CSc 114: Introduction to Computer Science

These are some notes on current events involving a web site called Wikileaks. Their mission is to leak documents, and assure they stay leaked. They preserve the anonymity of leakers, and are in no hurry to comply with government orders to keep things quiet. The New York Times has a good summary here, and here's a good story at Computerworld.

1. What has happened.
   1. Wikileaks posted some documents, apparently genuine, originating from Baer Bank and Trust Co., a Cayman Islands operation of the Swiss bank Julius Baer & Co. Wikileaks believes some of these documents may contain evidence of money laundering and/or tax fraud.
   2. Bank Julius Baer is not pleased. They brought an action in federal court in California against Dynadot, which is the DNS registrar for Wikileaks. The judge ordered Dynadot to remove the DNS entry. They have.
   3. The judge issued a second order instructing everyone involved, Wikileaks, Dynadot, and ten John Does, to remove the Baer documents. It's not clear if this was intended to replace the previous order or add to it.
   4. The main Wikileaks web site is located in Sweden, beyond even the reach of even a federal judge, and remains up. While it cannot be reached by http://www.wikileaks.org, the site can be reached by IP address: http://88.80.13.160/. There are also several alternative names registered outside the US which work just fine, such as http://www.wikileaks.cx, which resolves to the same IP address.
   5. The main site has been struggling to support a much higher level of traffic than ever before because of the additional publicity.
2. Observations.
   1. One wonders if the judge understood how little he accomplished by blocking a DNS entry, but leaving the site itself up.
   2. At the same time, the action is directed against the whole site, most of which contains documents other than those under dispute.
   3. The news stories have created a huge amount of publicity for Wikileaks. Many netizens who hadn't heard of the place and probably wouldn't have bothered are going there to see what it's like.
   4. There are plenty of folks in Internet land who consider “don't post or display” fighting words. Every last one of them seems to have made copies of the offending documents, even if they hadn't heard of Wikileaks two days ago. It seems the bank had no clue how counterproductive their actions would be. This may be rather a clash between the mind-your-business world of a Swiss bank and the let-it-all-hang-out web culture.
   5. Given the distributed and international nature of the Internet, it's essentially impossible to get rid of anything once it's there.
   6. Why on earth is a US court entering a dispute between the Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank and a Swedish web site? Because the site used a US domain registrar. Does that seem like a pretty weak reason to you?

This article includes links to relevant legal documents.