WikiLeaks finds a permanent mirror site on French daily "Libération"

Libération, a Paris-based center-left daily close to the French
Socialist Party, has just decided to host a mirror site of WikiLeaks.
(I translate below the full editorial penned by Laurent Joffrin,
director of Libération, to justify the move.)

This is in defiance of the move by Industry Minister Éric Besson who,
two weeks ago, announced that he was exploring juridical ways of
banning the hosting of WikiLeaks on French sites and servers.

A possible legal battle could be taking shape between Libération, a
media powerhouse, and Besson, a controversial and stubborn socialist
turncoat who had presided over Sakorzy's much-decried and now
abolished Ministry of Immigration and National Identity.

Here's my translation of Laurent Joffrin's editorial::

Why "Libé" hosts WikiLeaks

To attack WikiLeaks illegally, as do a number of states, is a menace
that all free newspapers should denounce.

By LAURENT JOFFRIN, Director of "Libération"

Libération, anarchist of the Net? By hosting the site of WikiLeaks,
hounded on a worldwide scale, are we conforming to the ideology of
absolute transparency in which Michel Foucault saw a form of insidious
of totalitarianism? In no way. Democratic states have the right to
keep secrets and to act, in legal forms, in the shelter of recognized
laws of confidentiality.

But the organs of information, on the Net or elsewhere are not and
shouldn't be the extensions of states. They have as function to inform
the citizen and strive, in doing so, to understand what happens behind
the scenes of organizations--public or private.

In a radical form, this is that which does WikiLeaks, which made sure,
it needs to be emphasized, to latch on to respected medias of the
world press in order to make public informations it had obtained. The
attacks carried out against these useful tormentors have as of this
day no legal basis.

And for a very good reason: in a democracy, the right of information
overrides the logic of the powers that be; to illegally attack
WikiLeaks, is, all things considered, to set up a virtual Guantánamo.
A menace all free newspapers must denounce.