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Wikileaks — Anonymous Whistle-Blowing
too_old_to_be_irate writes to tell us about a site that word got out on before they were ready. Wikileaks aims to be an anonymous and uncensorable repository of leaked documents, posted for commentary by interested parties. It's expected to go live in a month or two. From the site: "Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. We have received over 1.1 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources."
"word got out on before they were ready."
anybody else want to raise the B.S. flag?
"It's expected to go live in a month or two."
and die about a month PRIOR to that.
" We have received over 1.1 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources."
You mean folks that bitch and UNRELIABLE sources?
"Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact"
Tell me, how is this going to be any different from any other site pushing a political agenda?
"We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people."
How does political impact have anything to do with your interface being like Wiki?
Oh, and BTW doesn't
"leaked documents"
mean leaked documents? Ones that are already 'out of the closet'?
I guess I just don't get how this got our attention.
This looks like an ideal place to spread FUD and provide a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
According to the FAQ
For the technically minded, Wikileaks integrates technologies including modified versions of FreeNet, Tor, PGP and software of our own design.
If they don't release the source for their custom/modified anonymity network, how do we really know it works?
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
1. they're gonna get their asses sued nonstop because DUH most will be illegaly leaked
2. Anyone can make up anything but unlike wikipedia, you can't just go and check and see if it's true somewhere because it's supposed to be classified and leaked so nobody knows about it. Everyone can deny everything and everyone can say everything is true and nobody really, really knows. I bet politicians will "leak" things about their opponents and opposing parties and all sorts of made up BSing situations like that
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
HONEYPOT
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
After reading the documents decrypted on Cryptome to do with wikileak. I've come to the conclusion that this is just a front for CIA to destabilize governments that do not follow the unique US democracy.
... people these days would jump high at anything that smells like web 2.0.
I just see no point in anyone ever having to contribute to this.
The other point is, a wiki (central location) is not a good idea to distribute this type of static data.
Tor or similar type of network with non-destabilizing search front ends would be a better way.
And most of this data would be static, thus why the need for Wiki?
I had a similar idea myself, but it never became more than an idea. To make this uncensorable, it would have to not be hosted on one centralised server, but rather have the data replicated in a P2P network. This is pretty much the idea in FreeNet. You'd have to download a piece of software to actually access the system. This program would have to talk some special protocol with the other peers. To make it accessible to the average user, it would then provide a webserver, that you could use through a portnumber on localhost. I think FreeNet already has something like that. But rather than transfering html documents over the P2P network, you could use the P2P network to create some kind of database, and simply run wikipedia on top of that.
I say Wikipedia here, because that is what I thought this particular project had in mind. The idea I had in mind would have been using a different layer on top, something similar to worldforum.dk where you can put a small piece of javascript in your bookmarks and using that start a discussion thread about an arbitrary web page. (Worldforum sucks because it never reached a critical mass, and in spite of that performance sucks as well, and these days there are more spam than content, but that's besides the point, all three are issues that might be solvable).
Now to help on credibility of such a system where anybody can post anonymously, it should be possible for you to prove that two messages written by you were in fact written by the same person. Of course that proof also has to be something that you can give anonymously. It should work in such a way, that initially when you write something, you are completely anonymous. But at a later point if you choose to do so, you can prove that two messages have the same author. With clever cryptography it could probably even be done in such a way, that you can either give a proof that anybody can verify, or you can decide to do a proof that only one particular person can verify. (That last part can be done by designing the proof in such a way using that person's private key, it would be possible to forge the proof. Since this person know he generated the private key himself and didn't give it to anybody, he knows that the proof cannot be a forgery.)
That way if somebody doubt your credibility, you can show which information you provided earlier. This needs to encorporate a time stamping mechanism as well. Such that it can be verified that you did in fact provide the information before it became public knowledge. And if somebody copy other peoples information claiming to be the original source, it can be verified who posted the information first.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
There is every indication that this project will fail. If the wiki is un-censor-able, and it gets really popular, I bet the some non-western covert organization would be the first to pollute it with false information.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
If that wasn't a warning, I don't know WHAT it was
It was a very true statement - people DO need to be careful about what they say. For those whose mouths tend to be heard, one offhand comment can spark riots around the world.
I love my sig.
You're blaming the messenger. Especially given my example what you're doing here is suggesting that it's better to cover up abuses than to let their natural consequences occur. You are a tool of the entrenched power structure.
It's better to have a shakeup and solve the problem than simply let it continue, which in the final analysis ends up having hurt a lot more people.
The implication in your statement is that the truth is less important than the status quo.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
In the last couple of years I only recall a couple of cases where journalists were jailed, and it wasn't for what they wrote but for not revealing their sources.
Not revealing their sources is the tool used to jail journalists because of what they wrote. "State secrets" is a very convenient excuse.
What?
No, you're misinterpreting the messenger. Remember, those allegations were false, yet there were riots about them, and people were killed. He was basically saying that you shouldn't yell fire in a crowded theater. And how many of those people who said things that resulted in those people being killed are in Gitmo? Please remove the tinfoil and join us in the real world.
It may not have been a troll, but it was pretty dumb.
JOIN US FOR PONG!
Uh, who said the allegations were false? Allegations of abuse at gitmo are nothing new. You really want to take their word that there was no such abuse, when they have admitted to carrying out various other forms of abuse? When the whole point of gitmo is that it's a prison that they keep people in when they want to deny them their rights?
Step AWAY from the government kool-aid, little sheep.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
JOIN US FOR PONG!
Although I understand where you're coming from with this, and I strongly disagree with you being modded flamebait for it, the very fact that we can have this discussion shows that, although it's been curtailed somewhat and our freedoms are being steadily eroded, we do still posess the right to free speech, and those parts of the media that aren't owned by the financiers of our governments are still free, and I regularly read of abuses by the UK and US governments in the UK press.
The fact that most people choose not to listen is irrelevant to this discussion. I don't know what the media is like in the US because I've never seen it first hand, but I know that most of the mainstream media in the UK is owned by the same few people as in the US, and if that is all you see of the news I feel sorry for you, but over here those of us with some free thinking and intelligence can see the truth written clearly, and from some of the most respected voices. They earned that respect by printing unflinchingly all the uncomfortable truths that our governments would rather we didn't know, even when most people don't want to listen, and they earned that respect by checking their facts and going to press only when they had evidence to back up their claims.
I don't see that an uncensorable and untraceable repository of anything anyone wants to post there can ever be anything better than an irrelevance. How can you trust as fact anything you see there? Will they cite references, and link you to the evidence for their claims? If they don't, why should I trust them any more than I trusted my own governments claim that Iraq could bomb us within 45 minutes? Anything we should know about will be buried in so much shit, we wouldn't recognise it if we saw it.
This just isn't true. History may be written by the victors, but that has no bearing on truth. The Soviet Union spent decades rewriting history but once it collapsed people started uncovering the truth again. You can bury the truth, but you can't make it up. Same thing's happening to Bush and the neo-con spin machine. They're coming apart at the seams, and there's too much truth for the spin machines to bury.
There are lives at stake here!
As noble that sentiment is, it is not correct unless you assume that there is some Truth "out there" irrespective of whether we know it or not. Truth is what you think is true. Period. If people(/state/media/"whatever forces & circumstances you fancy") can make you believe something then it becomes the truth. Who is to say that those new "facts" uncovered after the collapse of Soviet Union are The Truth? Do YOU actually know what happened in WW2? Do YOU know what goes on in your country? Do YOU know what goes on in your neighbourhood? Aren't you just believing what has been told to you by others. Truth is a good label to put on something you believe in. It doesn't matter if someday I see a purple UFO and post in on some blog. It will not be truth to you and everyone else. It won't even be truth for me once I begin to doubt my senses enough (maybe it was the last drink I had that day etc etc,), But then maybe it Was the last drink and there wasn't any UFO there at all. As long as I believe I saw a UFO it is truth for me, the moment I start not believing it enough, it loses that tag.
Politicians and Pedophiles: Two groups of exploitive bastards who are most dangerous when they're thinking of children.