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With World Watching, Wikileaks Falls Into Disrepair
JDRucker writes "Supporters are concerned. Very concerned. Would-be whistle-blowers hoping to leak documents to Wikileaks face a potentially frustrating surprise. Wikileaks' submission process, which had been degraded for months, completely collapsed more than two weeks ago and remains offline, in a little-noted breakdown at the world's most prominent secret-spilling website."
Wikileaks provides an extremely useful service, one which is only possible on the Internet, considering its widely accessible scale. Here's to hoping things get straightened out -_-;;
Living With a Nerd
Manning got caught whistle blowing because he was tooting his own horn.
If you leak shit, stfu about it. While I don't agree with Manning on leaking the cables, the video was a little more understandable. I have also lost a lot of respect for Wired and their coverage of this. They are far too involved and it looks like a serious conflict of interest.
Either lack of funding, or fear of repercussions. I personally don't know what is worse, having the world's government spooks on your ass for propagating their no-no's publicly, or having Islamic radicals after you for propagating 'heresy'. Either way, people want you dead.
They are either afraid of, or in cooperation with the groups whose documents they leak, or are truly out of funds. I am placing my faith of judgement in one of the former.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
the list of which bankers, world leaders, and radio hosts are lizard people from other planets.
now you'll never know.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Taken from wikileaks' Twitter at http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/17498238199 is this:
"Wired's war on WikiLeaks continues. See comment by 'mpineiro' http://bit.ly/aZm4US"
Not so quick to judge Wired's coverage at face value...
Wikileaks lost the majority of their credibility in January when they decided to stop actually being a decent site and instead beg for donations for a few months.
Right, anyone that won't work for free is not to be trusted.
Nice job quoting an article with more spin than a v8 unicycle.
For those who actually follow these things thou, it's important to note that Kevin Poulsen (of Wired) is the same Journalist (and I use the term loosely) posting the edited chat excerpts from conversations between whistleblower Bradley Manning and wannabe hacker/cum police informant Adrian Lamo.
So much for an actual story.. moreso just Wired trying any attempt it can to bring down Wikileaks.
(Protip: Reading the comments on the wired story alone give you most of the information publicly available on the Poulsen/Lamo lovefest)
Wikileaks lost the majority of their credibility in January when they decided to stop actually being a decent site and instead beg for donations for a few months.
You're right. They should have just shut down in January instead of waiting until now to run out of money. Do you see the problem with your logic here?
the list of which bankers, world leaders, and radio hosts are lizard people from other planets.
now you'll never know.
Let me make an educated guess - All of them?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Yes, the webmasters should have to pay for the site out of their own pocket. Seriously? It's like PBS. Everyone loves them until they start asking for money so they can actually RUN.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
Freedom is not free. I don't see any problem with wikileaks or wikipedia or any other site asking for donations to pay the bills
.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"With World Watching, Wikileaks Withers Woefully While Walruses Wrangle Wrapped Wrens"
Although Leaking in some sense is an good thing when you are talking about dealing with the extremist of the world, leaking can also be, and more often is, done for less honorable reasons. 30 years ago the politicos and the media, especially the Main stream media were MORE trustworthy. Now I question the reason why anything is leaked. politicos, media types, governmental employees, people with an axe to grind, liars, cheats, thieves, criminals defense lawyers, and people that just do not like some policy use "leaks" as a way of getting information, often un-vetted, or purposely false and vicious. out in the public eye. Even the person(s) that ran wikileaks is not above doing this if it were to meet their personal agenda.
Apparently they're just upgrading:
http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/17461648435
And even if Wikileaks was to disappear, there's always Freenet if you want to leak something:
http://freenetproject.org/
Of course, you'd have to check your own data to make sure there's no metadata that can be used to identify you. But Freenet covers the anonymous distribution angle.
If your goal is to /really/ spread around leaked documents for the benefit of mankind, you will find a way to do it regardless. Complaining that people aren't giving you enough money and taking down a site is simply babyish. Yes, you aren't going to become a millionaire* by doing it, but if you are /really/ doing it for the benefit of mankind, you will do it for free and find ways to make it work.
*Assuming you don't get a list of future lottery numbers or something
Except that it really does cost money to run a server, pay for bandwidth, pay for lawyers, etc.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Or sabotageeee?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Torrents die, something like that very quickly too, due to it's taboo nature. And they're not going to starve themselves so they can pay for the site, that'd be stupid.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
So why is it that The Pirate Bay which comes on even more legal fire than WikiLeaks can stay afloat with minimal down time?
Yes, such things cost a bit of money, but this is the internet, distribute things via torrents and other ways, use other servers, etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Well, when you run out of money to pay bills, there really isn't a whole lot else to do. I'm sure the bandwidth provider doesn't give a flying fuck about the good of humanity until it's been paid "enough" money to keep the site up.
PB only upsets entertainers.
WL upsets people with real power. People who can make you disappear. People who are willing to do really bad things (TM) to you.
They could have failed to get the SSL or someone could have made them fail to get the SSL.
I don't care if they ask for money. It's an easy way for those of us without free servers and admin time to help out (and yup I've donated).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I seriously have to take issue with that. If all of the others are for-profit, you will never get what you want... only what they tell you we want. "Reality TV" is a classic example of them telling us what we want. I haven't watched TV since.
On the other hand, PBS provides intellectual stimulation that is simply not available elsewhere. What is there for kids to watch as they grow up? What did you watch growing up? PBS is indispensable and we need at least one more of them, not less of them. Where are the Science shows that we all still love today? Will we see "Nova" anywhere else? The history channel has boiled down to "the war clips channel" and the others like Nat'l Geographic and the like? Well, gotta pay to get access to those... where's the free TV?
Kinda like this: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support
?
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
What about an archive of the site and all those things hosted throughout the world via torrents and the like? Etc..
For some reason I don't like the idea of donating my IP to a swarm full of the stuff that wikileaks has..
Uh... Not everyone. I think PBS is a waste of money. It was originally sold to the congress as an alternative to the 3 TV networks. There are now hundreds of alternatives so the tax dollars still being paid to PBS are a legacy to a problem which was fixed long ago.
No, because we need a non-commercial voice on the public airwaves. We've essentially given away our public bandwidth to big corporations. We should maintain at least one commerce-free public station. Corporate interests are not our interests.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I think citizens will only revolt when it becomes apparent that the message is being stifled, not when the message is "out there." And by stifled, I mean with soldiers (real ones, not police in fancy armor) in the streets shooting people. The general trend in Western societies is to just assume that we're fine, that all is as it should be, and when people complain to say "why don't you go to North Korea or something and then try saying that!". I think the difference between Iran and America isn't that our government is less corrupt, but that our citizens have become more corrupted with crap like American Idol and/or Facebook. Our protests are totally lame and half-hearted. The people who talk the most about revolution have beer guts too large to allow them fit in a fox hole, and age degenerating their eye sight, so they probably can't shoot very well either. Wikileaks is almost irrelevant in the face of cultural apathy. It really almost doesn't even matter if WikiLeaks were flourishing because only the people who are inclined to care would, and there aren't nearly enough of them to cause any major changes.
Troll much?
The awards list alone should be enough to counter your argument that there is a comparable alternative.
Tax dollars account for less than %1 of the operating costs of PBS.
There are NO commercial alternatives for truly important investigative reporting such as FRONTLINE, no commercial childens programming comparable to Sesame Street, no commercial news broadcasts that are willing to do more than a sound bite on any topic other than the PBS World Report.
The problem with torrents is that anyone can see the IPs getting the files, and in some cases it may be as important to protect the source as it is to protect those wanting information. If you can imagine an oppressive regime trying to stop the spread of some information would likely try to find the individuals in possession of the information... which would be anyone that connected to the torrent.
If I were running a company dealing exclusively in secrets, I wouldn't trust anyone who came forward to donate their time toward handling said information to not be a mole.
Regardless, no mater how much time gets donated, they would still need at least some capital.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
There's a lot of hyperbole in your post, but this is true: cultural apathy and self interest to the point of idiocy will destroy western civilization, not terrorists. Now excuse me while I tune in Oprah and watch some Youporn.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
While I think there is a lot of crap on PBS there is a lot of good stuff to like "Nova", and I really like "This Old House" and "New Yankee Workshop". Also, if you've been paying attention there is a lot of advertising on PBS, it comes in big chunks between the shows in the form of sponsorships. I think that PBS only gets 5 or 10 percent of it's money directly from taxes, but they also get a lot of tax breaks too.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
The awards list [pbs.org] alone should be enough to counter your argument that there is a comparable alternative.
Industry mutual masturbation is not a counter argument, but the rest of your point stands.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
The citizens will NOT revolt when the message is being stifled. The message IS being stifled, have you not been paying attention for the last several... lifetimes?
The citizens MIGHT revolt if you threatened to take away their iPhones or cancel their favorite TV show.
This space available.
I think people don't protest because the only people with a legitimate complaint here are the urban kids getting screwed by the drug war. Pretty much anywhere else... what are you complaining about? There are plenty of details to bitch about, to go support a candidate about, to write letters to the editor. But society is still working. We can still get up, do mostly what we want, go home to our families.
It doesn't effect people. For all that we're invading two different countries right now, the monthly casualties are less than the people who die in car accidents in a single state in the same time.
The scale of things just isn't bad enough to make anyone get out the pitchforks.
This is why it makes me sad to see PBS sliding into being almost just-another-commercial-outlet. Remember when underwriting acknowledgments at the top of the show were a textual/voiceover mention of the company, and not a whole ad-like video segment? And when no PBS station would be caught dead airing show-length commercials and pretending they're shows?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Not by accident that Reporters Sans Frontiers has launched an "anti-censorship shelter" online, consisting of VPN, onion routers and training docs. Sound familiar?
Wikileaks is essentially a pilot project. They have demonstrated the need. The day-to-day work will be picked up by long running groups with funding models and full time staff and a CEO who doesn't go out his way to piss off every anti-secrecy activist who so much as murmur reservations about their comprehensive lack of transparency.
http://en.rsf.org/reporters-without-borders-unveils-25-06-2010,37809.html
Ha! If anything, PBS is more necessary now than it was before. With all of the big corporate entities buying and merging, your radio, newspaper and television media is increasingly controlled by fewer and fewer people. Or are you one of those people that think that corporations are more benevolent and altruistic than your government? At least in government there's always the threat that a politician will lose his or her job if they displease the people. With a corporate entity, they don't have to appease anyone as long as they make money.
Taxpayer-funded national broadcasters, like ABC (Australia), BBC or CBC can be critical of the government in a way that corporate broadcasters cannot be critical of their parent company.
I don't see the problem with Wkileaks, frankly. All sites have downtime; people simply mock the famous ones when they are down. I hardly think that downtime is "falling into disrepair".
The most likely cause for a revolution at this time is termination of unemployment benefits for the 10% of the workforce which can't find a job.
Considering the trillions they are throwing away elsewhere, that $100 to $140 billion is pennies on the dollar vs sending the national guard and paying police overtime to maintain order.
There are a lot of graduations below outright revolt. Increase in crime (with resulting increases in policing costs and incarceration costs ($30k a year to house a robber vs $12k to $18k unemployment benefits), protests (increased police costs), riots (increased police and national guard and property damage), vandalism, petty theft, drug abuse, etc.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yes, they produced an edited video that demonstrated a point of view. Quelle horreur! That's completely unlike the Washington Post, the IHT, the Economist, the NYT... Ahem.
In fact, what is completely unlike them, Wikileaks published the unedited video at the same time. Unlike establishment journalism, Wikileaks offered source material from which you can form your own opinions.
Given the choice between an organization that offers an opinion and also the unedited information from which they formed that opinion, and one that only offers the opinion while withholding the unedited information, which one do you want to call a "propaganda group"?
I forget what 8 was for.
Name one of those alternatives where I can get what I get from PBS.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
And how, exactly, is PBS not neutral?
They're biased in favor of the truth, maybe? And the truth, as we all know, has a well-known liberal bias? : - )
Actually, PBS does lean a little to the Left/Liberal side. But the people who get all bent out of shape about that are really complaining because it isn't heavily Right-Wing/Conservative. They can't understand how a straightforward presentation of the facts doesn't, and won't, and can't, always, and in every case, support the way they see things, so when it doesn't, they're sure it's a Godless Commie conspiracy.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Garbage collectors, the real ones, the guys who come around on the truck into which they empty your garbage cans, and do it in whatever the weather is, as long as the truck can get through, are far more important than any of the other categories indicated.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The US Gov is undermining CREDIBILITY of Wikileaks, to discourage leakers.
You ARE familiar with the 2008 Army Counterintelligence Agency report, which specifically calls to discredit Wikileaks through disinformation and propaganda, are you not?
The HIGHLY suspect connection of Manning with Greenwald STINKS of a PsyOp, then, hot on the heels comes this tidbit. Where from? Oh! DangerRoom on Wired.com.
I think we can now see wired.com as another polluted information channel, co-opted by the spooks. Leak meaningless true tidbits on intelligence and surveillance to establish/maintain credibility - then use this established route for the insertion of disinformation messages.
The next stage is to plant doubts about Wikileaks among its advocates, who will begin to speculate if the project is not a honeypot, designed to attract and expose leakers.
"To live outside the law, you must be honest."
-- Bob Dylan
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Oh, and an off-hand jab? This?
Personally, I think conservatives find the very idea of a publicly owned broadcast system communistic and repugnant.
How is that a jab at all? It is not negative. Is it even untrue? Have conservatives embraced communism while I wasn't looking? Is it bad to say they don't like it? Do they not look at PBS that way? Maybe they don't, but stating that I think they do is hardly negative. I bet conservatives don't like terrorists, either. Is that insulting to conservatives?
Seriously, if conservatives find what I just said insulting, that certainly explains why they don't like PBS: because they take offense at hallucinatory insults. There, do you see? That was slightly insulting to conservatives, implying they take offense at completely non-offensive things. Do you see the difference?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Reporters Sans Frontiers/Reporters Without Borders are primarily funded by the US government [zcommunications.org] through the National Endowment for Democracy which was founded during the Reagan administration to channel funds to organizations abroad that would support US foreign policy. Sometimes this funding is direct [ned.org], sometimes it is conducted through the international arms of the US Democratic Party or Republican Party [counterpunch.org].
I'm sure that the US government would much prefer that whistleblowers send any leaked video of massacres by US troops or State Department cables to this new site rather than Wikileaks [wikileaks.org]. The only way it would be easier for them to discover the identity of the whistleblower would be if the leak went directly to the CIA with a return address.
It appears to me that this new Reporters Sans Frontiers project is a honeypot intended to catch would-be whistleblowers.