Most of the diplomatic messages released by Wikileaks have been traced to a US defence department network, known as Siprnet, used for the exchange of classified information, media reports say.

Ironically, Siprnet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network), which was set up in the 1990s, was expanded as part of moves after 9/11 to allow classified information to be shared more easily and prevent failures of communication between different intelligence agencies.

It is designed for exchange of information up to "secret" level - the level for information that would cause "serious damage" to national security.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11863618

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The US state department's wishlist of information about the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and other senior members of his organisation was drawn up by the CIA, the Guardian has learned.

The disclosure comes as new information emerged about Washington's intelligence gathering on foreign diplomats, including surveillance of the telephone and internet use of Iranian and Chinese diplomats.

One of the most embarrassing revelations to emerge from US diplomatic cables obtained by the whistleblowers' website WikiLeaks has been that US diplomats were asked to gather intelligence on Ban, other senior UN staff, security council members and other foreign diplomats – a possible violation of international law.

US state department spokesman PJ Crowley, in interviews since the release, has tried to deflect criticism by repeatedly hinting that although the cables were signed by secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, they originated with another agency. But he refused to identify it.

The Guardian has learned that the intelligence shopping list is drawn up annually by the manager of Humint (human intelligence), a post created by the Bush administration in 2005 in a push to better co-ordinate intelligence after 9/11.

The manager of Humint sets out priorities for the coming year and sends them to the state department. The actual form of words used in the diplomatic cables is written by the state department, based on the CIA's list of priorities.

The cables are tailored for each embassy, such as the US mission to the UN.

The list of priorities, though co-ordinated by the manager of Humanint, is drawn up with input from all US intelligence agencies, including intelligence analysts at the state department.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-cables-cia-united-nations

WASHINGTON — Amazon on Thursday defended its decision to expel WikiLeaks from its Web site hosting service this week after an aide to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman called the company and asked about the relationship.

In a statement, Amazon — which rents server space to companies in addition to its better-known business of selling books, music and other products online — said that it had canceled its relationship with WikiLeaks not because of “a government inquiry,” but because it decided that the organization was violating the terms of service for the program.

“When companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere,” the company said.

WikiLeaks, which began making public the first of a cache of more than 250,000 secret State Department cables this week, apparently moved its Web site to Amazon’s servers in recent weeks after “denial of service” attacks had sought to shut it down.

On Tuesday, after reading about the move in media reports, a staff member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Mr. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, leads, called Amazon and asked several pointed questions, including, “ ‘If you are aware of this, do you have plans to take it down?’ ” according to Leslie Phillips, a spokeswoman for the committee.

On Wednesday morning, Ms. Phillips said, an official at Amazon called back and said the company had “terminated the relationship because it was a violation of terms of use,” but offered no further details. She said Mr. Lieberman found out about his aide’s inquiry only afterward, but strongly approved of it — and of Amazon’s decision.

“The senator immediately said they did the right thing,” she said. “They should have done this previously, and that other companies should hear the message.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/world/03amazon.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print

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Please don't deal via Amazon or with Amazon... Their excuse is very flimsy and totally political...

The Department of Homeland Security effectively confirmed it was behind the move, referring journalists to Senator Lieberman's statement. WikiLeaks tweeted in response: ''WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free - fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.''

The development came amid increasingly angry and polarised political opinion in America over WikiLeaks, with some conservatives calling for the organisation's founder, Julian Assange, to be executed as a spy, while an adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, reportedly said Assange should be killed.

Availability of his website has been patchy since Sunday, when it started to come under internet-based attacks by unknown hackers. WikiLeaks dealt with the attacks in part by moving to servers run by Amazon Web Services, which is self-service.

Amazon.com would not comment on its relationship with WikiLeaks or whether it forced the site to leave. Messages seeking comment from WikiLeaks were not immediately returned.

The fury among right-wingers in the US is in contrast to the measured response from the Obama administration.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/amazoncom-bows-to-political-pressure-and-pulls-the-plug-20101202-18ib0.html

Gus: it could be successfully argued that Wikileaks is presenting a major university thesis that government around the world are lying to each others and diplomats are the biggest liars of them all. In order to illustrate this thesis, Wikileaks has no choice but to quote or present the evidence as reference material. I am sure wikileaks mastermind would get honours plus for his excellent work. I knew someone who was doing a thesis on the cosy relationship between media and conservative politics and the way they would manipulate the electorate, but the thesis was more or less shot down by the secrecy that surrounded this cosy relationship...

If you support free speech, boycott Amazon... And boycott America, the land of free speech where nothing is free — including speech.

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Mr. Ellsberg also encouraged any Amazon employee with inside knowledge of how the decision to stop renting server space to the whistle-blowers to leak that information:

This would be a good time for Amazon insiders who know and perhaps can document the political pressures that were brought to bear-and the details of the hasty kowtowing by their bosses-to leak that information. They can send it to Wikileaks (now on servers outside the US), to mainstream journalists or bloggers.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/latest-updates-on-leak-of-u-s-cables-day-6/?ref=world

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last year in a leaked classified memo that donors in Saudi Arabia were the "most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide".

She said it was "an ongoing challenge" to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority.

The groups funded include al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, she added.

The memo, released by Wikileaks, also criticised efforts to combat militants by the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for the founder of the Wikileaks website said he was holding back secret material for release if anything happened to him.

He told the BBC that a rape case being prepared in Sweden against Julian Assange, an Australian national, was politically motivated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11923176

From Malcolm Turnbull

Leaders could end up with a second helping of egg on their faces.

[Malcolm must have seen my cartoon at top]

IN 1986, I represented former MI5 officer Peter Wright in his efforts to publish his memoirs Spycatcher. Margaret Thatcher was determined that no former MI5 officer should be able to write about his work regardless of whether the information was still confidential, affected current operations or was otherwise of any real detriment to intelligence services.

While it is true that some of the best legal minds of the day had advised Wright's publishers he had no hope of success, we always thought that the old spook turned Tasmanian horse breeder would succeed.

That was because of a decision of the High Court of Australia in 1980, Commonwealth v Fairfax, in which Sir Anthony Mason had held that a government could restrain the publication of confidential information only if it could establish that the information was still secret and, most importantly, that publication would cause real detriment, not just embarrassment, public debate and controversy.

It was also a fundamental part of our jurisprudence that a court would not restrain the publication of confidences if their disclosure would reveal the commission of crimes.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/political-risk-in-making-a-martyr-of-assange-20101208-18ppy.html