There's an interesting little legal battle brewing, over a site you may never have heard.  It's called WikiLeaks, and it's a whistle-blowing site where people can anonymously upload documents to blow the whistle on corruption.  Disgustingly, it was ordered shut down by US District Judge Jeffrey White.

He even went as far as having WikiLeaks wiped off the face of the Internet DNS system, which means you can't use www.wikileaks.org to reach it any longer.  However, the Internet is nothing if not resilient :)  You can still reach it by its public IP at http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks.  There is also an extensive network of alternative DNS names which point to WikiLeaks as well.  I think this is great--not only because WikiLeaks is an important site, but it's also important that government officials of all stripes know that they can't silence the Internet like that.

How, you might be wondering, can WikiLeaks thumb its nose at a court order like that?  Bullet-proof hosting:

Also making a take-down difficult, Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources and other confidential information, according to an unidentified individual who answered a press inquiry sent to Wikileaks.

I predicted this would happen eventually, I just didn't know it was happening already today.  Off-shore servers are the new off-shore banks:  untouchable, private, secure.  I say, give me some more of that.

Government lately has trended towards less transparency, not more. Credit markets are currently locked up--and have been for a while now--because the whistleblowers (Congress, OCC, OTS, FDIC) are not doing their jobs, instead demonstrating a frustrating reluctance to expose bankrupt companies.  Sarbanes Oxley is a joke in the financial world. If this isn't fixed soon we are headed for a 1930's-style DEPRESSION.

I actually hope people with access and a conscience will leverage WikiLeaks to expose companies which are unlawfully hiding losses off their balance sheets and restore transparency and trust to our economy .  It's not fair that Joe 6-Pack should have to suffer because the official cops are asleep on the watch.  We need MORE sites like WikiLeaks, not less.

If you're concerned about the current lack of honesty in our country and its effects on the people you know and love, it would be well worth your time to sign the petition to restore financial transparency to the USA.