A secretive Swiss bank landed an apparently novel censorship blow against the internet this week. Anyone who tried to call up wikileaks.org, a global website devoted to publicising leaked documents, found themselves frustrated. The site simply wasn’t there any more.
The Julius Baer bank in Zurich succeeded in hamstringing the shadowy individuals behind the website by the simple trick of moving not against them, but against a US company that hosted their domain name.
The injunction blew up a gale of debate about internet freedom, and sprayed the bank’s secret documents all over the net. It has also thrust into prominence an obscure group of dreamers and programmers who want to provide what they call an “untraceable and uncensorable” leaking machine, to be used by dissidents worldwide.
Those behind Wikileaks include Tibetan, Chinese and Thai political campaigners, an Australian hacking author, and Ben Laurie, a mathematician living in west London who is on the advisory board. Read more
