Thursday, March 26, 2009

Police raid Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe's home over 'censorship lists'

Handcuffs / FilePOLICE have raided a Wikileaks associate's homes in Dresden and Jena after the website published a list of banned websites.

Theodor Reppe owns the German domain registration for "wikileaks.de", one of the many URLs used by the whistleblowing website.

This morning, Wikileaks published a Twitter update:

"Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists - stay tuned."

Wikileaks, which offers an anonymous service, has previously published alleged web censorship lists from Thailand, Denmark, and Australia.

A statement on Wikileaks's website claims police were investigating the "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence".

Wikileaks claims Mr Reppe is not involved in the website other than "sponsoring the German domain name and mirroring a collection of Wikileaks US Congressional Research Service reports".

Mr Reppe also reportedly maintains one of the most popular anonymous proxy servers in Germany.

Wikileaks told news.com.au it's not clear whether the raid was initiated after complaints from Australia.

"The raid is over the censorship lists, but which particular list, we can not be certain, although the Australian lists are the most recent and the most prominent due to their non-voluntary status."

In the past week, Wikileaks published three lists all purporting to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMA's) blacklist of websites.

While ACMA and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last week denied the list belonged to ACMA, they both warned that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate its distribution.

The lists contained apparent links to child pornography websites, gambling sites, as well as relatively innocuous sites including those of a dentist and canteen manager.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25240192-5014239,00.html

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