There is a Mount Everest-sized amount of news, information, and analysis on the Internet about Wikileaks. The release of, to date, 1,269 diplomatic cables out of a total of 251,287 that Wikileaks has in its possession has sparked a furor in the United States and globally — although the tenor of the debate in this country is strikingly different from what it is in many other parts of the world.
I have set myself the task of finding and reading as much of this vast coverage as I can, over the period of time between November 28, when Wikileaks released the first batch of cables, and the present date — and the present date, of course, is a moving target. There is so much more information out there than just what you see on Memeorandum or by reading or watching the more obvious news sources. The themes, implications, lessons, and news angles relating to Cablegate, as many are calling it, are almost overwhelming in number and variety — and there are certainly many more of these than are being discussed or even mentioned in the traditional media. Part of what I aim to do is tease out as many of these angles as I can, and shed as much light on them as possible.
First, some basics. Wikileaks as a website no longer exists, thank to unrelenting DDos attacks and the loss of the site’s server (the two are related, of course). Despite that — or more accurately because of it — Wikileaks is now more available and easy to access than it ever was before:
WikiLeaks is currently not available at WikiLeaks.org. It recently lost its DNS service provider, and the site itself has been battered by DDoS attacks for more than a week now – ever since it first started releasing secret embassy cables.However, when highly coveted information once spreads on the web, there’s no stopping it. Case in point: WikiLeaks () currently has several hundred mirrors, and although some of these mirrors are incomplete, slow or perhaps even completely unavailable, it’s highly unlikely that any effort will be able to exterminate them all.
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Obviously, WikiLeaks was never about one website. As large U.S. companies such as Amazon () and PayPal fold under pressure, refusing to give service to WikiLeaks, thousands of enthusiasts help WikiLeaks out by hosting a mirror of the site, uploading a torrent with the latest cables or by donating to the site.
Some of them do it because they are advocates of free speech, some of them do it because they support the cause, and some do it just for the heck of it. And with simple instructions on how to set up a WikiLeaks mirror readily available, anyone can do it. The result? Regardless of what any nation, company or organization wants, WikiLeaks isn’t going away.
Here are some of them. Here is another, much longer, list.
ReadWriteWeb has what they call a “comprehensive WikiLeaks timeline” of their own coverage of WikiLeaks. Strictly speaking it’s not a timeline since it’s not in chronological order, but it IS comprehensive.
The Guardian has a chronological timeline that focuses on the specific actions taken against Julian Assange by private companies and by the U.S. government. MSNBC has a timeline covering the events in August that led to Assange being accused of rape and “molestation” by two Swedish women. It doesn’t have much, if anything, we didn’t already know, but it’s good for basic information.
More to come.
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