Wikileaks Publishes List Of Banned Aussie Sites, Goes Offline

Whistle-blowing site Wikileaks has published a list of sites banned by the Australian government...and then has mysteriously gone offline.

Wikileaks is known for blowing the whistle on all sorts of things. But just after publishing what it claims is a list of sites banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) it went offline and hasn’t yet returned.

The list contains sites that Australians are not allowed to access, according to Wikileaks, but the Australian communications minister has said the list is a fake, the Guardian reports, and that whoever leaked the information might be prosecuted.

The list leak has caused a minor firestorm in Australia, with the Sydney Morning Herald stating that it casts doubt on the government’s Internet censorship plans, and Forbes saying that the plans could go well beyond the original aim of blocking child pornography.

One claim, by the Register, is that some Wikileaks pages had been added to the banned sites after it published a similar list of sites banned by the Danish government. Australian ISPs face a fine of $7,500 if they link to banned pages. Wired has said that the AMCA has added two Wikileaks pages to its prohibited list, which it says numbers more than 1,000 URLs.