German Police Shut Down Wikileaks Domain

According to The Inquirer, German police have raided the offices of WikiLeaks.de, a website that publishes leaks of government documents, transferring control of the domain to German authorities and shutting down the website.

This move was triggered by WikiLeaks’ publication of a leaked document outlining Australia’s proposed Internet censorship list. In addition to the standard gamut of websites (including child pornography, et cetera), this list included the filtration of sites that were opposed to the policy of the Australian government.

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Australian government did not have any role in the German raid.

WikiLeaks postulated that the German raid occurred because the German government is in the process of establishing their own censorship list and wants to avoid publication of leaked documents, should a leak occur.

At present, China and Germany are the only countries censoring a WikiLeaks domain.