Censorship

Chinese leader googled self, got mad at Google?

Every leader enjoys moments of revelation.

In the case of Chinese Politburo Standing Committee member Li Changchun, it seems that his came the moment he googled himself and discovered that some people might not appreciate him as he would have wished.

A New York Times report intimates that WikiLeaks cables reveal that Li was rather taken aback that he could put his own name in that helpful Google search box and, within a mere breath-length, up would pop entries that were not uniformly supportive of his politics or being.

The cables reportedly go on to suggest that once Li further … Read more

PayPal shuts out WikiLeaks

PayPal, the popular online payment service owned by eBay, has "permanently restricted" the account hitherto used in fund-raising efforts by WikiLeaks.

The service posted a short statement about the matter on its blog Friday:

"PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal 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. We've notified the account holder of this action."

WikiLeaks, meanwhile, updated its support page, crossing out the PayPal … Read more

WikiLeaks reappears on European Net domains

WikiLeaks re-emerged today on a Swiss Internet domain and later on domains in Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands, sidestepping a move that had in effect taken the controversial site off the Internet.

The group, under heavy criticism in some quarters for publishing U.S. diplomats' classified cables, has been working hard to keep operating amid distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks over the Internet and Amazon's decision to stop hosting WikiLeaks' Web site.

Meanwhile, Swedish authorities said they had re-submitted an international arrest warrant asking U.K. police to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange following sex crime allegations, according to the BBC. … Read more

WikiLeaks faces more U.S. demands for prosecution

WikiLeaks encountered another round of criticism in Washington political circles today as the two senators who head the Senate Intelligence Committee called for the espionage prosecution of editor Julian Assange.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Kit Bond (R-Miss.) said that Assange--and, in wording that was likely designed to intimidate programmers and other volunteers aiding WikiLeaks--any of "his possible accomplices" should be charged with federal crimes.

"We believe that Mr. Assange's conduct is espionage and that his actions fall under the elements of this section of law," the senators told Attorney General Eric Holder in a … Read more

Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks no longer has a home at Amazon.

The controversial site, which has roused the ire of the U.S. government for leaking classified information, is no longer being hosted by Amazon's Web servers as of yesterday.

WikiLeaks had been tapping into Amazon's EC2, or Elastic Cloud Computing service--including earlier this week. WikiLeaks said yesterday it's now being hosted by servers in Europe, according to Reuters.

In response to its expulsion from Amazon, WikiLeaks tweeted two comments:

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free--fine our $ are now spent to employ … Read more

Republicans slam White House over WikiLeaks response

Congressional Republicans are starting to condemn the Obama administration for not doing enough to curb WikiLeaks.

In a calculated affront to official Washington, WikiLeaks is dribbling out hundreds of thousands of confidential State Department cables at a leisurely pace, effectively ensuring that new embarrassing disclosures will appear every day.

There's no "sense of urgency" from Attorney General Eric Holder to stop this, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said today. Holder told reporters yesterday that an investigation that's been in progress since the summer is still "ongoing,&… Read more

WikiLeaks has U.S. scrambling to plug holes

The apparent revelations originating from the latest WikiLeaks are both embarrassing and rapid-fire: Afghanistan's vice president was found to be transporting $52 million in cash; Saudi Arabia's king called for the U.S. to attack Iran; a British duke mocked Americans' understanding of geography.

This week's leak--still incomplete--of some 250,000 State Department dispatches follows WikiLeaks' April release of a video showing U.S. troops firing on journalists and its release of hundreds of thousands of classified military dispatches from Afghanistan and Iraq. There was also, earlier this year, an internal Army report that worried about the … Read more

AG says WikiLeaks criminal probe is 'ongoing'

It's set to become the new waiting game in Washington, D.C.: how long will it be before the U.S. government puts the legal smackdown on WikiLeaks?

That there is an investigation into how WikiLeaks obtained classified documents is, of course, no secret. In July, the Pentagon publicly confirmed a criminal probe into the matter.

A month later, that probe had expanded to include the FBI. "The Army's Criminal Investigation Division and the FBI are conducting an investigation into the leak of the documents," the Pentagon said on August 18.

Attorney General Eric Holder didn'… Read more

Congressman wants WikiLeaks listed as terrorist group

The incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says WikiLeaks should be officially designated as a terrorist organization.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the panel's presumptive next head, asked the Obama administration today to "determine whether WikiLeaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization," putting the group in the same company as al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas on the Tokyo subway.

"WikiLeaks appears to meet the legal criteria" of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, King wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reviewed … Read more