Not that more proof was required that governments think of nothing of sabotaging public access to information, lying about and then crying foul when the tides turn, but new Wikileaks revelations add fuel to the fire. According to The Guardian, a high ranking Chinese official was responsible for hacking Google and forcing them to move ‘offshore’ to Hong Kong.

The hacking of Google that forced the search engine to withdraw from mainland China was orchestrated by a senior member of the communist politburo, according to classified information sent by US diplomats to Hillary Clinton’s state department in Washington.

The leading politician became hostile to Google after he searched his own name and found articles criticising him personally, leaked cables from the US embassy in Beijing say.

That single act prompted a politically inspired assault on Google, forcing it to “walk away from a potential market of 400 million internet users” in January this year, amid a highly publicised row about internet censorship.

The attacks claimed not to drive Google out, or filter out pornography, but purely to restrict communication between Chinese dissidents. Clinton criticized China at the time.

The documents reveal a close relationship between Google and the US authorities in China. In January, a few days after Google made the hacking public – without specifying who it believed was responsible – Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, made a speech in Washington entitled “remarks on internet freedom”.

Clinton weighed in heavily on the side of Google, warning that “countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”.

She called on the Chinese government to “conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions” without revealing that it was her own officials who believed the attack was co-ordinated from inside the Chinese politburo.

“…countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users…” That was then, this is now.

So far, three American companies have refused to do business with Wikileaks and obvious pressure has been brought to bear on the Swedish prosecutors to issue an arrest warrant for something he extended his stay in Sweden, specifically to do. US Government employees, including the state department and future state department employees, and US troops, risking life and limb for ‘freedom’ are being forbidden access to information on the public domain.

Senator Joe Lieberman wants to pass legislation to make it treasonous to tell the truth.

The constitution apparently doesn’t apply if you work for the US, or live in it for that matter.