Wikileaks update

15 December 2010

At this moment, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, is held captive in a British prison on various sex charges. Initially, the British government denied Assange the ability of leaving on bail because the District Judge Howard Riddle has reasons to believe that Assange will abscond. But after his court hearing yesterday on December 14, Assange will be allowed to leave on a $380,000 bail. He will then go on to fight an extradition warrant by Sweden. The United States, who are investigating Assange and his role of releasing the highly contentious documents are still unclear of whether to request an extradition warrant also. If US officials do decide to, it will be up to the British government to decide which country's request will be honored.

Although Julian Assange is currently inactively involved in Wikileaks due to his legal battles, there's no doubt that his creation of Wikileaks has sparked a new gang of Wikileaks supporters who are terrorizing the web and mimicking Assange by hacking various websites. Of the major websites, visa.com and mastercard.com were taken down earlier this week. The group identifies themselves as an "internet gathering" rather than an individual.

 From a statement released late last week concerning the hackings, the Anonymous group wrote, "We do not want to steal your personal information or credit card numbers. We also do not seek to attack critical infrastructure of companies such as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal or Amazon. Our current goal is to raise awareness about WikiLeaks and the underhanded methods employed by the above companies to impair WikiLeaks' ability to function."

These attacks on various websites are all a part of a series called "Operation: Payback." Furthermore, the Anonymous group had tentative plans to bring down amazon.com earlier this week, but terminated the plan due to the hype caused by the media. On its decision to not attack amazon.com, the statement says, "Simply put, attacking a major online retailer when people are buying presents for their loved ones would be in bad taste."

            Releasing this disclaimer to the public after attacking some of the most popular websites is strange. The group seems to be concerned with its image and most likely fears the public's perception of its actions. Putting this entire situation in perceptive, the actions and the statement is ironic.