Wikileaks: Little to stop leaks turning into a flood

Even if the United States or Sweden succeeds in arresting and imprisoning Julian Assange, there is little his enemies can do to halt the world of online whistle-blowing that he has created.

Assange has spawned an idea, one which will now be copied by volunteers all over the world.

As a web entity, WikiLeaks is virtually impossible to destroy. It is staffed by volunteers who know as much about the methods used to take down a website as those who might be plotting to do just that.

The two "distributed denial of service" attacks on WikiLeaks this week have given us an indication of how they prepare for pre-emptive strikes. As soon as the assaults began, administrators played a game of virtual cat and mouse, moving WikiLeaks on to previously secret backup servers.

The majority of its sites are currently hosted on French and Swedish internet service providers - the latter is housed in a bunker built 30 metres into a mountain. The Americans can do little to target servers outside of their own country, and WikiLeaks has a host of mirror sites.

Assange has called on supporters to download two "insurance files" - vast encrypted caches of information which can be unlocked at his command.

Even without him the organisation would live on. More importantly, copycat networks are already springing up.

The information dam is already leaking in various places. Plugging up a single leak, even if it is the biggest, will do little to halt the coming deluge.

- Independent