Investigations, censorship, harassment and surveillance
According to The Times, WikiLeaks and its members have complained about continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organizations, including extended detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, “covert following and hidden photography.”[97] Two lawyers for Julian Assange in the United Kingdom told The Guardian that they believed they were being watched by the security services after the US cables leak.[98]
By governments
Police raid on German WikiLeaks domain holder's home
The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the German WikiLeaks domain name, wikileaks.de, was raided on 24 March 2009 after WikiLeaks released the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist.[99] The site was not affected.[100][101]
China
Wikileaks's website claims that the government of the People's Republic of China has attempted to block all traffic to web sites with "wikileaks" in the URL since 2007, but that this can be bypassed through encrypted connections or by using one of Wikileaks's many covert URLs.[102]
Potential future Australian censorship
On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added WikiLeaks to their proposed blacklist of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned.[103][104] The blacklisting was removed 30 November 2010.[105]
Thai censorship
The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) is currently censoring the website WikiLeaks in Thailand[106] and more than 40,000 other webpages[107] because of the emergency decree in Thailand imposed as a result of political instabilities (Emergency decree declared beginning of April 2010[108]). When trying to access the WikiLeaks website, internet users are redirected to this webpage.
United States
Access to WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the United States Library of Congress.[109] On 3 December 2010 the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a memo forbidding all unauthorized federal government employees and contractors from accessing classified documents publicly available on WikiLeaks and other websites.[110]
The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal probe of Wikileaks and founder Julian Assange shortly after the leak of diplomatic cables began.[111] Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed the probe was "not saber-rattling", but was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation.".[111] The Washington Post reported that the department was considering charges under the Espionage Act, a move which former prosecutors characterized as "difficult".[112] Several Supreme Court cases have previously established that the American constitution protects the re-publication of illegally gained information provided the publishers did not themselves break any laws in acquiring it.[113]
Iceland
After the release of the 2007 airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai airstrike, Julian Assange has said that his group of volunteers came under intense surveillance. In an interview and Twitter posts he said that a restaurant in Reykjavík where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; there was "covert following and hidden photography" by police and foreign intelligence services; that an apparent British intelligence agent made thinly veiled threats in a Luxembourg car park; and that one of the volunteers was detained by police for 21 hours. Another volunteer posted that computers were seized, saying "If anything happens to us, you know why ... and you know who is responsible."[97] According to the Columbia Journalism Review, "the Icelandic press took a look at Assange’s charges of being surveilled in Iceland [...] and, at best, have found nothing to substantiate them."[114]
In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank, succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks site; faced with an injunction minutes before broadcast the channel ran with a screen grab of the WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the bank. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.[115] Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers.[116][117] Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former volunteer for WikiLeaks and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.
By organizations and companies
Facebook Inc.
WikiLeaks claimed in April 2010 that Facebook deleted their fan page, which had 30,000 fans.[118][119][120][121] However, as of 6 December 2010 the group's Facebook fan page was available and had grown by 100.000 fans daily since December 1,[122] to more than 875,000 fans. It is also the largest growth of the week.[123] Regarding the presence of WikiLeaks on Facebook, Andrew Noyes, the company's D.C. based Manager of Public Policy Communications has stated "the Wikileaks Facebook Page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies."[124]
Moneybookers Ltd
In October 2010, it was reported that Moneybookers, which collected donations for WikiLeaks, had ended its relationship with the site. Moneybookers stated that its decision had been made "to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities, agencies or commissions."[125]
After the US diplomatic cables leak
Following the US diplomatic cables leak, which started on 28 November 2010, several companies severed ties with WikiLeaks. After providing 24-hour notification, American owned EveryDNS dropped WikiLeaks from its entries on 2 December 2010, citing DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure".[126] The site's 'info' DNS lookup remained operational at alternative addresses for direct access respectively to the Wikileaks and Cablegate websites.[127] On the same day, Amazon.com severed its ties with WikiLeaks, to which it was providing infrastructure services, after an intervention by an aide of US Senator Joe Lieberman.[128][129][130] Amazon denied acting under political pressure citing a violation of its terms of service.[131] Lieberman, who later praised Amazon's decision and called for other companies to follow suit,[130] also proposed new legislation targeting similar cases — Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act,[129] also known as the the SHIELD Act.[132] Two days later, PayPal, the payment processor owned by eBay, permanently cut off the account of the Wau Holland Foundation that had been redirecting donations to WikiLeaks. PayPal alleged that the account violated its "Acceptable Use Policy", specifically that it was used for "activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."[133][134] In the days following, hundreds of mirrors of the WikiLeaks site appeared and the Anonymous group of internet activists, called on supporters to attack the websites of companies who do not support WikiLeaks.[135] The Associated Free Press reported that attempts to shut down the wikileaks.org address had lead to the site surviving via the so-called Streisand effect, whereby attempts to censor information online leads to it being replicated in many places.[136] On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange that it holds, totalling 31,000 euros. In a statement on their website, they stated that this was because Assange "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account.[137] Wikileaks released a statement saying this was due to that Assange, "as a homeless refugee attempting to gain residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's address in Geneva for the bank's correspondence".[138] On 6 December 2010, Vice President of Global Marketing Communications at MasterCard Worldwide Chris Monterio announced "MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products", adding "MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal."[139]
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