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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."
Wikileaks aims to be an anonymous and uncensorable repository of leaked documents, posted for commentary by interested parties.
They were going to name it LawyerMagnet.com, but that was already taken by a file-sharing service.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
This looks like an ideal place to spread FUD and provide a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
HONEYPOT
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
That's the hilarity of it all. John Young (owner of Cryptome) was asked by the people behind Wikileaks to be the owner of the domain (since it would end up being public, and Mr Young is no stranger to Government intimidation). He agreed and participated in the private mailing list, but became disillusioned after it appeared the creators had no actual product and were only interested in funding. He posted all the private and internal conversation his own site.
Read the two links I provided, and you'll get the story.
Short Version: This 'secure and untraceable' Wiki software probably doesn't exist, it's a PR ploy for cash.
This group, whomever they are, is improperly using the trademark "Wikipedia" as a buzz word to try and gin up support for this very dubious sort of project.
Say what you might about Wikipedia, but this does not involve either the Wikimedia Foundation, its employees, or frankly much of anybody even involved with the day to day running of Wikipedia either.
And slashdot is hardly the best place to announce something like this if you wanted to involve the Wikipedia user base. While this is a sort of "geek news" that might get some notice, it is disingenuious to suggest any association with Wikipedia.
Besides, on those Wikimedia projects where I have admin privileges, I would delete most of this content on the spot as unverifiable rumors and gossip, and expect the same on the other Wikimedia projects.
While this might be something rather interesting in terms of a web server to host this material, and invite some anonymous method of gathering these documents, I don't even see that they are going to be using a Wiki to gather this information.
In short, move along.... there is nothing here to see.
Dude, you couldn't have picked two worse examples. There is a huge amount of documentable and verifiable evidence on both the 9/11 conspiracy and moon landing hoax theories. In fact, the amount of contrary evidence exceeds "real" evidence for both.
I've read through parts of it briefly (skipping a lot). It's quite entertaining. There was an anonymous mailing list about this project. They've talked John Young into being the frontman for the site (domain name registration, basic contact, etc.). After that there's endless self-congratulating discussion about how cool things are going to be. Since there is no real technical discussion shown it appears that they were not in the process of actually developing anything. Although they claim to have a huge number of leaked documents in store already, no evidence of that was given. Instead, this degenerated into overly ambitious and suspect fundrasing effort. :)
At that point John Young pointed out that instead of trying to raise millions on empty promises, they should do the actual implementation and work hard for a year or two on a shoe-string budget to prove that they are real. As a sarcastic ploy he suggested that if their goal is to fleece CIA (which is most likely to cough up $5M they're trying to raise), than they should ask for more. Astonishingly enough they took the joke seriously, and said they'll try
And John posted their mailing list discussion to the public (without the real names/addresses, which he said will come next), accusing them of simply being a scam to raise money.
This type of anonymous whistle-blower system is mandated by U.S. Sarbanes Oxley Act, but is illegal under European privacy laws. SarBox says thou shalt support anonymous informants as a means of preventing fraud, corruption, etc. The EU says thou shalt NOT permit anonymous tipsters because that's how the Nazi's found so many Jews.
It's a real conundrum for multinational companies.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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.
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