http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/08/AR2010120804038.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
WikiLeaks avoids shutdown as supporters worldwide go on the offensive
Video
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Afghanistan, where he learned about the
arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. When asked about it, Gates said
"that sounds like good news to me."
ยป LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER
By Joby Warrick and Rob Pegoraro
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 10:53 PM
Over the past several days, the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks has been hit
with a series of blows that have seemed to threaten its survival. Its primary
Web address was deactivated, its PayPal account was frozen, and its Internet
server gave it the boot.
The result: WikiLeaks is now stronger than ever, at least as measured by its
ability to publish online.
Blocked from using one Internet host, WikiLeaks simply jumped to another.
Meanwhile, the number of "mirror" Web sites - effectively clones of WikiLeaks'
main contents pages - grew from a few dozen last week to 200 by Sunday. By
early Wednesday, the number of such sites surpassed 1,000.
At the same time, WikiLeaks' supporters have apparently gone on the offensive,
staging retaliatory attacks against Internet companies that have cut ties to
the group amid fears they could be associated with it. On Wednesday, hackers
briefly shut down access to the Web sites for MasterCard and Visa, both of
which had announced they had stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks' long-term survival depends on a number of unknowns, including the
fate of its principal founder, Julian Assange, who is being held in Britain
while awaiting possible extradition to Sweden related to sexual-assault
allegations. But the Web site's resilience in the face of repeated setbacks has
underscored a lesson already absorbed by more repressive governments that have
tried to control the Internet: It is nearly impossible to do.
Experts, including some of the modern online world's chief architects, say the
very design of the Web makes it difficult for WikiLeaks' opponents to shut it
down for more than a few hours.
"The Internet is an extremely open system with very low barriers to access and
use," said Vint Cerf, Google's vice president and the co-author of the TCP/IP
system, the basic language of computer-to-computer communication over the
Internet. "The ease of moving digital information around makes it very
difficult to suppress once it is accessible."
Thus, despite the global uproar over the release of sensitive U.S. diplomatic
cables, Assange's Web site remained defiantly intact Wednesday. Over the past
week it has continued to publish a steady stream of leaked State Department
documents with little visible evidence of injury from repeated, anonymous
cyber-attacks or the multiple attempts to cut off its access to funding and Web
resources.
By contrast, companies that have pulled the plug on WikiLeaks have suffered
publicly, with cyber-attacks rendering their Web sites inaccessible or slow for
hours at a time.
While a group of "hacktivists" targeted MasterCard and Visa - part of
"Operation Payback," they called it - anonymous assailants have also in recent
days attacked PayPal, which severed relations with WikiLeaks citing violations
of its terms of service.
Web sites for Swedish prosecutors and a Swedish lawyer have also been hit, as
has the banking arm of the Swiss postal service, which said it had frozen
Assange's account, and even the Web site of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
WikiLeaks' seeming invulnerability is seen by experts as a demonstration of the
power of new Web-based media to take on not only governments but also the
traditional news media.
The group prides itself as an organization without a country - it has
supporters worldwide but no central headquarters that would make it vulnerable
to legal and political pressure. The organization's Internet infrastructure is
spread over several continents, making it harder for outsiders to knock the
site offline.
For those reasons, experts say, WikiLeaks remained relatively unscathed last
week when the site's main domain name - wikileaks.org - was deactivated by its
New Hampshire-based domain-name manager. Within days, WikiLeaks had signed up
with more than a dozen other firms scattered across Europe, Canada and Asia.
WikiLeaks also simultaneously posted an appeal to its supporters, asking them
to voluntarily host "mirror" sites. Hundreds of individual Web servers signed
up, from countries around the world.
Similarly, WikiLeaks found new avenues for processing donations after PayPal
and MasterCard announced they would no longer service payments for the group.
The effect on the organization's financial health is not yet clear.
Inevitably, efforts to restrict sites such as WikiLeaks through financial and
regulatory pressures will fall short, for the same reasons that government
regulators have been unable to shut down purveyors of Internet spam, or various
Web-based criminal enterprises, said Paul Vixie, president of Internet Systems
Consortium, a nonprofit Internet infrastructure company in Redwood City, Calif.
"Something that's illegal in some countries but not others is very hard to keep
off the Net, even though there's been some success in keeping it out of the
countries where it's illegal," Vixie said. "If WikiLeaks is willing to spend as
much money as e-criminals . . . they could probably remain online
indefinitely."
The pressure on WikiLeaks is not insignificant. Amazon, the online retailer,
canceled its Web hosting services with WikiLeaks after receiving a call of
concern from the staff of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.). At a technical
conference Wednesday in Paris, a PayPal executive said the company's decision
to freeze WikiLeaks' account was based in part on the State Department's
declaration that the group had acted illegally in publishing classified
documents.
The isolation of WikiLeaks has prompted cries of censorship and government
interference.
"I can use my credit card to send money to the Ku Klux Klan, to antiabortion
fanatics, or to anti-homosexual bigots, but I can't use it to send money to
WikiLeaks," said Jeff Jarvis, a new-media critic and director of the
interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's Graduate
School of Journalism. "The New York Times published the same documents. Should
we tell Visa and MasterCard to stop payments to the Times?"
It is ironic, Jarvis said, that the U.S. protests against Assange's campaign of
leaks come weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized
Chinese efforts to restrict freedom of the Internet. While Western governments
are used to seeing secrets leaked through traditional media, they are
struggling to adjust to a new era in which raw data can be easily and rapidly
disseminated around the world.
"There is an information war, and it's about control," he said. "The choice is
to either live in a transparent world or shut down the Internet."
[email protected] [email protected]
This Story
a.. WikiLeaks avoids shutdown as supporters worldwide go on the offensive
b.. In the Loop: Rice, on 'The View,' defends Obama on WikiLeaks
c.. PostPartisan: The worm turns
d.. Poll: Should the U.S. government prosecute Julian Assange?
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