileaks itself, as can maillists, IMs, chats, TOR .gov, .mil, .com, .edu, .org, and the rest of the insecure-by-design Internet. Beyond that, network equipment manufacturers, security producers, operators and admins can access anything under guise of security and administration -- the Internet's true authoritatives responsible only to themselves, and their profits, cloaked by high-minded claims of public service. This continues the long-running practice of analogue communications -- messengers, couriers, mail, publishers -- and electronic telecommunications providers. Man-in-the-middle, panopticon. Mea culpa. Cryptome mirrors, too.

December 18

Bank of America has suspended all payments for WikiLeaks, joining Mastercard, Paypal, and Visa. Shortly after this announcement, WikiLeaks commented via Twitter saying "We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America." and "Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advise (sic) is to place your funds somewhere safer."

Questions are now surfacing about whether alleged WikiLeaks source, Bradley Manning, is being treated humanely. Reports are surfacing that Manning has been kept in solitary confinement for 23 days without a pillow or blankets, and is barred from any access to news or current event programs. His trial is also said to be far from any where near beginning, yet he is already being treated as threat.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20025724-503543.html

Completely unrelated, but the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is one step closer to finally happening. The Senate voted to repeal the law, 65 to 31. The House passed the repeal on Wednesday, 250 to 175. However, the President and Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary, both have to certify that the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" will not affect military readiness.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/1218/In-historic-vote-Senate-moves-to-end-don-t-ask-don-t-tell

Andddd

Julian Assange has been released. A victory for everyone against censorship*. At least for now.

Julian Assange Speaks After Release on Bail





*I'm sorry, but in my opinion the rape charges are at least somewhat politically motivated.

Whoah

So Youtube is (possibly) editing viewing statistics on videos. I wasn't even completely aware of this, but it appears that on some videos, the views stay the same or even go down after long periods of time, even in seemingly rather popular videos. Some speculation going on of this especially in this string of comments: http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v=NXbCwq4ewBU. I have no clue if this is actually happening or if it's just speculation and theories. But I wouldn't put it past anyone to change statistics in their favor.


99% of statistics are made up.

Blocked

The US Air Force has blocked members from accessing websites of the New York Times, the Guardian, and at least 23 other sites that have published some of WikiLeaks' leaked embassy cables. If members of the air force attempt to access any of the websites, the screen will reportedly read, "Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored." So far, the air force is the only military branch to institute this ban, although it is likely that others may follow, and federal employees have been advised to not read any leaked cables.
http://www.neontommy.com/news/2010/12/us-air-force-blocks-new-york-times-over-wikileaks-cables

Also, Mark Zuckerberg has been named the Time Person of the Year for 2010. Even though he placed at number 10 out of 25 in the poll on the Time website. His average rating was a 52, which is 40 behind Julian Assange, who placed number 1 in the poll. Ahead of Zuckerberg was Julian Assange, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Lady Gaga, Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert, Glenn Beck, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, The Chilean Miners, and the unemployed American.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2028734_2029036_2029037,00.html

The Berkeley City Council (Berkeley, CA) has decided to postpone a vote to decide whether to name Bradley Manning a hero. It was reportedly postponed indefinitely because several members of the council were converned about the way that the resolution was written and that it should be investigated more. It has also been said that it was premature to honor Manning as he has not admitted being the source of the leaks.
http://www.whsv.com/virginiaap/headlines/CA_City_Postpones_Vote_to_Make_Soldier_Tied_to_WikiLeaks_a_Hero_111937744.html


As of December 15, 15:56 GMT, Wikileaks has been mirrored on 2,194 websites. 1,532 out of 251,287 cables (0.6%) have been released so far.

On an unrelated note, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday in favor of the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.