DDoS Attack On Wikileaks Increasing 919
tetrahedrassface writes "According to the Twitter feed for Wikileaks, the attack on the controversial site is increasing and is now at 10 Gigabits per second. In light of the recent release of highly sensitive documents and calls by many lawmakers around the world to swiftly find, extradite, and try suspected rapist Julius Assange for breaches of national security, one nation, Ecuador, has offered asylum."
Re:Ut Oh! (Score:3, Interesting)
Are they doing it? Have they announced where the majority of the attacks are coming from or is like a /. effect?
(They can't lose! Either they're being attacked for revealing the truth and/or they're super popular!)
Pied Piper (Score:5, Interesting)
What we've learnt about the US is that they privately criticise and occasionally seek intelligence on important figures, and they don't like their citizens being arrested. Moreover, several million people have US "secret" clearance, which means anyone foreign and relevant also had the information: the release was therefore benign.
In other shocking news, I sometimes mumble "idiot!" under my breath after leaving a meeting and double-check a CV. Don't get me wrong, it's a great laugh to see a few fragile egos insulted, but the most interesting thing to come from this in the West will be whatever law stops it happening again.
This leak was damaging to those who the US are currently LARTing, from the UK to Saudi Arabia; from a diplomatic PoV, the US government has come out pretty well while playing the perfect victim. It's almost like we're approaching a significant anniversary of another time it did that: now the fires need stoking from an information warfare angle.
If wikileaks is being DDoS'd, it certainly isn't the US government trying to put some genie back in a bottle.
He is rocking the boat that people are sitting in (Score:5, Interesting)
People don't like people who rock the boat they are sitting in, especially if its edge is already close to the waterline. They tend to kick people overboard, even if they are the person trying to signal a rescuer.
Wikileaks is exposing not just the obvious criminal corruption, the stuff you claim on others, but the widespread moral apathy that is the US of A. You can see it from the murder video. 12 civilians clearly unarmed shot with the murderers expressing clear joy at their slaughter. The US reaction? Absolutely nothing. If any of these soldiers were ever to be brought before a war crimes tribunal, the US of A has invasion plans for The Netherlands to stop any international justice by whatever force required.
This is America, and it doesn't sit well to have this truth shoved in their face. They want to believe the US of A is the land of the free, defender of democracy, hero of the oppressed.
You have to remember that most countries have the same thing. The Netherlands and its war crimes in Indonesia. Recently the state refused to meet a survivor of a masacre the germans would have been proud off, because it was going to upset the murderers. Don't ask the british about their colonial behavior or say the treatment of Jews after WW2.
Wikileaks is kicking up the dirt in peoples eyes and the people don't like it one bit.
Easier to kill the messenger then deal with the message. Always has been true, always will be. Cue this message running a high change of instantly disappearing because a teabagger is upset and mods it down to never be seen again.
©ontrol (Score:3, Interesting)
You're only as good as the system you hack;
If you become a problem you will be replaced--
banned, shut down, erased!
The world has capsized, gone erratic
Constitutional rights have dissolved into static
The truth is based on misinformation--
reality is only a hallucination!
-MDFMK, ©ontrol
Hackers bad but so cool when you need them (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this just goes to show the dual morality of entities such as the government when even they wont frown on hiring hackers to protect their interest despite all the government laws, motions and acts layed by said government to stop those said hackers when they're not working for them.
Go wikileaks! not that we had any doubts that shit is taking place just about everyday, but its nice to have some proof and poor some clear water into that mud pool.
Assanges leaks put intelligence sources at risk (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you separate one from another? Really, how do you? And who should judge which is which?
And that is against the rules regardless of what side you are on. The rule is do not harm civilians.
He has lost all credibility with me. Wikileaks needs to remove Julian Assange or fork the project.
Forget Assange (Score:5, Interesting)
If any heads should roll over the leaks, it should be those of the guy who stole the data and whatever dunce(s) allowed peons access to the data. Although, overall so far, I'm generally pleased with the leaks because they show that most of the world's leaders are fallible but basically rational human beings. For instance, it is good to see that most of the middle eastern leaders understand that Iranian leaders are nutjobs who cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. Same goes for China's recognition that Kim Jong Ill is off his rocker. I feel much better about the world in general now because so far the leaked info confirms my suspicion that the world's messes aren't as insurmountable as it sometimes seems.
That said, I am deeply embarrassed that the Pentagon is incompetent enough to have allowed the leak of things said in confidence. They are idiots who shouldn't be trusted with so much power.
Even more, I am embarrassed over the USA's strong-arming of Germany over the arrest of one of its citizens. World ***please*** don't take that kind of shit from us (the USA).
I really think it is high time for the USA to turn over the job of policing the world to a democratically elected world government. It is unfair for the US taxpayers to pay so much for world security and to get all of the blame when our leaders fuck up and holy fuck do they ever fuck up. More importantly, it is unfair to the world for the US to have so much say in how the world is run.
Re:Can't be The Jester then. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong analogy. (Score:2, Interesting)
At least isn't that what the government tells us?
Right, because you don't have any embarrassing secrets. You don't tell friends things in confidence.
Thanks to this leak (and to the idiotic flubbing of security in the first place), it will be at least a little bit harder for American diplomats to make friends who will tell them things in confidence.
We all have secrets that we only tell our partner, or best friends... that's not the point. We don't care if the diplomats are visiting prostitutes or cheating on their wives.
But as soon as those diplomats start representing me, or my country, they better behave. And if they use official lines, their message should be decent enough anyway.
If you like an analogy, the people can be called a shareholders assembly, and the government a management. This has nothing to do with the personal sphere... it's business. At a shareholders meeting, you do not have the right to know who the management is having sex with, but you do have the right to know why the company is or is not making any profit. And you do get a big annual report... again, it contains all relevant information, and no "secrets". And wikileaks may have leaked some juicy relational secrets - that's not necessary imho, but harmless too - but all the rest compares to that annual report that we have been missing all those years.
Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean even his next leak will be against Bank of America. I'm not a fan of Bank of America at all, but why is he only going after US interests? He even leaked cables which exposed intelligence sources around the globe. Assange is not a force for good, he does not realize that his leaks hurt the very civilians he claims to be fighting for.
The political elites are rich, powerful, and wont be harmed if there is a world war. They wont be harmed if thousands of intelligence sources are tracked down.
Robert Hansen did something similar. The only difference is Hansen did it on purpose while Assange does not seem to have a clue what the consequences of his actions are. Or he's just trying to protect his own ass and is throwing intelligence sources under the bus. His behavior exposing intelligence sources like this and his inability to properly defend his own intelligence sources, lead me to believe hes completely rogue.
What this succeeds in doing... (Score:3, Interesting)
...is making the USA's government look desperate and pathetic. If they don't understand how unstoppable this is now, they look technically impaired. If they don't understand what "out of your jurisdiction" means, they look disingenuous, dangerous and as hamfisted as the Russians. All it does is to confirm every negative impression that came out of Wikileaks, which by the way, would be immediately replaced by several other similar organizations if the original is somehow made to stop and it's founder killed or imprisoned. Apparently the US government hasn't learned the lesson of Napster.
Bottom line: The American empire no longer commands the respect of its subjects and incidents like this will continue. Thank you very much, conservative republican financial community and all the recent presidential figureheads starting with Reagan, none of whom actually give a rat's patoot about the USA other than as a money generating device.
Re:Personal Attacks & Defamation (Score:4, Interesting)
They have apparently subsequently changed their minds, and I can't blame him for fighting it. He made a good faith offer to come in for questioning, now they're wanting him to fly back on his own dime to do it. Something about this appears to be very, very wrong, beyond the initial charges looking like complete bunk. There is no ex post facto rape, either it was rape at the time or it isn't rape, you can't change your mind after the fact. Or at least you can't in civilized countries.
Re:I think (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, that's why every famous person becomes a rapist immediately upon achieving fame. No matter how many decades they spend as an innocent person, never hurting anyone; every guy just needs a slight dash of fame to become a sexual predator.
Besides, if the CIA had just trumped this up, surely someone would have seen it coming [slashdot.org] beforehand.
Wikileaks too slow to release the cables (Score:3, Interesting)
"calls by many lawmakers around the world" (Score:3, Interesting)
that means there is probably even stronger sh@t to come up yet. since those bastards have started calling for his arrest calling him 'rapist'. despite the girls who are involved in that case openly state that there is no rape involved and that was voluntary. i guess, that conveniently slips by their ears.
the rock bottom level of corruption that politics has hit, is nauseating.
It is nauseating .... (Score:4, Interesting)
i find it nauseating. how can someone support some party that has DECEIVED them, by betraying the founding ideals of their country in regard to freedom, liberty and basic human rights, and perpetrated innumerable filth behind the cover of secrecy with the 'national secrets' excuse
YET, some people can still stomach being deceived, lied, and bottomless filth committed in their name, AND come up supporting that !!!
HOW. WHY ?
Re:If you didn't do anything wrong, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It is nauseating .... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If you didn't do anything wrong, (Score:5, Interesting)
You're completely missing the point. When one diplomat tells another something, the expectation all around is that it will get written down and passed to the recipient's superiors. It is NOT expected that it will fall into the hands of someone like Assange who will release it to the world.
If these were Iranian diplomatic cables would you still have a problem with this release by WikiLeaks? If the answer is yes, congratulations, you're not a hypocrite!
Re:If you didn't do anything wrong, (Score:2, Interesting)
If one is looking at Operation Downfall in the long term, and you can't assume that Little Boy or Fatman will cause the Japanese to surrender, then yes, destroying 2nd General Army Headquarters ahead of the planned invasion on 1 November 1945 is both a viable military target and aimed at getting them to surrender before you lose hundreds of thousands of men and kill millions of civilians invading.
The lasting effects of Hiroshima were not that devastating, within a decade the city was rebuilt and was an industrial city, hell Mazda's Hiroshima plant survived the attack and was back to truck production by December 1945.
So Little Boy destroyed alot of in home light industry, the 2nd General Army Headquarters, Fifth Division, but wasn't able to destroy all of the city's heavy industry.
I recall in Richard Rhodes's Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, that Hiroshima was calculated as needing 4-5 150 kt devices by US SIOP calculations.
Re:Let's change "suspectted" to "alleged" (Score:3, Interesting)
You're attempting to define swedish law in un-swedish terms. They told him they didn't want to have unprotected sex, and later he did it anyway. Swedish authorities want to arrest him for that. Whether they call it "rape" or "sexual oppression" is merely a semantic issue, though in the media would be quite a bit more significant than the false distinction you're trying to make between calling someone with an arrest warrant open against him "suspected" or "alleged".
He's a confirmed douchebag and a vaulting hypocrite. No equivocation about that.
Godaddy domains down (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At least someone has balls (and common sense) (Score:3, Interesting)
International treaties say otherwise.
Which treaty, exactly, says that U.S. law applies worldwide?
And US law was violated by people in the United States, who were aided and abeted by Assage.
Even assuming that this is true, then it says nothing about Assange's guilt under international law, or the law of any other nation. If it was illegal under international law for a non-U.S. resident to communicate with U.S. resident dissidents who then went on to break U.S. law, then, under a reciprocal treaty, it would also be illegal for the reverse to happen - for U.S. residents to communicate with dissidents in other nations such as China and Iran. Do you really think that there are international treaties in place to deport U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil, for breaking no laws in the U.S., but who do talk to dissidents in other nations who are breaking laws by protesting against the government of those foreign nations? If not, then why do you think any other nation would be crazy enough to enact such laws?
Thomas Jefferson (Score:3, Interesting)
He seems to be a revolutionary against the government of the USA (non-partisan). Although, I'm not in favor of some of the things the government of the USA does, we have a ballot box to fix most things and I don't think the revolution that Thomas Jefferson had in mind had much to do about the dribble coming out of wikileaks these days...
Being against the foreign policy of the USA does not mean that a person is against the government of the USA. Thomas Jefferson would be absolutely appalled at what U.S. foreign policy has become:
"We wish not to meddle with the internal affairs of any country, nor with the general affairs of Europe. Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object."
"I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people."
Replace "Europe" with "the Middle East" and the sentiment is the complete opposite of current U.S. foreign policy.
Re:If you didn't do anything wrong, (Score:3, Interesting)