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WikiLeaks' Daniel Schmitt Speaks
Lars Sobiraj submitted an interview with Daniel Schmitt of WikiLeaks. "He encourages all readers and warns his opponents — WikiLeaks has the means to make our society better, to create a world which stands united and strong against abuse — locally and nationally as well as globally. Modern, fast, world-wide technology makes it possible. In the interview, Daniel explains in detail how this will be done, with the help of WikiLeaks and all its supporters."
I don't think the Slashdot crowd should need convincing that Wikileaks is a force for good. However, passive support won't be enough for such a contentious organisation, so do what I did and show them some love.
(Hmm, I just noticed that PayPal donation is currently down, which is rather awkward...)
gulli.com is a known hacking/warez site. Back in the day they were one of the places you could reliably get programs like Serialz 2000. They also have rootkits and other malware available for download.
My blog
Quote Schmitt:
In the context of the latest developments in a complex context and the necessary political support for a certain cause, we are considering marking certain Tweets with a hashtag for emergencies which signifies that it has to do with something very important which needs the world's attention. #EMERGENCY or something like that. We have to try and make sure that dramatic developments in the world get the necessary attention.
Honestly, when did the humble RSS feed or - heaven forfend - an actual webpage become an unacceptable way of disseminating information?
More importantly - why?
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
The U.S. has set up over the last two centuries a means by which information that should be kept secret is kept secret and information that should be public is public. By and large, this works, despite some well publicized failures. Legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act, etc. has proved to be a means to uncover unsavory facts that would see the light of day despite the wishes of unsavory politicians. All of this takes place in the well defined arena of law and politics.
Wikileaks would throw all of this out and make themselves (the collective leakers) the sole arbiter of what is in the national interest and what is not with respect to keeping secrets. They do this without realizing the potential impact to national security or potential diplomatic damage that, while the leaker may think is justified and deserved, is more damaging to the U.S. (or other country subject to a wikileak) than the leaker realizes. They can't know the potential impact because they do not have access to the entire picture.
So what wikileaks does is to substitute the judgment of a system, made of up of untold knowledgeable individuals, with the judgment of one or two cranks with an ax to grind. The cranks may be right sometimes, but I think more often that not they will be wrong.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I noticed they had the question and answer keys to the Red Hat Certified Engineer's exam, so I asked what the justification for this was. The answer was that Red Hat was being "unfair" by keeping the test closed. For political matters, Wikileaks can be useful, but for being a place where cheaters gather, it's pretty damned lame.
I wonder where the Novas Scarman report has gone. If it's run like most of these charity rackets, it'll be one huge gravy train.
davecb5620@gmail.com
I think Wikileaks recently posted some private wikileaks financial information. Just saying.
Do you have trouble with some particular action on wikileaks' part, or do you borrow your attitude toward secrecy from la cosa nostra?
When people and organizations are in positions of power and public trust, secrecy is, as often as not, a means of breaking trust. Wikileaks has had a valuable role in exposing some of these instances.
"The U.S. has set up over the last two centuries a means by which information that should be kept secret is kept secret and information that should be public is public. By and large, this works .. Wikileaks would throw all of this out"
The people have a right to know what its government is doing on their behalf. Generally, if it can't stand the cold light of day, then they shouldn't be doing it. The ACTA secret agreement being a case in point.
davecb5620@gmail.com
I don't really think that's what wikileaks is about. It's to provide a safe avenue for the release of sensitive information. Information you might get in trouble for posing. It's an avenue for free speech. A way to show government and corporate corruption, bring light to things that people would often be too afraid to speak of. I don't disagree that it certainly can be misused, but I think you're missing the idea of free information, and just preaching the idea of security by obscurity (if they don't know how to build a bomb...).
"How about detailed descriptions of the making and distribution of nerve gas in a military manner?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_gas#Synthesis
Seriously, why are people so paranoid about the formula for these things? Most nerve gases are very similar to industrial pesticides (in fact, VX gas was originally intended to be a pesticide), and if we kept the knowledge of how to synthesize nerve agents top secret then we could not educate chemists or chemical engineers.
The fact of the matter is that in a free society, information should flow freely. Wikileaks is not posting the personal information of the average citizen, they are posting information about the misconduct of governments, government officials, and corporations -- information which the average citizen has a right to know. There is a huge difference between a defense contractor conspiring with a national government to start a war and some guy who is having an affair with his neighbor's wife.
Palm trees and 8
The difference is we're not funding him with our tax money. We fund wikileaks with money, so I expect transparency. As another poster has mentioned, wikileaks financials have been leaked - and they weren't removed. When people are paying for a public organization, they have a right to know where their money is going and what the actions of that organization are. Further, knowledge that information will be brought to light will hopefully end a lot of clandestine things that go on outside of public view. Things like the Contra scandal and General Oliver North's secret wars. US imperialism in Panama and the Philippines. The US's habit of gaining funding from "unsubsidized government revenue streams." When governments are allowed to use dirty business and treat the rest of the world like shit with no accountability, that tends to backfire. Then who gets blown up when a terrorist bomb goes off in retaliation from whoever we've pissed off? 99% of the time, its not government officials - its civilians.
Since I'm sure this posting will be flooded with a lot of love for Wikileaks, I feel I have to try to post possible negatives.
We must never forget this. We have the means to make our society better, to form a world in which there is a strong and united opposition against abuse. Locally, nationally, globally.
One problem I've often seen in the past with regards to certain activist groups is their unintentional imposition of values on the people they claim to support. A very common example in places like Europe and occasionally Canada is feminist groups speaking on behalf of oppressed Muslim women who have to wear certain kinds of clothing. Some of these women are oppressed, but usually the solution those groups present is as undesirable to them as is the original problem. Additionally, most of the Muslim women seriously dispute the notion that they are oppressed, only to be dismissively told that they don't see it because they're not yet free. In other words, the activist groups have this attitude of "We know what's right and the rest of the world is wrong." If any of you have spent a lot of times with activists, I think you'll find this is a trap often fallen into.
I've seen similar issues with some human rights organizations, labor oriented organizations, etc. They often fail to realize that while a problem may exist, the solution in their own society may be a poor solution in other societies.
The real question is: Can Wikileaks avoid such a path? Or will they ultimately take on certain philosophies with the belief that they hold for all humanity, while possibly having little experience with most of the world's major cultures. So far they seem to have done well, but I suspect that this is something they'll need to actively guard against.
Beetle B.
I do not have "trouble" with any particular posting, instead it is the principal of the thing. When you think about it, wikileaks goes against any IT best practice, and it certainly goes against any geek value. They are getting a free ride and sympathy from a crowd where they don't deserve it. The fact that you may think it's a hoot that your personal bad guy had his secrets exposed today should be irrelevant. If someone is breaking the law and using secrecy to protect themselves, well they too can fall (Nixon very nicely feel well before wikileaks). It's also down to a matter of judgment on who gets to decide what.
Lets say you work for company and your coworker who was denied a promotion decides to leak your companies R&D results for an upcoming product (say your company just invented a way to make plastics that biodegrade more readily). Well your company just put millions into research for a product that is now going to made by a Chinese company that has to pay none of the research cost, and can skip straight to production. It's going to be your job on the line when your company can't compete. While you may consider that information secret and of no business to the world at large, your Chinese competitor would consider such a thing as being ideal for leaking.
The number of examples are endless, it's only a matter of time before R&D is leaked prevalently. When you remove your companies secrets, you remove much of your companies competitive advantage and you now have to compete on cost alone. Now pause and think about your job, and those of your friends and family, how many of those jobs would be gone? What if you were in the military instead and someone decided to leak secrets that protect you and your buddies in a time of war?
No, that was WikiWikiLeaks.
People who argue how damaging things can be if they were made public completely forget that if certain things were known earlier... things like this wouldn't NEED to be kept hidden.
This huge cloud of people who just don't want to know and go on with their happy day lives is exactly what allows events to build up where releasing the information COULD be damaging.
But lets be honest. How worse off do you think the United States could be right now in the eyes of the world?
You will always have followers who don't want to know things and want the *smart* people to deal with it. The problem is, often enough those smart people aren't smart... or are greedy, power hungry... or otherwise influenced. Public eye on what they do is the ONLY thing stopping them. Watchdogs so to speak. Most of them in jobs just like you and me who happen to be there when something happens.
The fear is that people will overreact to the sheer amount of hidden crap and revolt, or some religious nutjob will start calling the end of days and 50,000 idiots will believe him. But if you start slowly... revealing the truth bit by bit people will gradually become adjusted to it.
The reason this will never happen is those in power will suddenly lose the ability to do things that might have been the "easy" way. It also will prevent us from doing things for "the good" that would be seen as "the bad". But that's a tradeoff I want to see simply because... the person making that decision does not have to answer to anyone if they were wrong. That should always be part of leadership.
You make the call... you take the fall.
What does he have to do with this?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Strange, with a cursory glance at wikileaks I could not find an instance of any private company R&D proposals. Everything on there is something which is in some way public. The closest was Cisco marketing material for the US Government. I pay for the government, so why shouldn't I be able to see what cisco is claiming to sell to the goverment I am paying for? Similarly, people pay for scientology, and its a church. It receives special tax status. So I have a right to see what goes on inside of it. All other items are government based, or otherwise censored. Hell, about the only thing you could even remotely argue from the looks of it would be the leaked rituals of fraternities - and if you really can compare leaking a fraternity's initiation ritual to losing millions on R&D, I think you fail at teh maths. Again, this was a cursory look, but your example seems to be completely off base and unfounded. Unless your R&D proposal is for a government, and remember that we the people ARE the government and therefore have a right to see it, I don't think it will be showing up on wikileaks.
You are right to be skeptical. That's healthy. However, there is a greater good than one's career or chosen job field. That is where sites like Wikileaks are great -- as long as they are functioning effectively.
It seems very unfair however, to mention Jimmy Wales and Schmitt in the same breath. As these are two very different types of people. Jimmy Wales' interesting and dubious background (and present for that matter), and many failings, have been well covered here, and on many other sites. Schmitt isn't that bad in comparison.
Whenever someone stick their head over the parapet they can expect exposure. This is a good thing. We should know who is providing us with information, and why. And still be skeptical.
While you're right about the general respect for IP among slashdot patrons, there is also a very vocal slashdot community that does not view intellectual property as property. That component is a natural friend of wikileaks.
Almost all of the leaders of the planet Earth act like mobsters and criminals that are above the law because they are wealthy and above the law. The US is no exception. It is very very rare in the history of any country in any part of the world to find a leader that was not a monster. No matter who it was in any given time in any given place.
This is why Wikileaks is necessary. Try and imagine a world where every secret of every government in every part of the world was known by every citizen. Governments should be accountable by the citizens that allow them to be there and thats not the case today. The world is full of unaccountable Tyrants.
The parent post was a none-too-insensitive discussions on the potential darker sides of Wikileaks, and certainly didn't deserve to be modded troll.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Yes they did, after the donators emails were accidentally sent to lots of other donators and some of them requested that they'll add the leak to the site.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_partial_donors_list%2C_14_Feb_2009
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Technoli
You do know that twitter provides both a website and an RSS feeed, right?
In order to run an RSS feed, you either need bandwidth and a server, pay for a hosted server, or a twitter account. The bonus with twitter is that it automatically receives updates view twitterfox or SMS.
I like twitter is a handy way to disseminate information so that people can add and remove it from their newsreader themselves.
Changa hates change.
Actually, I think you mean the number of hypothetical scenarios are endless. Examples would be things that have actually occurred. Do you have any of those?
onyxruby, I get the impression you don't understand what Wikileaks is about, and are setting up an army of straw men to wage war on.
wikileaks are no more parasites of the technology world than any other site on the Internet. Rather, they serve a useful function: It is not the purpose of wikileaks to expose the personal information of "normal" individuals, nor stuff like credit card data. They release information, where it becomes known, of wrongdoings of corporate and/or government institutions and/or employees/agents, the disclosure of which is in the public interest because these wrongdoings would otherwise remain secret and cause damage to individuals or society. wikileaks is essentially a safe outlet for whistleblowers.
Reading the rest of your post, it looks to me like "I fail to see" is the overall theme. I feel you should have at least tried to inform yourself before starting to rant.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
What if you were in the military, and someone decided to leak secrets that proved the war you are fighting was illegitimate? No... that could never happen....? Could it?
If the military truly has leaks, they're doing it wrong! It's not everyone else's job to keep their secrets. The importance of bringing truth to the masses outweighs any straw man argument you can possibly bring up. Exposing things like secret government human rights abuses will always trump anything else. Do you have a better idea for an open and transparent and safe way to spread that kind of information to the world?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you're stupid, I'm saying your hypothetical coworker is stupid.
If this R&D is worth millions, then the coworker could sell it to a Chinese company for a tidy profit and nobody would know. (They might strongly suspect, but it could be convergent research.) At least with Wikileaks, the company could confirm that it's been leaked and try to take action against the coworker. So given the choice between the hypothetical coworker seeking only revenge via Wikileaks and seeking both revenge and money via selling it directly to the hypothetical Chinese company...well, I think you can see my point.
Disclaimer: Selling R&D to the Chinese is bad and leads to jail time, mmmkay.
No, that was WikiWikiLeaks.
No, that was WikiLeaksLeaks
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
They do this without realizing the potential impact to national security or potential diplomatic damage
Would you prefer that none learns of human rights abuses, executions or torture and therefore everyone believes your country is "good", or that the world knows and your country is forces to become "better" in order to improve its public image?
True. That's the same logic that we had attacking Iraq: "Just because no one has found WMDs yet doesn't mean we won't find them!" I expect your line of thinking to work out as well as it has in other places where it has been employed. I think you utterly miss the point of wikileaks, and am thinking you really need to read the bill of rights (if you're an American) so you can see what many people fought and died to give you, before you pish it away in the name of cited corporate profits that don't even exist. We will have to agree to disagree.
Since Danial Ellsburg did the country a favor and released the Pentagon Papers, now everybody thinks that EVERY secret is just the government trying to cover its misdeeds.
The problem with that is that I've seen secret tech docs on hardware in the field of battle in Iraq and Afghanistan show up on this Wikileaks site, so therefore the enemy undoubtedly has too.
Going to Afghanistan? Iraq? Have a Father / Mother / Son / Daughter / Sister / Brother / Friend in one of those places? Thanks to Wikileaks, you or they might just come back in a box, rather than walking down the concourse of your favorite local airport, because the enemy may now know some places our counter-IED equipment does not operate within the RF spectrum. Just lovely.
For publishing so irresponsibly, I would personally like to see these Wikileak perpetrators tried, convicted, and sentenced for murder. I'd take great pleasure in firing the shot / pulling the trapdoor / throwing the switch / pushing the plunger on whatever method of execution they might have available to them and choose.
There's just no excuse for endangering the troops... none.
Or worse yet, what is someone leaked false information indicating the war was illegitimate and because other soldiers protested, you ended up getting killed or maimed.
No, of course that would never happen... except you have no way of knowing if whatever was posted is real or not. So which is worse, eating from the hands of the people governing you, or from the hands of the people wanting to lie to defeat them?
Actually, it is their job. Everyone who has access to secret military information is sworn to secrecy and mandated by penalty of law as long as it remains secret. That the entire reason Wikileaks exists, to allow people who otherwise know full well that they aren't allowed to divulge information, a semmi safe place to do so without retribution or penalty of the law which they a bound to otherwise. If random people were finding the secrets and releasing them, there wouldn't be a need for wikileaks.
That's only true when the so called truth is real and it isn't being used solely to further someone's political aspirations. You can be manipulated just as easily with information as you can be without it.
You mean like the Abu ghraib pictures that was presented as a Bush down systematic pattern which later turned out to be nothing more then poorly trained soldiers and a commanding officer who wasn't paying attention? Yea, those secret government human rights abuses that most likely would have never- ever- made it into public knowledge if it wasn't for someone looking for some political advantage. And then, the truth, just like in the outing of Valaree Plame case, gets withheld while people like you are manipulated into thinking something totally untrue.
Show me where that system exists. So far it's more or less pissed off people attempting to gain an advantage of some sort.
I take issue with your idea that Wikileaks goes against "any geek value". Other posters have addressed the fact that leaks happen regardless of Wikileaks' existence, and that the leaker stands to profit more by leaking elsewhere. I want to talk about the geek values involved.
First, Wikileaks is free to access and open to anyone. I think most geeks would think a corporate secret, if leaked, is better off out in the open than sold to a competitor. Second, often a leak itself is in accordance with geek values. The sort of technical secrets likely to be leaked there (given the incentives and likely values of the people involved) include details of DRM systems. I bet more geeks want DRM broken than want to keep corporate secrets.
I don't think there's a clear set of geek values, but I do think a lot of geeks' values align with Wikileaks for valid reasons; the values you state align more with corporate values. I'm not saying they're wrong, but they don't have much to do with geekiness.
Geez, don't you know anything!? You don't need launch codes. All you have to do is hack into the DOD WOPPER computer and launch the Global Thermonuclear War game, and then trash your PC. The game will run to completion. Unless you can get it to play itsellf in a game of Tic-Tac-Toe.
Sheesh, NOOBs.!
wikileaks goes against any IT best practice
Quite the opposite is true: It aims to ensure the anonymity of its sources to the best. It aims for maximum uptime, distributes its server locations strategically to ensure operations even against wide-spread censorship and disruption and aims to verify the integrity of the information it provides. (Not its authenticity, mind you. That is someone else's job.) That's more than you could ask for from most web hosting providers.
it certainly goes against any geek value
Quite the opposite is true, again: Openness of information, transparency of official bodies and procedures, exposure of censorship and malicious activities, using technology to promote a social good - and most importantly: the irresistible lust for anything fancy and exciting. All they lack is Nerf Guns.
While private R&D might end up on WikiLeaks, there is none of it there so far as far as I can tell. The rather obvious reason for this is that it simply is not really interesting to most people, and those who want it usually pay well enough for it that your hypothetical co-worker would have to be a total and utter moron to turn to WikiLeaks with their information.
Regarding the military: Considering the (usually leaked) budget of espionage and counter-espionage outfits around the world I would wager a bet that any really sensitive information that ends up on WikiLeaks is already common knowledge among most parties involved. And if you find your nation's secrets there you at least know it has been burned.
WikiLeaks really is a tool for distributing information to the public at large. Interested parties in a specific field usually will already have their sources and means of acquiring whatever information they need. It's us, the Great Unwashed, who are its target audience, because we are kept out of most circles - even if we ought to know what they are up to because their doings directly or indirectly affect our lives.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Ahem, WikiWikiLeaks is *actually* the meta-site for discussing the Wiki servers and software that power WikiLeaks. You are probably thinking of WikiLeaksLeaks, your one-stop game-changing resource for everything nefarious about your one-stop game-changing nefarious secret document leak site.
I simply don't understand your thinking. I've not yet heard of Wikileaks installing malware on computers, or harvesting personal data for whatever nefarious reasons. But, you compare them to such people.
Wikileaks is just about the ultimate whistleblower. Perhaps you believe that fraud is a protected activity of elected officials? As well as people appointed by those elected officials? How about large corporations? Government itself, whether elected or not?
The fine people at Wikileaks may be chasing wild geese from time to time, and putting out info that really doesn't do a lot of good, but overall, they seem to be pretty accurate.
Please, point to information that they have leaked which does real harm to society. Please, explain how the Wikileak people are preying on me, or on you. Have you spent any time exploring the material they deal with? Does NONE of it qualify as "good info", in your eyes?
As for Jimmy Wale's personal data - I guess if you can find it, you can publish it. If a man in his position is dumb enough to have published his SSN, driver's license, and other information then he can suffer the consequences. Have fun with that, though.
IMHO, Wales and company are doing the world a service. It is good to get information out, in most cases. Those who are most embarrassed by leaked information are usually doing something wrong. Not always, but usually.
Show us some real harm done by Wikileaks, and my opinion my change.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"Wikileaks is but one place for individuals to research what their governments are doing"
But then, you have only the word of the leaker. How many "fake, but accurate" documents are in Wikileaks?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Given that your interpretation of the "general principle of the thing" (fixed your sp for you, no need to thank) leads you to an obviously contradictory conclusion, have you taken the time to consider whether your interpretation isn't, in fact, bollocks?
Generally people who set up shit like WikiLeaks take far more time to come up with the concept than you do attempting to tear it down. It's unreasonable to assume that WikiLeaks' administrators were idiots or half-wits or otherwise of right-wing mental caliber. the classical vice of hubris is built on this same concept, i.e. that of overestimating oneself and by contrast the underestimation of others.
(Oh boy, that was a long and roundabout way to say "grow up, dickhead".)
How about selling R&D that the R&D'ing company intends to sit on and not develop? Surely the suppression of progress is a great enough sin to warrant a leak -- and the money comes in handy trying to avoid The Man for the next ten years, so no begrudging that either.
And we should be bound by your "geek values" why?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
This is due entirely to the US government (amongst others, I wont argue about who is the worst, almost all western governments have earned our suspicions) actually lying and being caught out. People have no reason to trust that secrets are being made for their beinift. This is a hole the US govt dug for itself, if they want trust back then they have to earn it.
Military secrets act in the UK and Australia specifies that military secrets can be revealed after 50 years. The problem here is that the plans were leaked out of a secure facility, the fact wikileaks is publishing them is not an issue. Censoring wikileaks or the entire US population will not stop the fact that the plans were leaked/reverse engineered/fabricated in the first place.
When people die in war it is traditional and still prudent to blame the leader. For ultimately the responsibility is there. The US has been appointing political leaders to run the military so the blame lies there. Once again, if the information is available to Wikileaks it will be available to someone else. Wikileaks is the transmission medium not the source.
Ask that of the ones who sent them to war in the first place, and more importantly of those who were to scared/gutless to speak out against the war.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The formula is already out, if Wikileaks were to publish it then they would be the conduit, not the source of the leaked material. Censoring wikileaks does nothing to stop the leaking of information, only it's publication on a single site so the information is still out there.
With regards to the specific VX example, the formula is well known but the process production raises several flags, chemicals and equipment needed for its production can be monitored as well as the production facilities if inside US jurisdiction. Further more you need a method of delivery, these are much easier to track. SCUD missiles are not easy to hide (which is why no WMDs were found in Iraq, by the US or UN. Both were looking for manufacturing facilities and delivery systems neither of which Saddam had).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Besides, you can make poisonous gas with household cleaners; they certainly aren't that big of a deal. The real secret to them is the most efficient way to disperse them...and that is harder to find.
Yep, you could use a crude explosive but then you'd loose most of the gas in the explosion. This is why poison gas was so ineffective in WWI, all sides agreed that artillery shells could not be used solely for the dispersion of chemical weapons, so an explosive element had to be included.
Air dispersed aerosols would be somewhat effective but in order to compensate for wind you would need a lot of toxin and a lot of time in the air which leaves a huge window for discovery and interception.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Jeez mods, I was commenting on the bizarre grammar used in the summary (he 'encourages all readers', what the hell is that supposed to mean?) by way of a little Bill Hicks reference. Is that really so hard to understand?