Does the cutting off of service to Wikileaks by its NH service provider, EveryDNS, not go against the state's motto "Live Free Or Die" and the very core of American political philosophy?

It’s unfortunate, but if you want freedom of speech for your site, you need to go elsewhere than the USA to host your site…

Agreed. Direct or indirect steps taken against wikileaks and founder so far:
-Wave of denial of service attacks on many mirrors.
-Possible baseless slanderous allegation.
-Closing of two hosting providers.

What else, burn him at the stake?

If he can finger bin Laden he can get allee-allee-infree but he is not a covert operative, just a smart, concerned geek

It might go against the state’s motto, but no one is required to swear an oath to that motto, either. And as much as I like New Hampshire for various reasons, no one is completely free there, any more than we are in Connecticut.

@CyanoticWasp g’wan you have more taxes.

State mottoes are worth bupkiss.

Ths ISP was under sustained DNS attacks from hackers outraged at the leaks. They didn’t cut them off out of censorship, but out of self preservation. Besides, the live free or die motto ought to leave the ISP free to act in their own best interest, shouldn’t it. I don’t see how “Live free or die” means I am duty bound to give up my life some some guy who wants to poke his fingers in the eyes of giants can go about his agenda. Let Assange live froo or die too.

I agree with @ETpro here.

See, I used to live in NH and trust me, their communications infrastructure is pretty old and quite limited. They cannot handle that sort of traffic very well.

Tell me, how many people do you have living in your home right now? If the answer is less than the population of your entire home state then you have to concede my point here. If you don’t have the infrastructure, you can’t handle massive things like housing and feeding millions of people, just as no place in NH can really deal with a massive DoS attack.

Furthermore, even if they could, no company would. If you can’t understand why then you obviously have never been inconvenienced in your life. Imagine if you were under siege in your house. No way out, no supplies coming in, no communications; just you and the walls around you. Running out of food? Too bad. Can’t make a call for help? Tough. A DoS attack is pretty much a siege, only it is digital instead of physical.

If you still insist that they should have stood their ground then lock yourself in your house with no supply lines or communications. Totally paralyzed, unable to do your job, totally useless. I say that not to be mean, but as it seems to me like the only way you can understand why they did it.

and where are you from @marinelife? I’m from New Hampshire.
@ETpro do you feel the same way if those DNS attacks were from governments?
I also think their customers should have rallied to their support.

One thing I forgot; wasn’t’ the NH telecommunications network pretty well fucked over by the whole Fairpoint fiasco? And then hammered by the ice storm a couple of years back? Honestly, I am surprised I can even call my folks back home. Unless things have changed a lot recently, I think that a DoS attack on NH servers is not only easy, but inevitable. Hell, outside of the tri-city area, you could clog the data pipes and effectively shut off ‘net access for the whole county just by streaming a Youtube video :P

Unless EveryDNS is a government entity, then no. The company’s leaders have the right to manage it and its accounts in the way that they feel is best, provided that they comply with the law.
Wikileaks is politically messy; I hardly blame them for not wanting any on their servers.

@anartist If the attacks came from the Government, that would be censorship. So yes, I would feel differently about it. So would the courts. Wikileaks may have violated US and International law, and if so, I believe they should pr prosecuted. But denial of service attacks aren’t the right way to handle law enforcement.

I like ETPro’s revision – “Live froo or die” – makes about as much sense. Slogans don’t mean shit.

@ETpro My sentiments exactly.

@ETpro “If the attacks came from the Government, that would be censorship” Where else would the attacks originate? I can’t picture a bunch of independent hackers incensed over leaks of diplomatic messages.

I don’t see how this rises to the level of censorship. These are classified documents that were stolen. Yes, I remember the Pentagon Papers crisis, and Daniel Ellsberg was right to expose the false reasons we were given to enter that war, but this is just crap to embarass this government. I half suspect a Republican must be responsible.

@Ron_C I can. I recall a local DNC office getting their phone lines clogged by a grassroots Conservative group in the telephone equivalent of a DoS attack, and many of the great computer hacks of all time were pulled off by small groups or mere individuals.

Never underestimate the power of small groups with big brains ;)

…or big groups with small brains :-/

@ETpro If a government [or governments] did not wish to acknowledge their role, DoS attacks would work very handily. No one said it was the US government.

@Ron_C The attacks almost certainly came from a distributed group of individual people, not a government. I will be willing to bet you that they were just ordinary people outraged by Wikileaks behavior and organized by an email network.

@anartist It’s true that Denial of Service attacks are difficult to trace. Yes, it could have been a foreign government. The US isn’t the only government finding this irritating. China has blocked all searches to it. But I really think it’s likely the work of a loose-knit group of American right wingers who are outraged by Wikileaks behavior.

@ETpro You may have better sources than I but I find it too convenient for the attack to rapidly coalesce between groups of hackers. In fact, leaks like this are what hackers are about. I also find it difficult to believe that there are enough smart right wingers to pull something like this together.

@Ron_C Crackers move fast. Since Wikileaks has been out for over a week, they have had more than enough time to get their heads together. As for the other, I agree that that does sound unlikely, but it is possible that some of them evolved and learned to walk upright.

@Ron_C Why would it necessarily be right-wingers? After all, big government isn’t exactly popular on this end of the spectrum, and the leaks are very much a blow against the Feds.
We are not general-purpose boogeymen.

@Ron_C You apparently are not plugged into the far right’s email and blogosphere network if you find it hard to understand how they could move rapidly. I subscribe just to know what is coming next. You would be utterly amazed at how fast the marching orders fly. Haven’t you ever wondered why Democrats fight among themselves and only develop a consensus over an interminable time, if ever; whereas right-wingers all step out in lockstep, each mouthing exactly the same talking points?

@Nullo If all Wikileaks had done was slam the Fed, I don’t think the American right or left would have given a rat’s ass. It was the disclosure of the names of Afghan citizens working with US and NATO forces against the Taliban that enraged the right. It enraged me too, but I did not have anything to do with the DoS attack.

O.k., O.k., Nullo and Etpro you are right. I concede that right wing nutters move fast and march in lock-step like good little fascists. I also agree that both the right and left are interested in exposing big government secretism. My personal feelings is that we should have nothing to do with the governance of any country in the Middle east, especially Saudi Arabia. I believe that we should let those countries stew in their own juices, fight eachother and then deal with the winners.

I still find it difficult to feel enraged with Wiki-leaks. To me, “high level diplomacy” means lying an subtle shading of the truth, done in secret. Nothing good come from long term lying and the result always come back to bite you in the ass.

@Ron_C It is useful to keep in mind that conservatism is related to but ultimately distinct from fascism. Rather like how nazism is related to but ultimately distinct from communism.

@ETpro Honestly, I don’t really know what was in the wikileaks; I’m currently taking a break from the news.

From where are we hearing that these hackers are right-wing, anyway?
Heh. You comment about lockstepped righties, but lefties are pretty darn good at it, too. It is, methinks, a human tendency, not a political one.

@Nullo I beg to differ. Conservatives tend to be better about marching in lockstep since they tend to be a few smart people with similar or at least compatible and a whole lot of sheep who can’t think of their own cadence.
Liberals also have a lot of sheep, but their top people are a lot like pretty much everyone in the middle of the Left/Right spectrum; independent thinkers with enough ego to put the kibosh of consensus thinking, thus leading to endless infighting and bickering amongst themselves rather than doing anything productive.

That is why I am of the opinion that it was a small group. They hit too many people on all sides to really be either Left or Right, and you can’t coordinate a large group of Centrists and it’s not something that can really be pulled of with sheep.

Besides, Hackers (and their evil counterparts, Crackers) tend to be either Liberal or apolitical.

@Nullo conservatism hasn’t been represented by the Republican party since Reagen’s nomination for president. I know because I was there, I was active in the Republican party and watched the convention. After listening to his speech and watching the proceedings, I switched to the Democratic party. I’m a democrat not because I love what they are and have been doing but because of the shift far to the right of the Republican party of which I was a member.

The neo-conservatives are much closer to the Nazi party than to the previous Republican party. Even Pres. Obama is much more right wing than was Nixon.

I completely support the exposure of lies, corruption and other illegal behavior. But the latest Wikileaks coup is unethical to say the least:

“The controversial whistleblower site published the cable late on Sunday, listing potential targets that experts told British daily The Times were a gift for terrorist organisations. The list of critical infrastructure and key resources located abroad detailed hundreds of pipelines, important data cables, and businesses belonging to international industrial and pharmaceutical giants. If destroyed, these sites could damage US interests, the diplomatic communique said.

In Germany such sites included the BASF headquarters in Ludwigshafen, which was described as the world’s largest integrated chemical complex, and Hamburg’s port. Other crucial sites include the northwestern coastal city of Norden and the North Sea island of Sylt, where two important underwater data and communication cables connecting North America and Europe reach land. The list was the result of a February 2009 order from Washington for officials to compile a list of international assets critical for the United States.

The plants of industrial giant Siemens were also listed for essentially irreplaceable production of key chemicals and the production of hydroelectric dam turbines and generators. Other companies included Dräger Safety in the northern German city of Lübeck, critical to gas detection capability, and Junghans Fienwerktechnik in the southern city of Schramberg, critical to the production of mortars. A number of German pharmaceutical companies that produce critical vaccines, medications and medical tests, including insulin and a small pox vaccine, were also included on the list.”

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20101206-31623.html

There are people in Germany who live or work near these sites. And many of them are now very worried or even terrified.

This is psychological warfare. Wikileaks has become an ally of Al-Qaeda. Besides killing people, their goals include spreading fear.

@mattbrowne I read an article in the London Independent that stated that diplomatic efforts in many key countries was severely undermined and many of the most thoughtful and knowledgable diplomats would have to be reassigned because of this. While I am usually in favor of transparency in government, I think these leaks were unethical and potentially disastrous. I see no good reason for them having been released; secrecy is necessary for diplomacy.

@mattbrowne Thanks…very very good info

W/o leaks, those bastard still do whatever they want, w/ leaks, they cares a little bit more about opinion, about if they can be reelected or if others will still trust them. Pro>>con…

There are three things to consider here:

1. There are almost 2000 government agencies that now use and classify documents as secret and over 870,000 people with top secret clearance. That is an untenable system that prohibits access to documents which should never have been classified.

2. The military person that leaked the Wikileaks documents has been in solitary confinement for more than 6 months without a trial. I agree that this person deserves punishment for breaking his clearance but fail to see why he has been “disappeared” by a supposedly “open government”

3. Newspapers have always been free to publish secrets and Wikileaks has been responsible in its release of those documents. The publisher cannot be tried for espionage because he is not a U.S. citizen and did not steal what was published. In fact, he should be rewarded not punished.

If anyone should be punished, it is the diplomats that run fast and loose with U.S. and international laws.