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Cringely Looks at the WikiLeaks Debacle
dtwood writes "Infoworld's Cringely has an interesting take on the Julius Baer bank trying to silence WikiLeaks.org — and how stunningly stupid they've been. 'But the bank's solution is so mind-bogglingly stupid, you have to wonder if these guys need help getting their pants on each morning. First, this is exactly the kind of story bloggers and Net-centric journos crave. Big nasty corporation stomps all over plucky public-serving underdog. Who can resist that plot line? Second, the equation Bank Julius Baer = Money Laundering is now firmly cemented in the minds of everyone who has encountered this story, regardless of whether it's true. Trois: The documents in question, which might have been quickly forgotten alongside the 1.2 million others on the site, are now hotter than the Paris Hilton sex video. Dozens of mirror sites have sprung up, and Cryptome.org and PirateBay have squirreled away copies of the docs for any interested parties. "
I think this is called the Streisand Effect.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
are now hotter than the Paris Hilton sex video
That's a pretty fancy way of saying "ice-cold".
It's a perfect example of the Streisand Effect in action.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
The site itself could still be accessed at its Internet Protocol address (http://88.80.13.160/) the unique number that specifies a Web sites location on the Internet. Wikileaks also maintained mirror sites, or copies usually produced to ensure against failures and this kind of legal action. Some sites were registered in Belgium (http://wikileaks.be/), Germany (http://wikileaks.de) and the Christmas Islands (http://wikileaks.cx) through domain registrars other than Dynadot, and so were not affected by the injunction.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Something incriminating ends up online, and you have two options.
1) Ignore it, and hope that no one notices it.
2) Try to get it removed, guaranteeing that everyone in the world will hear about it.
Sadly, this works the same way whether its true or false information...The information trail almost always increases when you try to have something taken down, so while it may have been only 1 data point before, your attempts to bring it down can create many more...In cases like this, a ridiculously large number.
Probably the best policy is trying to brazen it out...Hardly ever is the information that good...You can always try to laugh it off, but trying to bury it makes it look like you've something to hide.
I'm not a huge privacy nut, so this doesn't necessarily bother me, but I wonder if a lot of the free-speech/privacy buffs are starting to feel a little worried. When everything is free, even the most trivial stuff can end up online, and it's pretty obvious that once it's there, it's never coming down.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'd be surprised if Pirate Bay has "squirreled away" copies of the leaked docs which would be just asking for trouble. It is my understanding that they don't manage content, only links to torrents providing content from elsewhere.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Didn't you know everything sounds more sophisticated in French?
;-)
Je suis un cheval.
I rest my case
would rather see a Paris Hilton sex video.
I've seen it. That bank documents are more arousing.
Everyone knows Cayman banks launder money, but my understanding is that at least in the case of US clients, only the client himself is actually breaking the law in his own country by not reporting those offshore assets. Did the leaked info actually incriminate a _client_ of the bank? Because the bank may in fact be confident enough that they themselves are operating legally within Swiss and or Cayman law that they don't care, or are even happy to have the exposure.
Free advertising! What's so bad about that?
It's the only money laundering bank I can name.
"(If you think those [NSA] taps will only be used to identify terrorists, you're living in a fantasy world.)"
Why is it that this kind of common sense doesn't often penetrate the mainstream media? Because they create said "fantasy world"?
Militant Agnostic: "I don't know, and damn it, neither do you!"
"Cringley" missed a key element of the story. Bank Julius Baer was preparing to take their US operation public via an IPO for about a billion dollars. They filed the prospectus with the SEC a few weeks ago. "We are an asset management company that provides investment management services to institutional and mutual fund clients. We are best known for our International Equity strategies, which represented 92% of our assets under management as of September 30, 2007." They were going to call the business "Artio" (ticker symbol ART, to be listed on the NYSE). Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were to underwrite the IPO.
So the last thing they needed was to be the subject of a New York Times story and all over the world press, associated with money laundering. Now the deal goes under a microscope. Their underwriters have to take a second look and the SEC may have questions. Julius Baer will probably have to file a "material event" 8-K report with the SEC. Newspaper and magazine reporters will be looking at Baer. The question will be raised that the rather high returns Baer reports may be achieved via money laundering.
All this is happening in a down market, in which it's hard to do an IPO and in which investors are very sensitive to unexpected risk. The whole deal may evaporate, or be repriced downward.
This was a very, very expensive mistake for Baer.
Makes me wonder what kind of university that was... University of Text Messaging for Minors?
c++;
If it is true, and if they can continue to get away with it, then that's some great advertising.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
In following this story, I also read about a recent murder of a bank employee somehow associated with all of this. I guess it's little to do with "Your Rights Online" but it does go to show how far they are willing to go which is a fairly likely reason for some of the mysterious complicity with their demands that is going on here.
He implies that this is a bad thing that the bank would want to avoid. But he has already made it clear that the very reason for existence of these banks is money laundering and tax evasion. Is it that hard to imagine that someone at Julius Baer decided "we don't want the Cayman Islands to be the first thing someone thinks of when they want to do money laundering, we want it to be Julius Baer"? Cringley seems to be playing right into their hands.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
enum Bool { True, False, FileNotFound };
Short story: The guy commonly thought of as "Robert X. Cringely" (in reality Mark Stephens,) was actually Infoworld's third writer in the Robert X. Cringely column (and therefore, the third to use the name.) He wrote it for so long, that when he left Infoworld, he got to keep the name, as long as he doesn't use it in another computer-industry magazine. Infoworld has been through a number of people writing as "Robert X. Cringely" since Mark Stephens' departure.
The Infoworld column is pretty standard back-page tech-mag column material, Stephens is the one you think "has been slipping".
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
He learned a valuable lesson; when you cross the mob, you get the b@.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The above part is hard to disagree with in itself. No doubt, most documents posted to the site were obtained by breaking a law (hence illegally) and/or some company's internal policy (thus violating contract, hence tortiously — funny, the word itself is not known to my browser's spell checker).
People like lawyers and judges (often — ex-lawyers) are all about law and contractual obligations — there is nothing surprising about their contempt and distaste for anyone encouraging/rewarding either. The judge is neither "stupid" nor "a monkey" — he acted as should be expected.
Cringley's point is about the stupidity of the bank making itself infamous overnight. This is hard to disagree with, but Cringley's sympathy for Wikileaks shows (he even provided the direct link), so it is valid to discuss the case itself.
And the case boils down to the oft-asked, but never answered question: Do we want 100%-effective law enforcement? Judges certainly strive to achieve that, and we pretend to agree. But do we agree? Answering "yes" would mean condemnation of WikiLeaks (pertaining to documents in our and other free countries, at least). Answering "no" could mean making it impossible for you to stop dissemination of some information about you... What if a site posted SSNs and addresses of everyone they could?
WikiLeaks shouldn't have tried to hide — they were asked for contact information repeatedly. It is no wonder at all, that the judge agreed with the plaintiffs and imposed the injunction. He could've found them in contempt too, and imposed a fine in addition...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You mean there are 2 Robert X. Cringely? What are the odds of there being two of them AND both writing major blogs?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Using a bank that's famous for money laundering defeats the whole point of money laundering. This could cost them their exisiting customers.
Why in the world do you assume it's unwanted publicity?
If you wanted to advertize their money laundering services, how would you go about that? Publish an ad in newspapers? On TV? Advertize on the webpage? How would you even word such an ad?
Meantime, Viral Marketing is the new wave. It's a grassroots campaign. If anyone is looking where to launder their money, now they know. And that publicity all nearly for free.
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In a weird development, someone copied my Slashdot posting above, changed the intro so it looks like a "Wikileaks press release", and sent it to some news outlets via e-mail. It was published by Global Integrity Commons and ZDnet as if from Wikileaks. Someone took out the first sentence about Cringely and put in "Wikileaks has discovered". After the second line, the supposed "Wikileaks press release" matches my text word for word.
I have no connection with Wikileaks, and have no idea who's behind this hoax.
I've just received an e-mail from "press@wikileaks.be" saying that they copied their press release from my Slashdot posting:
Dear X
We'd like to thank you for your post to slashdot which we have used after fact checking and a little rewriting in one of our press releases. We would have liked to credit you directly, but the post was pseudononymous.
WL
The source is a DSL line in Sweden, so I can't confirm this is valid. I've tried calling Wikileaks, but their phone line is returning a fast busy.I now have an admission from Wikileaks that they copied my posting above and put their name on it as if they wrote it. That was sloppy journalism on their part. ZDnet, which published the Wikileaks press release, has published a correction.
My concern is to make it clear that I'm neither behind Wikileaks nor copying material from them. I'm writing my own material under my own name, and I stand behind it. "Animats" isn't an anonymous handle; I own "animats.com", and "ANIMATS" is my US registered trademark.
John Nagle (nagle@animats.com)