The More Some Try To Kill Wikileaks, The More It Spreads

from the ultimate-streisand-effect dept

One of the earlier events in Wikileaks’ life that got the site a ton of attention was when a California court ordered the entire site blocked, after the site revealed a document that the Swiss Bank Julius Baer wanted to keep hidden. That story got a ton of attention — in part because of how much more attention the document got after the court’s ruling. In fact, that story was also a story that got the concept of the Streisand Effect into the popular mindset (and got me on All Things Considered chatting about the Streisand Effect and the Julius Baer situation). So it’s been amusing seeing all of the attempts by US politicians to get Wikileaks blocked. As of this posting, the site has now listed over 500 mirror sites and the number keeps growing. And that’s just mirrors of the site itself. The actual documents are being copied and offered up from a lot more places. Trying to shut down something like Wikileaks only gets it more attention…

Filed Under: , ,
Companies: wikileaks

Rate this comment as insightful
Rate this comment as funny
You have rated this comment as insightful
You have rated this comment as funny
Flag this comment as abusive/trolling/spam
You have flagged this comment
The first word has already been claimed
The last word has already been claimed
Insightful Lightbulb icon Funny Laughing icon Abusive/trolling/spam Flag icon Insightful badge Lightbulb icon Funny badge Laughing icon Comments icon

Comments on “The More Some Try To Kill Wikileaks, The More It Spreads”

Subscribe: RSS Leave a comment
49 Comments
JC says:

Secrets for Assange?

“Assange making arrangements to meet police, lawyer says-
“We are in the process of making arrangements to meet with the police by consent in order to facilitate the taking of that question-and-answer as needed,” Stephens told the BBC.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/12/06/wikileaks.investigation.assange/index.html

I’m looking forward to Wikileaks making all the documents in this case available to everyone. I have no doubt Assange would approve. He’s shown no doubt that private communications should be shared with everyone in the world.

The Invisible Hand (profile) says:

Re: Secrets for Assange?

Don’t worry. Those that seek to destroy him will make sure they are available. Although that won’t change much.

The “damage” is already done and destroying wikileaks won’t prevent any further “damage”. As long as there is an Internet, those that hold “The Power” will have to answer for their actions.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance
this one looks interesting too. i wonder whats inside

You can bet the NSA are trying their damnedest to figure that out. But this is what JA does best so I guess they won’t find out.

Considering how people have been “rendered” from European cities by the CIA in the past, and given that the UK police claim to know where he is, I can only assume he’s still free because either
– the UK and USA are not co-operating
– the USA know nothing good will come of him being “removed” from circulation. And I’m sure this relates to the contents of the “insurance” file.

So the plan is presumably to have him arrested for something unrelated to the actual leaks and hope he does not release the stinkbomb.

BearGriz72 (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Otherwise known as 3.231700607131100730071487668867*10^616
-OR-
32,317,006,071,311,007,300,714,876,688,670
with 585 0’s behind it

AES-256bit key, breaking a symmetric 256-bit key by brute force requires more computational power than you would believe. A device that could check a billion billion (1018) AES keys per second would in theory require about 3*10^51 years to exhaust the 256-bit key space.

Good Luck with That….

Matt says:

Dude, you seem to misunderstand this, greatly. It’s not about stopping the already leaked documents from further proliferation. Even bureaucrats under that already leaked is a past tense, water under the bridge situation. All the people who it would be bad to have that information had it in the first day, probably the first hour.

It’s about preventing the next leak, or, in fact, just being plain punitive.

Hephaestus (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

You also have the russian government, and chinese ??spying?? documents. Which I am guessing are going to be worse than the corporate influence and back dealing you see in the US documents.

One thing is for certain. The next year its going to be fun to watch as the news agencies all say how evil Asange, villify him, and then use all the information they would be to afraid to open up for public viewing to gain greater ratings.

johnny canada says:

Try to Kill

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Calgary+looking+into+possible+charges+after+Flanagan+comments/3935098/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+canwest%2FF228+%28The+Province+-+News%29&utm_content=Google+International

Calgary looking into possible charges after Tom Flanagan comments

Calgary police said Monday they were compiling evidence for the Crown to determine whether to press charges against Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for comments he made suggesting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be assassinated.

The Calgary police join their Vancouver counterparts as the second department to act on public complaints against Flanagan, who now works as political science professor at the University of Calgary.

“Due to a number of calls we have received from the public regarding this matter, the Calgary Police Service will be compiling all facts and compiling a package that will be forwarded to the Crown prosecutor’s office for review,” said Supt. Kevan Stuart in a prepared statement. “The Crown’s office will then determine if this is a criminal matter.”

Flanagan, appearing on the CBC program Power & Politics last week, told host Evan Solomon that he thought Assange “should be assassinated, actually. I think (U.S. President Barack) Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something.”

Flanagan retracted his statement two days later, apologizing for the “glib” comment and said it shouldn’t have been taken seriously.

On Saturday, Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson submitted a complaint to police in that city, asking them to review whether or not Flanagan was inciting murder with his comments.

Section 464 of the Criminal Code of Canada makes it a crime to “counsel another person to commit an indictable offence”, regardless of whether the offence in question is committed.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/news/Calgary+looking+into+possible+charges+after+Flanagan+comments/3935098/story.html#ixzz17NPomrPC

Trish says:

Thank you Wikileaks!

Thanks to Wikileaks, I now know that us Canadians have an ‘inherent inferiority complex’ vis a vis americans that prevents our politicians from dicussing the state of american politics during our elections! And I thought we were just being polite! Well, I’m glad at least we don’t have a superiority complex vis a vis the rest of the world eh…

Darryl says:

Wikileaks is as good as dead Dept

wikileaks did not publish all the information it had in its posession.

He has and had many more documents..

So all the mirrors can do is mirror what has allready been release,, and that is a case of ‘move along, nothing new here’.

But no new information can be released, and wikileaks, is not capable of doing the job it was intended to do.

Release information, if it cannot do what its job it, it has been killed.

Yes, lots of mirrors, and mirrors are only able to mirror what has allready become available.

So the claim that wikileaks is dead, is correct, it is not capable of performing the job it was started for.

It is not anymore a central point to contact to whistleblow, therefore it is no longer wikileaks, and therefore it is dead..

And julian assange was in it for the money, and to blackmail people, he claims he has more information that he will not release !!!..

so he is censoring information to his readers, why not release it ?

One reason, it is not in his benefit to release that information, even though it may be in the ‘public benefit’ according to the supporters of wikileaks.

So, how can you claim wikileaks is working for freedom of speech, or freedom of information, or against censorship.

When Wikileaks ITSELF engages in censorship, restriction of information and control of information for your own personal gains.
(blackmail)

Would google be dead if you could log onto a google web site but you could no longer perform search ?

Its dead because it does not do what it was intended to do, and it is dead also because it has NEVEr done what it was intended to do..

Wikileaks engages in censorship, and witholding of information, for personal gains, just as much as anyone else.

If you think wikileaks is there for any other reason but to make some money you are badly mistaken…

(typical Darryl Comment)

Add Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here

Comment Options:

Make this the or (get credits or sign in to see balance) what's this?

What's this?

Techdirt community members with Techdirt Credits can spotlight a comment as either the "First Word" or "Last Word" on a particular comment thread. Credits can be purchased at the Techdirt Insider Shop »

Follow Techdirt

Techdirt Daily Newsletter

Ctrl-Alt-Speech

A weekly news podcast from
Mike Masnick & Ben Whitelaw

Subscribe now to Ctrl-Alt-Speech »
Techdirt Deals
Techdirt Insider Discord
The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...
Loading...