The app, which is described as “The Wikileaks app gives instant access to the world’s most documented leakage of top secret memos and other confidential government documents.”  was written by developer Igor Barinov.

The app cost $1.99 which technically means it was selling access to leaked documents, even through the documents themselves were free.  It could be then that Apple felt the app breached its terms and conditions.  It could be argued though that if this was the case and a third-party was trying to benefit financially from selling content that is made freely available by another provider, that the app should not have been approved in the first place unless it too was free.

Apple join an ever-growing list of companies which have withdrawn services from Wikileaks including Bank of America, MasterCard, Visa, Paypal and Amazon.

There will no doubt be more companies withdrawing services from Wikileaks, though this number is bound to drop off now as new stories move on and people slowly forget about the Wikileaks scandal of recent weeks.

The reason the bank gave for refusing to handle payments from the controversial website was that “Wikileaks may be engaged in activities that are… inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”  Which could mean anything.

Wikileaks hit back by asking supporters to stop using bank of America, though this is a tougher sell given the difficulties people face in moving their accounts from one bank to another these days.

The bank of America, based in North Carolina also said that they will ”not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for Wikileaks” but left the statement at that without providing clarification about what types of transaction this could cover.

The war of words between Wikileaks and businesses that have withdrawn services from it is set to rumble on into the new year and it will be interesting to see what companies, if any, will be the next to line up against the website.

It’s entirely possible that this could throttle Wikileaks to a point where they simply have to close their doors and shut up shop.  Fear not though because the scandal has inspired whole generations of people to take up arms and Wikileaks in 2011 will be only one of a great number of whistle-blowing websites out on the world wide web.

Only this week have the US military blocked the use of removable media in their computers, something business and corporations did several years ago.

I spoke to security expert James Watts from Zinstall, the data protection lead of their DiCOP (Digital Content Protection) unit.  He had some interesting thoughts on overall ICT security within businesses and governments.

“This outbreak is not surprising or sudden.”  He said.  ”It is simply another blow in a string of leaks – and subsequent scandal – from military and governmental networks. And it is definitely not the last one.”

“Traditional defense systems of notable manufacturers (such as Symantec, McAfee, CheckPoint), same antiviruses and firewalls installed in every organization and personal computer have not failed. They were simply created with a different concept, developed in the early 2000s, with the primary goal of protecting from an external attacker trying to penetrate the system. It is more fitting to say that the actual modus operandi on which these tools are based was the one that failed.”

He went on to detail the three main categories of defence against information leaks…

1. “Bruce force” defense: totally block all USB devices, CD/DVD burners, Bluetooth and Firewire ports, Internet access and email. The immediate problem with this method is of course the severe impairment of business continuity of the organization, by cutting off and obstructing the normal flow of data crucial to ongoing operation – “blocking all exits” unfortunately also means blocking communication and collaboration between the staff – as well as creating an heavy air of suspicion and distrust throughout the organization.
2. Rules and permissions: this category contains DLP systems which rely on defining a centralized and organized set of permissions for classified data, employees and computers. For each user, the system defines exactly what kind of documents he can access, and on which computers. Will this protect from an internal threat? Obviously not – after all, all of the aforementioned leaks were performed by a trusted employee who was in fact authorized to access and use the classified data. Furthermore, in reality such a centralized rule system quickly becomes bloated, cumbersome – and unmanageable.
3. Heuristic system: an improvement on the previous category, a heuristic system tries to replace the management attention of a human officer responsible for setting the permissions with a continuously self-learning computer system which automatically classifies different types of documents in the organization, and sets permissions according to context. This approach definitely helps to prevent a data leak from an authorized source – however, its operation is limited to textual information only, while pictures, photos, videos, drawings, designs etc. will still leak as before.

It’s interesting to note with the first category that this feature is available in software within Windows 7, though as we have yet to see the first service pack for this operating system, many businesses and certainly many governments are yet to switch over to the new OS.

It remains to be seen if recent events will change the policies of these organisations who normally wait for this first service pack release.  Will future Windows versions be adopted sooner after their release than is currently the case?  Only time will tell on this one.

Watts has some simple advice for companies though and it’s the mantra for Zinstall’s own security products.  “The motto is simple: protect all digital content in the organization, including all files of all types – while maintaining complete transparency for the users, keeping data flow unobstructed and allowing full streamlined collaboration between the employees. The leak source can try carrying the files out on a USB drive, burning them onto a CD, transferring them to a smartphone, sending them by email – but he will not be able to use that leaked content outside the organization. Of course, a disgruntled employee will still be able to write down some information on a simple piece of paper – but leaking many thousands of classified documents, reports and many kinds of digital content will be impossible.”

Despite reports that hackers are responsible for the attack there’s no actual evidence one way or another, but it’s raised important and pertinent questions about the information that’s in the public domain and if there really is such a thing as “too much information”.

Most people will agree that sometimes it’s just better not to know a fact, and to live in ignorance of it.  The Human brain and conscience is only capable of processing so much which is why we choose to blank out certain events.

This was the case with the previous WikiLeaks revelations of documents from the Iraq war.  Most people chose to ignore the event and, as such, it went away.

Revelations about private discussions and thoughts from US Ambassadors and envoys from around the world though could have a much more serious impact.  This time it won’t matter if the public choose to ignore the documents, other countries, friendly or otherwise will be pouring over them and you can be certain that there will be ammunition in there for everyone.

Extracts from the revelations, to add fuel to the fire, are also set to be published in tomorrow’s papers  including El Pais in Spain, Le Monde in France, Speigel in Germany, The Guardian in the UK and the New York Times.

The latest round of leaks covers diplomats confidential views on countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, Russia and Turkey and, according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “covers every major issue in every country in the world”.

Most heads of state will be sensible enough to take such matters on the chin, but it’s the responses of fringe elemants in both friendly and unfriendly countries, and the roll on effects for years to come of the revelations that should cause the people of the world concern.

WikiLeaks has made its point, that the freedom of the Internet cannot be removed.  Now Julian Assange needs to stop, and stop quickly before his actions, and the actions of his staff cause an incident that will cost even so much as a single life.

It’s all too easy for those of us who sit behind a screen making a living from the Internet to think only of ourselves, cocooned in our own safe little world.  It’s harder to think that anything we say or do, or write, can have consequences for other people and perhaps even cause bloodshed… or worse.

This situation comes about because we’ve had the longest period of western peace in history and every day we see more and more countries working together towards common goals.  People like Assange have never witnessed first hand the horrors of war or suffering.  Consequently [we] they have no way to properly relate to it or understand it.

Some of the documents from Iraq exposed corruption and aided democracy.  That’s great and I’m sure some of these documents will too, which is also great but you need to be careful. The information about the Saudi’s wanting the US to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities neither exposes corruption nor aids democracy.  It’s just salatious information that can only have the effect of making any such move to disarm Iran less likely.

This is why people like Assange are dangerous.  Power without responsibility is always dangerous and it is us, the people of the world, who will have to accept responsibility for this one man’s actions.

I don’t care tonight whether it is hackers or the US government that is trying to bring down this website.  I can only hope that they succeed.  Our freedoms, and the freedom of the Internet, do not need to come at such high a price as a person’s life.

The warrant, which was issued on Friday, comes with no details but Assange, in a message on Twitter, said the accusations were “without basis”, “deeply disturbing” and that he had been warned to expect “dirty tricks”.

Saying that nobody at Wikileaks had been contacted by the Swedish police, it asks the question of whether the accusations are genuine or if there might not be the hand of the Pentagon stirring things up!?

Despite this, Assange has said that in addition to the 75,000 secret military documents Wikileaks has already published, they will be publishing another 15,000 in the coming weeks.

Assange was in Sweden last week to talk about Wikileaks and to defend his decision to publish the secret Afghanistan documents.

Update: It still has not been decided if Julian Assange will be extradited to Sweden. The final appeal hearing takes place today at London’s High Court. Depending on the outcome of that hearing, the request may be denied or granted. If the ruling goes against Julian Assange, he will face extradition to Sweden within 10 days.

Swedish authorities want to question Mr. Assange over sex crime allegations made by two Swedish women that he denies.

The US Army’s detention of Bradley Manning was arrested in Kuwait and was “placed in pre-trial confinement for allegedly releasing classified information”.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told the BBC that they could and would not confirm or deny who the source of the original leak was.  ”We do not know if Mr Manning is a source, but we understand there are allegations that are being taken seriously so we are naturally inclined to try to defend [him].”

One video that was put on the website shows a US Apache helicopter killing up to a dozen people, including two journalists, in Baghdad during 2007.  It’s reported that two children were seriously injured in the attack.

It’s been reported that it was a hacker who Mr Manning had contacted who revealed his identity to the US authorities over concerns for US national security and not wanting to be seen to “obstruct justice”.

Wikileaks meanwhile have said that no other potential whistle-blowers should be put off posting to the website, adding that they never divulge their sources.  They added “The site does not collect information about its sources and uses numerous web servers scattered around the world to host content.”

The website was launched in 2006 and built a strong reputation since.  In November 2009 it “published what it said were 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9/11 attacks in the United States” according to the BBC.

Earlier this year they published a 2008 Pentagon report saying that the site was a “threat to the US Army” though it’s hardly surprising that US authorities wouldn’t like such a website.

Only 15-20 users recognized the interference and reacted negatively to it. It goes on by suggesting changes so that the process will be 100% transparent to the user which simply means that they want a system where the user is not knowing that his connection is being hijacked and misused.

I have not had time to read the whole report but it seems like an illegal act to me to inject advertisement on web pages without the users and webmasters consent. In addition to spying on the users about 7000 cookies were dropped as well.

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I hope that there will be an unparalleled public outcry and coverage in Britain and world wide. Spread the word.