Wikileaks servers are overloaded and cannot operate. They recently posted a secret list of a proposed banned sites.
According to Forbes, the scope of Australia's internet censorship has developed far beyond its initial aim to block child pornography and web pages associated with terrorism. Free speech advocates fear it could be used to block legitimate activity.
(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly)
Wikileaks recently published a complete list of the proposed blacklist sites currently under review in Australia, under the guise of protecting the people of Australia from child pornography. The Australian government has issued a statement calling the list a fake and threatening action against Wikileaks. Wikileaks is standing behind the list's authenticity and has issued a statement informing the Australian government of their full rights to publish the list as well as a promise to pursue legal action against anyone attempting to censor Wikileaks.
There are some excellent articles on these events at the following links:
FORBES:
Aussie Internet Blacklist Has Gray Areas
WIRED:
Australia Censors Wikileaks Page
Excerpt:
The federal government in Australia has been wanting to force all ISPs to use the list to censor the internet for everyone, but that plan has sputtered under severe criticism from online liberty groups and technical experts.
But just last week, ACMA forced Whirlpool to remove a user forum link that pointed to graphic pictures on an anti-abortion website. ACMA threatened the site's hosting provider with fines of $11,000 a day if the link was not removed.
That, free speech advocates say, shows the censorship regime isn't limited to fighting child pornography and will be used to block legitimate political speech.
GUARDIAN (UK):
Wikileaks taken offline after publishing Australia's banned websites
IT NEWS:
ACMA blacklist proves too popular for Wikileaks
LEZGETREAL:
Australian Government Purposed to Ban Gay Websites
UBER REVIEW:
What the Leaked Australian Internet Blacklist Says About Censorship
Excerpt:
Then there are the technical aspects of censorship. It constricts rapidly increasing traffic and slows the flow of information. It is not simply a matter of blocking access to the sites on the list; all Internet use must be monitored in order to prevent access to the blacklisted sites. Thus, as the number of sites on the list grows, the speed of user traffic will decrease. Australia’s Internet is already embarrassingly slow for a developed country a nation-wide filtration system would constitute a further step back.
COURIER NEWS:
Scared men wear secrecy veil: Terry Sweetman
Excerpt:
SECRECY, said British judge Sir John Chadwick, is the badge of fraud. He was speaking in the context of financial fraud but it seems equally to apply in Australia where governments wear the badge while robbing us of our freedoms, all the while pretending to do precisely the opposite.
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-gadfly
[***UPDATE***]
Wikileaks is back online right now. If you tried to contribute earlier, but were unable to load the pages necessary to do so, please try again.
If you want to chat directly with Wikileaks staff, here are the instructions from their site.
Wikileaks:Chat
From Wikileaks
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Click HERE for live chat
Whistleblower? Journalist? Citizen journalist? Wikileaks writer, volunteer, supporter or techie? Get advice and talk with people like you on the Wikileaks secure chat (also good for safe interviews with anonymous sources).
Click "chat" to the right. You do not need to register. page will appear to be "loading" for ever — this is normal as a chat session never "ends". Click into the box at the bottom of the chat page and and start typing. For greater reliability and ease of use, you can install a chat program as described below. Our chat system is designed to work on almost any browser in any country. It has minimal bandwidth requirements and will even work over dialups or mobile phones.
Please be patient and leave the chat window up. Participants are often busy with other tasks. Depending on time of day you may need to wait several hours for a reply. If you can not wait, just login at the suggested meeting times below.
Contents
* 1 Using an independent chat client
o 1.1 Chatzilla
o 1.2 Pidgin
o 1.3 Other clients
* 2 If Wikileaks chat ever goes down (READ!)
* 3 Wikileaks weekly meeting
* 4 Daily Meeting Times
* 5 Time Zones
Using an independent chat client
For greater reliability and ease of use, you can install an independent Internet Relay Chat (IRC) chat program.
Chatzilla
1. If you don't already have it, download and install the popular Firefox web-browser: http://www.mozilla.com/...
2. If you don't already have it, install (very quick!) the Firefox plugin Chatzilla: https://addons.mozilla.org/...
3. Click on ircs://secure.wikileaks.org:9999/Wikileaks (you may like to bookmark it) or (type sslserver secure.wikileaks.org then join #wikileaks)
Pidgin
Pidgin is a multi-protocol chat client that supports MSN, Gtalk, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace, ICQ, IRC and many more concurrently.
1. If you don't already have it, download and install http://www.pidgin.im/
2. add a new acount
3. select "IRC" from the drop downlist
4. enter a nickname of your choice
5. enter the server name secure.wikileaks.org
6. click the "advanced" tab
7. for the "port" field enter 9999
8. click the "use SSL" (encryption) checkbox
9. save and connect to the server
10. click on the "Buddies" menu
11. click on "Join a Chat"
12. enter #wikileaks for the room name and click "Join"
Other clients
1. enable SSL (encryption). Some older clients do not support SSL.
2. connect to secure.wikileaks.org port 9999
3. once online type /join #wikileaks
If Wikileaks chat ever goes down (READ!)
If the Wikileaks chat server has a major problem for more than 8 hours duration, Wikileaks will use https://chat.indymedia.org/ as a backup. Failing that, channel #wikileaks on irc.freenode.net
Wikileaks weekly meeting
We meet online each Sunday evening to plan our course of action for the week at 1800 (6pm) GMT (London time without daylight savings). This roughly corresponds to midday in the United States.
Depending how many make the Europe/Americas meeting, there will be equivalent Sunday meetings for Asia/Oceania at 1100 GMT (about 9pm, Sydney time), as described below.
Daily Meeting Times
These are meeting times structured to take place in the middle evening for three sections of the world. Encourage everyone to attend meetings for the other regions as most of our efforts are global. There may or may not be anyone around on a particular day. Please try to stay logged in as long as possible (at least two hours).
The meeting times are:
The Americas, Europe, Africa & The Middle East (meeting 1)
1800 GMT, that is about midday US time (depending on coast), about mid-afternoon south American time, 6pm London and South African time, 7pm western Europe, 8pm eastern Europe and 9pm in western Russia.
For Asia & Oceania (meeting 2)
1100 GMT, that is 6pm Vietnam/Thailand/Cambodia time, 7pm China, 8pm Japan & Korea, 9pm Australian eastern seaboard and 11pm New Zealand time.
The times specified exclude changes due to daylight savings.
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