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Wikileaks Needs Help, and Not Just Money
st1d writes to tell us that Wikileaks has put out a call for help. However, instead of just asking for money, they have also suggested technical and legal avenues for support. In the site's short life, Wikileaks has been at the center of many breaking scandals and investigations. "Wikileaks is currently overloaded by readers. This is a regular difficulty that can only be resolved by deploying additional resources. If you support our mission, you can help us by integrating new hardware into our project infrastructure or developing software for the project. Become patron of a WikiLeaks server or other parts of our technology, adding more pillars to the stability and balance of the WikiLeaks platform. Servers come trouble-free and legally fortified, software is uniquely challenging. If you can provide rackspace, power and an uplink, or a dedicated server or storage space, for at least 12 months, or software development work for WikiLeaks, please write to wl-supporters@sunshinepress.org."
It seems that Wikileaks should operate over Freenet. Leaks could be submitted anonymously that way, and also distributed anonymously. The advantage would be that it would be entirely decentralized, so there would be no organization vulnerable to legal action.
Freenet has been slow and hard to use in the past, but its improved quite a bit. It is the obvious platform for something like Wikileaks. Of course, there is nothing to prevent people from mirroring content on the web (since installing Freenet, like any piece of software, is a hassle). But at least there will be an unimpeachable backup of all data on Freenet.
I wish a comprehensive group of security experts with varying backgrounds and specialties would get together and try to compromise both Freenet and Tor to see just how secure and anonymous they really are. By this I mean in an open, public, collaborative sort of way. This could only be a good thing, as any vulnerabilities or weaknesses could potentially be addressed. Then we could be a bit more confident about the confidentiality of those who contribute documents to sites like Wikileaks. I am sure that many such folks are doing so at great risk to themselves, especially when they live under repressive regimes, yet they believe in our right to know and are willing to take that risk. It really would be nice to know they are a bit safer doing it.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Wikileaks are asking for help at a time when people are financially struggling. If the aspects of the internet that enhance personal freedom depend on people committing their time and resources, this is a dangerous time.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
From the site:
For best performance, Freenet will run continually. It should not interfere with your computer usage, as it requires around 200MB of RAM and 10% of one CPU core, plus some disk access.
And no wonder considering that it is written in Java...
Not all PCs have Java installed. First. Second. With that kind of resource utilization, I do not see Freenet catching with average consumers.
Probably they should invest into a lightweight C/C++ client. That even I would let run on my systems.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Making a potentially offensive joke and then complaining about the moderators not getting the humor in it is also being an ass. So is continuing to post when the mass of "offtopic" moderators would prefer you to leave quietly.
BTW, I quite honestly had no idea that your "probably Native American" post was supposed to be funny.
...that I can't afford to be the legal test case for running a Tor exit node or a Wikileaks server, much as I believe in both of these projects. And I would imagine there are many who, while they possess the desire and the technical know-how to engage in such activities, simply cannot be expected to do so without some form of legal immunity (or at least a guarantee of unlimited legal representation). Until that time comes, I simply don't see many people stepping forward with offers of hosting assistance.
Perhaps an effort should be made to secure guaranteed legal representation from the EFF, FSF, and other groups for those who volunteer to run exit nodes, servers, etc.
Yeah, it really should be rewritten in Python (or what is the cool language today).
Seriously, I much rather pay the memory penalty of Java than fight against the numerous security bugs C/C++ program would give.