Assange

The U.S. government indicated today that WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange could be in legal jeopardy for disclosing classified information because he is "not a journalist."

When asked whether "traditional media" organizations that republish secret documents could be prosecuted, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that the administration applauds "the role of journalists in your daily pursuits."

"In our view, Mr. Assange is not a journalist," Crowley added.

Crowley's remarks come as Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents are scrambling to piece together a legal case against Assange, who was … Read more

Activists fighting on behalf of WikiLeaks brought down MasterCard's Web site today, according to the BBC and other sources.

The hacking group Anonymous is taking responsibility for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the credit company's site in retaliation for MasterCard's decision on Monday to block donations and payments to WikiLeaks, which was first reported by CNET.

MasterCard's main site was at times either offline or extremely slow to load this morning. Ping requests to the site also timed out, an indication that the site was unreachable.

Early this morning, the Anonymous group, which … Read more

As its operations have come under increasing financial and political pressure, WikiLeaks has quietly bolstered its electronic defenses in an attempt to become more difficult to censor.

In the last few days, the portion of WikiLeaks' infrastructure that relied on a company in Reno, Nev., has been shifted outside the United States to a provider in Toronto. Instead of employing only one company to direct traffic to Wikileaks.ch, currently the organization's primary Web site, 14 providers are now being used to provide redundancy in case of legal or extralegal attack.

The reconfiguration comes as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange … Read more

WikiLeaks is struggling to maintain its lifelines as infrastructure and payment providers cut their ties and at least one U.S. politician wants to list it as a terrorist group. Julian Assange, the public face of WikiLeaks, is in jail on what he claims are meritless sex charges. Meanwhile, critics in the U.S. are calling for his head and his home country of Australia seems unconcerned.

In an op-ed in The Australian today titled "Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths," Assange says he and the beleaguered WikiLeaks are being punished for providing people with information … Read more

On today's show, we follow the Google Chrome announcements live, but we'll have the real wrap-up tomorrow, because wow, did that thing go on and on. In other news today, Julian Assange is arrested but Wikileaks soldiers on; unsurprisingly, the DecorMyEyes guy turns out to be a bona fide sociopath; and whatever you do, do not buy anyone an iPhone or iPad for Christmas--just give them an IOU. Trust Shaw Wu on this one. Plus: Koreaceratops! --Molly

Julian Assange has been denied bail, and will be remanded in custody until mid-December, a magistrate ruled today.

Howard Riddle, chief magistrate of City of London Westminster magistrates court, deemed WikiLeaks editor Assange to be capable of breaking bail conditions.

"It's been said that it's quite clear that Mr. Assange has access to significant means if he wants them," said Riddle, who added that Assange had been accused of crimes of a serious sexual nature.

Read more of "Wikileaks editor denied bail" at ZDNet UK.

Julian Assange, leader of the WikiLeaks project that's published extensive secret details of U.S. military and diplomatic activity, has been arrested in London on a Swedish accusation of rape.

"He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation, and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010," London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement today.

Assange appeared today at Magistrates Court in the City of Westminster in London, the police said. The police's extradition unit arrested him this morning on … Read more

MasterCard is pulling the plug on payments to WikiLeaks, a move that will dry up another source of funds for the embattled document-sharing Web site, CNET has learned.

"MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," a spokesman for MasterCard Worldwide said today.

That further limits the revenue sources for WikiLeaks, which has seen its finances systematically attacked in the last few days, as the Swiss authorities shut down a bank account used by editor Julian Assange, and PayPal permanently restricted the account used by the group. WikiLeaks has responded with an … Read more

Though it's in hot water with the U.S. government, WikiLeaks is being supported by online activists fighting to keep the site alive.

WikiLeaks is being propped up by a barrage of mirror sites created by activists following moves by Amazon to stop hosting its site and Domain Name System provider EveryDNS.net to cut off its DNS services, according to The New York Times. Such mirrors can replicate an entire Web site, ensuring that all content and documents remain online and accessible even if WikiLeaks' own site is taken down.

But some of WikiLeaks supporters are adopting a … Read more