WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange breaks silence as site battles to stay online after being 'killed' by U.S. domain company
By Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 3:23 PM on 3rd December 2010
- Website down for six hours after American firm pulls plug
- Suspicions it acted under pressure from Obama administration
- WikiLeaks sets up again operating out of Switzerland
- Scotland Yard won't comment about arrest of founder Assange
- France become first country to attempt to ban website
The technical problems involved would clearly be enormous. Many would simply re-route to foreign servers so that they could read the information.
Wanted man: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today broke his silence as he hailed the young American soldier suspected of leaking classified US cables as an 'unparalleled hero'.Australian Julian Assange praised U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, 23, who lived in Wales as a teenager, without confirming he was the source of the leaks that have deeply embarrassed Washington and its allies.
Mr Assange, taking part in an online question and answer session, also said WikiLeaks' actions had been dictated by the moves of 'abusive elements of the United States government' against the group since April.
It is the first time the Australian has spoken in recent days. He is wanted in Sweden for questioning over sex allegations and has been hiding out in Britain. Scotland Yard are refusing to comment about his possible arrest.
His intervention came after Wikileaks was this morning forced to move its website to Switzerland after it was effectively taken off the internet when the U.S firm that 'translates' its address withdrew its services.
The site's U.S. domain name system provider, EveryDNS, said it stopped translating the wikileaks.org name into an address that computers understand after the website once again became the target of hacking attacks.
WikiLeaks complained it was being 'killed' and has now moved to a new address based in Switzerland, wikileaks.ch.
The website's move will raise suspicions that the EveryDNS has come under pressure from the U.S. Government to cut ties with the controversial site.
Meanwhile, France has become the first country to contemplate banning Wikileaks.
The country's Industry Minister Eric Besson pledged to 'remove' the whistle-blowing website from people's computers.
In a letter to other officials leaked to journalists Mr Besson wrote: 'I ask you to indicate to me as soon as possible what action can be taken to ensure that this Internet site is no longer hosted in France.
'This situation is not acceptable. France cannot host an Internet site that violates the secrecy of diplomatic relations and endangers people.'
WikiLeaks' Twitter page today where after the decision by EveryDNS' to withdraw its services
Amazon has already pulled Wikileaks off its servers after coming under intense political pressure.
EveryDNS provides access to some 500,000 websites. DNS services translate a website's domain name, such as www.dailymail.co.uk, into an IP (internet protocol) address. MailOnline's IP address is 195.234.240.212, for example.
EveryDNS said in a statement that it dropped the website because the attacks by mystery hackers threatened the rest of its network.
The firm said: 'Wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure.'
WikiLeaks confirmed the drop on its Twitter account, saying 'WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks.'
The move meant that for a number of hours Wikileaks was only accessible by typing a string of numbers into an internet browser address bar.
EveryDNS said: 'Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider.'
WikiLeaks has angered the U.S. and other governments by publishing almost half a million secret documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latest batch contains thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables.
They reveal how the U.S. regarded Gordon Brown as an 'abysmal' Prime Minister and were speculating about possible replacements as early as July 2008.
It was also claimed that British forces were slated as being 'not up to the task' in Afghanistan by the country's president Hamid Karzai.
The accusation sparked indignation among some of those linked to the UK deployment in Helmand, which has swelled to 10,000 troops since it began in 2006.
On Wednesday, Amazon.com - who had provided WikiLeaks with use of its servers to distribute embarrassing State Department communications and other documents - evicted it. The site remains on servers of a Swedish host, Bahnhof.
Amazon said it stopped hosting WikiLeaks' website because it violated its terms of service, not because an inquiry by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee sparked anger about the release of thousands of classified U.S. government documents.
Staff for the committee's chairman, Joe Lieberman, had questioned Amazon about its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday and called on other companies that provide web-hosting services to boycott WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks turned to Amazon to keep its site available after hackers tried to flood it and prevent users accessing the classified information.
In its statement on Thursday, Amazon said its Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed.
For example, it said under its terms of service, a customer must guarantee it owns or controls all of the rights to the content and that use of the content will not cause injury to any person or entity.
'It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content,' Amazon said.
'It is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy.'
WikiLeaks slammed Amazon for dropping it, claiming on Twitter that if Amazon was 'so uncomfortable with the First Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution), they should get out of the business of selling books.'
WikiLeaks' release of secret government communications has seen firms that help it come under huge pressure to distance themselves
Scotland Yard detectives were thought to be preparing to detain the 39-year-old over two claims of rape and sexual assault in Sweden but they refused to comment today.
An extradition warrant is expected to be handed to the Metropolitan Police in the coming days.
Sources told the Mail there should be 'imminent developments' once the papers are in place.
Mr Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens has said any arrest warrant will be challenged in court.
The WikiLeaks founder is suspected of rape, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of unlawful coercion but has not been charged.
He is accused of attacking one woman in Stockholm and then sexually assaulting another woman in the town of Enkoping, 40 miles from the capital.
Police hastily issued a warrant for his arrest over the first assault before even taking formal statements from the alleged victim, but it was dropped within 24 hours when prosecutors said the accusations lacked substance.
The case was then reopened after the woman appealed.
Prosecutors have released no details about the allegations, but copies of the women's police statements have been leaked to Sweden's media.
According to the statements, as revealed by the Mail on Sunday in August, the WikiLeaks founder slept with two women while in Sweden on business.
Mr Assange had flown to Stockholm to speak at a seminar organised by the Social Democratic Party on August 14 last year.
He met Woman A there, who let him stay at her flat. Later, the pair went for dinner before returning and having sex, according to police sources.
A source said: 'When they got back they had sexual relations, but there was a problem with the condom - it had split. She seemed to think that he had done this deliberately but he insisted that it was an accident.'
The next day, Mr Assange met Woman B who had seen him on television and become fascinated so organised to be at the seminar and sat on the front row.
She then loitered outside the building before approaching his entourage and was invited to join a lunch nearby. She and Mr Assange spent the rest of the day together.
They canoodled in a bijou cinema and had a nap side-by-side in a park but Mr Assange was due at a party and had to leave.
They met again at her flat the following Monday and appeared to have had sex. Much of her statement was blacked out except for: 'It felt boring and like an everyday thing.'
One source close to the investigation said the woman had insisted he wear a condom, but the following morning he made love to her without one.
This was the basis for the rape charge but after the event Woman B seemed unruffled enough to go out to buy food for his breakfast and they parted on friendly terms.
Events took a turn only after Woman B rang the office of Woman A, who she had met briefly at the seminar, and they realised they had both been taken in by Mr Assange's charm.
The unprotected sex meant they were scared about disease. It is believed that they both asked him to take a test for STDs and he refused.
Woman B was especially anxious about the possibility of HIV and pregnancy. They later walked into a police station and told their stories.
The claims emerged a few weeks after WikiLeaks sparked a row with the Pentagon by publishing classified war documents and the site claimed it was a smear campaign.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1335244/WikiLeaks-moves-website-Switzerland-web-address-killed-U-S-firm.html#ixzz1742fjAWQ
