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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
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"
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
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.
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.
Kinda like this: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Special:Support
?
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
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.
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!
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 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".