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Wikileaks Plans To Make the Web Leakier
itwbennett writes "At the Hack In The Box conference in Kuala Lumpur, Wikileaks.org announced a plan to enable newspapers, human rights organizations, criminal investigators, and others to embed an 'upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks' form onto their Web sites that would give potential whistleblowers the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organization or journalist they trust over a secure connection. The news or NGO site would then get an embargo period in which to analyze the material and write the story, after which Wikileaks would make the leaked material public. At the same time, the receiver would have greater legal protection, says Julien Assange, an advisory board member at Wikileaks 'We will take the burden of protecting the source and the legal risks associated with publishing the document,' said Assange. 'We want to get as much substantive information as possible into the historical record, keep it accessible, and provide incentives for people to turn it into something that will achieve political reform.'"
Screw my last mod point for the day, this sounds really fucking cool.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
One of the benefits of the current system is that the journalist verifies the source. Think Deep Throat and Watergate. The journalist then aims to protect their source but the validity of that source is bound up in how much you trust the journalist.
In this new approach the problem is that Wikileaks are unlikely to verify the validity of the source and the journalist will not know who they are. This makes it more open to subversion and political manipulation as the original source now feels protected even if what they are saying is completely and utterly wrong.
This might be a good step but a very important check and balance has just been removed.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The leakiest of organizations in any country is the government. Anything leaked is leaked deliberately with a concrete reasoning behind it.
This implies that the government is competent, which in turn implies that the members of the government are competent.
I don't mean to come across as flame bait, but have you read the news in the last couple years? Political corruption or scandals happen all the time. You don't honestly believe that people each time our government reveals one of these occurrences it was done on purpose, do you? There isn't a conspiracy at every turn, people just do stupid things. That is the nature of government and of humanity.
But I do have to agree with you on the reporters; they tend of have an agenda.
The leakiest of organizations in any country is the government. Anything leaked is leaked deliberately with a concrete reasoning behind it. Most of the time it is used to float trial balloons, but sometimes it's used to mislead the public for purposes of control.
From the article:
"At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives," he said. "Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it."
What does a Bank of America CEO's hard drive have to do with the government? Leaks happen all the time that are not "trial balloons" by the government--whether it be to the public or another country. Look at Aldrich Ames, do you think he was a trial balloon?
I don't think this is a good idea at all.
You're turning this into a partisan issue when it's just about getting things out there. Most of the world doesn't care about our petty political differences here in the United States. I have learned a lot about Scientology and even things that are supposed to be available to me through Wikileaks. When these guys have a new idea, I would listen up and give them a chance.
My work here is dung.
That would indicate that the recipient isn't interested. After it's made public domain, it might be picked up by someone that IS interested. This is also the elegent solution against collusive or untrustworthy recipinents.
The main roadblock, at least for newspapers, is that there is no longer be a trusted or verifiable source. That might mean that leaked documents aren't taken as seriously as they would have been otherwise.
"Anything leaked is leaked deliberately with a concrete reasoning behind it. " - This is not true at all
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The main roadblock, at least for newspapers, is that there is no longer be a trusted or verifiable source. That might mean that leaked documents aren't taken as seriously as they would have been otherwise.
That is why there would be an embargo period, to give the journalist time to verify the claims, and do his own little inquiry into the matter to check the facts. I know it's kinda weird asking journalists to actually check facts, but hey, it's worth a try.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Everything should be published. Obama's travel schedule/routes, secret codes, locations, troop movements, etc. Everything...
This is a straw man fallacy, and completely irrelevant to the discussion, or to the purpose of Wikileaks.
Go to the about wikileaks and have a read. Look at the slashdot article itself. Both use the work 'embargo'. The Advisory Board, and the staff of Wikileaks, are not going to release the information you are suggesting. It's not the purpose to reveal future troop movements, travel plans or secret codes. They reveal what has happened in the past, and how it was ignored, or hushed up, and allowed to continue.