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OpenLeaks — 'A New WikiLeaks'
Flixie writes "Swedish newspaper dagens Nyheter reports: '...[S]everal key figures behind the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational or religious documents have resigned in protest against the controversial leader Julian Assange only to launch a new service for the so-called whistleblowers. The goal: to leak sensitive information to the public."
Credibility means fairly little to the organization organizing the leaks - what matters are the outlets.
I think Wikileaks got it exactly right this time, using some of the most respected newspapers in the world to filter and disseminate the cables, rather than attempting to dump them directly. Sure, they got stick from the usual suspects, but the reality is that nobody is questioning the credibility of the leaks themselves: if The Guardian posts a cable reporting that, to use a real example, defense contractor Dyncorp organizes child rape parties for Afghan warlords in order to close the sale, and the US government's complicity in covering it up, we pretty much accept it, in a way less likely to happen if it's some random voice on the Internet posting what they claim is a cable.
OpenLeaks is made up of people who know this. I don't think they'll have an issue.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Why are journalists a special protected class in your opinion? Would they release information without filtering it? What if they were pressured to not release it by a government? Or what if it exposes the wrongdoing of the corporation that owns the journalists?
The ideal journalist will disseminate the information to everyone anyway, why add the extra step?
Unlike WikiLeaks, Openleaks will not receive and publish information directly for the public eye.
Ah. So, it's not really "open" at all then. Following the classic tactic of naming your product/service exactly what it's not (I'm looking at you, Great Quality).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
so, they will leak the information to journalists. the people that any notable ones from among them would be in the employ of established media conglomerates, which are subject to pressure of politicians and corporations ?
i think the fact that there has been no major leak that is detrimental to a government or a company has occurred since watergate, escapes these people. werent there any scoops ? werent there any brave journalists to handle them ? surely. why didnt anything in the scale of watergate came up ?
information must be provided to EVERYONE. we are the people, we are the owners of these governments and countries. we have the right to see them first hand. not anyone else, regardless of their profession.
by the way, journalists are people too, from among us. if you release it to us, you release it to everyone.
Read radical news here
...politically-correct organizations who will decide what we need to see and what would "confuse" us.
Bugger that. Release all of the raw data to the public or you're no better than Fox News and Huffington Post.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
*sigh*
Who, please name ONE SINGLE person who got killed! One would do.
Repeating spin over and over is not making it any more correct.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes.
1. People who aren't egomaniacs don't want to be the face of a cause.
2. Causes aren't successful without faces attached to them.
Thus, causes that become popular will always have egomaniacs leading them. Even Gandhi was a bit of an egomaniac, though less reprehensibly than most.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's as if you know him personally. Do you have more first hand experience with controversial personalities?
In the past, before the web, leakers had to talk to journalists because there was no alternative to reach the masses, even though journalists have never been paragons of objectivity.
Wikileaks today is much better than talking to a professional journalist, because what it publishes is closer to the raw leaked information, and it doesn't care about market share or editorial slant like newspapers do.
But wikileaks is still a middleman. If there was simple free software that any would-be leaker (nongeek) could use to put raw information directly and untraceably on the web, then the ideal would be one step closer.
The main is sitting in custody with a crime he probably didn't commit as an excuse, I'd say that any paranoia he has is pretty darn well justified.
Assange was originally a programmer; overinflated ego comes with the territory.
It's easy to armchair quarterback Wikileaks from your computer, isn't it? Assange is taking a very real stand with very real consequences against some very nasty people working in very compromised governments. You need to be a bit insane, a bit self-important, and more than a bit strong on your convictions and courage to have a mindset that enables to think this is a logical idea. You may not like the way Assange operates, but did you see anyone else do it? No? Exactly.
http://comixed.memebase.com/2010/12/08/4-koma-comic-strip-an-issue-of-debate/
When an I Can Has Cheezeburger site explains the entire Obama administration, government view of free speech vs. censorship, and current political climate in 3 panels something is wrong.
Yeah some details didn't need to be leaked. But most did. The military calls this "collateral damage" and minimizes it compared to the success of hitting a target. Civilians are apparently held to a different standard because we haven't been trained how to properly attack and cover up.
The only difference between what you see from Wikileaks and the raw data is that the Wikileaks version has gone through "harm prevention".
Here's a hypothetical example. The U.S. federal government gets a tip about a crime ring from someone. The government tramples all over the rights of the crime ring - therein is the leak-worthy material. Do you include the name of the person who tipped off the feds? I think there is a point where leaking certain information is irresponsible, especially when it interferes with an individual's (but not a government's) privacy and/or safety.
WL is, IMO, doing their job in the most responsible way possible - they make efforts to protect the privacy and safety of individuals and prevent any collateral damage.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
1300 people dead because they refused to put up with the shit any more, as opposed to several thousand dead from malaria and the country's resources being misused.
Was the leak a good or bad thing? Did it lead to 1300 deaths or save a few thousand more in the long term?
This isn't playschool, there isn't a clear good and bad, just shades of grey and complicated trade-offs.
In one film, I don't remember which, the chief editor of the newspaper says to his staff "Our job isn't to break the story first. We're never going to beat the television. Our job is to give the story behind the story."
A good journalist will always have his place. He's prepared to do the legwork that the armchair pundit isn't, checking facts and talking to people to find their motivations. Here on Slashdot people are quite happy to paste from Wikipedia as 'evidence'. A good journalist will spot an anomaly, and if necessary jump in the car and trawl through paper archives to see if the digital one is actually correct or has been altered.
Of course there will be bad journalists, like Gizmondo who can't tell the difference between and EveryDNS and EasyDNS, but the good ones are worth their weight in gold. It's the reason people will happily subscribe to the FT and the Economist, yet The Times has died an online death.
Raw data has become more readily available to the public, but hopefully it will inspire more people to write quality articles as well as add to the armory of those already in the business.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France