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Wikileaks Competitor In the Works
airfoobar writes "From TFA: 'A group of former members of WikiLeaks is planning to launch its own whistleblowing platform in mid-December, according to a German newspaper. The activists criticize WikiLeaks for concentrating too much on the US and want to take a broader approach.'"
The activists criticize WikiLeaks for concentrating too much on the US and want to take a broader approach.'"
More broads? Sounds good to me...
Free Martian Whores!
More leaking and less bragging about what they are sitting on and are going to release in a few weeks.
It was possible, via myriad methods, to release the same information in a widely distributed, completely anonymous manner, and the world would have received the information but never heard the name "Julian Assange" or ever heard of anything called "Wikileaks".
But Assange didn't choose to go that route. He definitely wanted his name and trademark on this information. Wanting to get the truth out is one thing, but wanting to make sure that the truth gets out *under your brand name* is another. I have more respect for the former than the latter.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
A good amount of the world hates America for various reasons.
Do you think the media will care if they leak the displomatic wires of the government of some tiny country nobody really cares about?
There are enough secret documents and nefarious backroom deals to go around. If Wikileaks has put a stop on submissions because it has too much, then there's clearly room for more, and Wikileaks should welcome them as such. It appears there is at least some indication WL feels that way, but while the people may not be the best of friends their organizations will at least be allies.
Unrelated - Why does TFS refer to TFA as such?
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
I hope they understand the risks.
US is still relatively civilised (althought I know there have been cases of torture etc), but I'm pretty sure once they start messing with China the response will be far more radical than rape charge.
(emphasis mine)
TFA: "The group stresses that the as-yet-unnamed platform should not be seen as a competitor to WikiLeaks but as a different approach, the newspaper wrote."
Title on Slashdot: "Wikileaks competitor in the works".
The only part in TFA that mentions the word "competitor" is the sentence stating what this new site won't be.
Cryptome has been up and running since -96 and if anything having Wikileaks show up in -06 has only made them more relevant. This should be a good development, the more targets the harder they will be to take down.
I think the problem with Wikileaks is that rather than being a neutral publisher of leaked documents, that have editorialized what they publish (for example, leaked footage of combat in Iraq that leaves out context and is labeled as "murder by US troops" or similar prejudice terms) and are, largely through the words and actions of Julian Assange, pushed their own agenda. I don't think that's what a lot of people thought Wikileaks would be. I can understand why some members might want to distance themselves from Assange and Wikileaks.
A Wikileaks that just makes available the documents they have without the need to try all tell people what they should think about those documents might have some value. Of course, it might also be impossible since somebody has to make the decision whether or not to release a document (for example, if they believe release might endanger lives) and that can be seen as a form of editorial control.
There is a big difference between "whistleblowing" to uncover domestic corruption and leaking state secrets of multiple nations.
Do we have a right to know this stuff? No. It is nothing more than titillating information like what you would find in tabloids concerning celebrities. It is not our right to know private information about either celebrities or diplomats. What is said behind closed doors off the record is supposed to stay private.
I would like to keep a sense of privacy myself as an individual so I think that even the 5th estate of our society needs to be held to a certain level of accountability. That is why I do not consider most bloggers "journalists" because they are not held accountable to anyone. Wikileaks is even a blogger but just some asswipe who is looking for money and attention and does not give a damn if the information he stole damages lives, reputations or brings us closer to a war.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Which news channel shows films at 11?
I'm either going to explain a cultural reference to non-Americans, or I'm going to overexplain a joke and get "Whoooshed". (Both, probably, now that I've mentioned it).
On network TV, during commercial breaks in prime time (8pm-11pm), the evening news, which comes on at 11, will "tease" a story that they're reporting on with a short summary and the promise of some exciting video in order to keep you watching after your show is over. "Fire guts popular downtown restaurant. Film at 11." Taking that common phrase out of context, the meme has become "[Obvious statement]. Film at 11."
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Why are you assuming he gathers his own intel? First of all, it's an organisation consisting of multiple people. Secondly, they have to work with what is leaked to them. They are not people who infiltrate governments or hack databases.
Your examples are laughable to say the least. Do you think they can pull such documents out of their ass or something? They need to be LEAKED to them.
It's an antiquated reference from the days when videotape was not yet available or not in widespread use. News agencies relied on film. Film actually required hours, at best, to make available for broadcast. When a piece of breaking news arrived, it arrived via telephone, in-person reports, teletype (the original internet!), etc. Still photos were often available, because there were instant films and relatively rapid processing (10 minutes to load and develop, 1 minute to stop and fix, 15 minutes to dry, and fast methods of getting prints out), but it took longer to get film ready to broadcast because of hard constraints on the processing time required.
Getting 16mm film from the camera to broadcast in a matter of hours was actually a pretty impressive, pretty expensive accomplishment, and would be a significant competitive advantage for one news agency over another.
Now, I personally remember this era of television, but I don't believe I ever heard a newscaster literally say "Film at 11." Any of you other old farts remember this and/or have a reference? I think it's one of those cultural idioms that sounds so good and is fully apropos to many situations, even if it was never really used in its original context. And in English it's an expression with a "nice" meter, a trochee and an iamb. Don't underestimate the appeal of a linguistic idiom based on the niceness of its sound.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Assange isn't a spy, he's somebody that whistleblowers turn to to dispose of their information. If he doesn't receive a particular piece of information how can he publish it?
Maybe you're talking about a different clip. I'm talking about the one Assange talked about on Colbert which Colbert ripped him a new one about. IIRC (I can't check YouTube from work) it was from a helicopter gunship camera which Wikileaks had edited down to remove all the real combat just prior to the incident. But either way, you can judge it any way you want. It's not, or should not be, Wikileaks job to tell you want to think about it.
I'm not spinning anything anyway, but you seem to think Wikileaks should spin it for you and that's somehow better than anybody else spinning it. I disagree and that was my point. Wikileaks shouldn't spin at all.
I don't think that anybody here is really suggesting that wikileaks shouldn't have published all of that stuff.
What annoys me with the site is that they UNPUBLISHED a bunch of stuff when they relased the Iraq war documents, and they remain offline to this day. It seems almost like a marketing decision (no need to distract the public with more than one scandal at a time).
It seems like the organization is more about marketing than getting info out.
While it is certainly possible he would have been tracked down, classified information is access controlled and they may have been about to narrow down who had access to it, they caught him because he bragged about it. He was not driven to do what he did for moral reasons, he did it for ego reasons. Well, something you find about people who do things for egotistical reasons is they usually feel the need to run their mouths about it. After all, hard for the world to know how awesome you (think) you are if you don't tell them!
Had he simply sent the data to Wikileaks quietly, never identifying himself, and had he not gone and bragged about it anywhere, well I'd say reasonable chance he'd be a free man and people would simply be talking about "the source" of the leaks, and not about him personally.
No if you cross the US they just kidnap you and send you to some shithole to be tortured. Then, if it turns out you're not the one they're looking for, they'll dump you out in the middle of nowhere and pressure your government to forget the whole thing ever happened. This is what happened to a German of Lebanese descent and that's a case we know of, god knows what else the CIA is up to where nobody's looking.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Oh well, they though he was a terrorist. I guess that's alright then. Your argument boils down to the fact that the US is the best of a bad lot, morality on a sliding scale. I don't accept that. You either stand for liberty and don't do this kind of thing or you wade in the shit with the rest of the totalitarians.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
There are already Wikileaks competitors. The differ from Wikileaks in that they actually concentrate on publishing leaking information, rather than self-promotion. That's also why many apparently haven't heard of them. To make a political analogy, Wikileaks is the Sarah Palin of the leak sites--not well respected by those in the know in the leaks community, but has been marketed in such a way as to become the darling of many.
You were born.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year