White House Opens Up For Questions About The Economy

German Authorities Raid Home Looking For Wikileaks Info

from the transparency... dept

Wed, Mar 25th 2009 2:59pm — Mike Masnick

In just a short while, Wikileaks has proven to be both an amazing resource to reveal useful information and a massive thorn in the side of those who wish that info wasn't revealed (this includes, by the way, Wikileaks itself, which had to deal with some of its own private info that was leaked as well. However, you knew that eventually governments would start to look for ways to "deal" with Wikileaks -- and up first appears to be the German government. Authorities have apparently raided the home of the owner of the Wikileaks.de domain name. The claim is that the raid was supposedly for "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence." The speculation (and, yes, at this point, it's still speculation) is that the raid had to do with Wikileaks recently publishing censored-site lists from various governments, which included certain porn sites those gov't's wanted censored, though it did not include any pornographic material itself.

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Filed Under: germany, wikileaks

16 Comments

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kevin (profile), 25 Mar 2009 @ 3:23pm

I may be wrong but...
Did you mean "German Authorities"?
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Anonymous Poster, 25 Mar 2009 @ 3:37pm

First rule of government censorship: kill the source. In this case, by "kill", I mean "scare into keeping quiet".

Here's hoping WikiLeaks doesn't back down and continues to prove just how much the governments of the world don't like being called out on their idiocy and hypocrisy.
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Weird Harold, 25 Mar 2009 @ 3:54pm

Germany has very strong and some very odd laws about porn (and even linking to it). I can't help but thinking that someone was just waiting for wikileaks to slip up to allow this sort of a legal maneuver.

Do I a approve? Nope. It's sort of funny to think the only thing that could get them was pr0n.
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Davis Freeberg, 25 Mar 2009 @ 4:05pm

That which doesn't kill you
The more they struggle against wikileaks, the more powerful they'll make it. The fact that they are now raiding peoples homes is a clear indicator of the success of the site.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Mar 2009 @ 4:23pm

The most hardcore stuff you will ever find is German Porn,
so Germany having strong anti porn laws is a big shocker to me.
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Weird Harold, 25 Mar 2009 @ 4:35pm

German authorities have even gone as far as to send letters of notification to websites outside of germany to stop offing certain types of pr0n to germans. It's really quite funny, actually. They have had a few really good ones:

http://news.cnet.com/CompuServe-manager-convicted/2100-1033_3-211618.html

It was overturned a year later - but it is typical of their view. Wikileaks posting a list of child pr0n websites would likely be pretty much in deep with local authorities.
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RIAA, 25 Mar 2009 @ 4:40pm

Didn't you know that a link is the same as the actual content?
I thought everyone knew this.
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Anonymous Poster, 25 Mar 2009 @ 4:49pm

Re:
Oh, you. [canned laughter]
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Weird Harold, 25 Mar 2009 @ 5:18pm

Re:
laugh at it all you like. The Germans are like that.
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Killer_Tofu (profile), 26 Mar 2009 @ 5:47am

Discovery of Evidence
What, they don't have any good reasons to break into his house, so they are breaking in to find evidence to justify the break in and seizure of computers?

"Surely you must be doing something illegal since you are linking to porn, so allow us to break in and find something to charge you with"
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Weird Harold, 26 Mar 2009 @ 6:07am

Re: Discovery of Evidence
No, because the linking to child porn is enough to merit the knock on the door under their laws.

Don;t try to apply US mentality to another country's laws.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2009 @ 6:32am

Re: Re: Discovery of Evidence
Was it a hyperlink, or was it text?

Does it matter?
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2009 @ 8:34am

Nothing like some good ol' German poop pr0n. And just think, if the USA hadn't intervened in WWII we'd all be in this same situation. Oh wait...
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Gene Cavanaugh, 26 Mar 2009 @ 9:02am

Raiding wikileaks
Yet, in most countries, if wikileaks was considered to be formal "news media", this would not be allowed.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2009 @ 11:25am

Re: Re: Discovery of Evidence
No, because the linking to child porn is enough to merit the knock on the door under their laws.

Seems that those making a list of such sites in the first place would be guilty as well then.
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Weird Harold, 26 Mar 2009 @ 1:13pm

Re: Re: Re: Discovery of Evidence
yeah, except they did it in another country where the laws are just a little different. Germany really thinks they can wag the internet, and have had the balls to send out noticed to overseas companies about certain types of sites that should be taken down - even though they don't operate in germany.

it's really quite funny to watch. But the guys running wikileaks should be a little brighter than that.
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