Openleaks Goes Live

Underholdning writes "Ars technica leaks the story of OpenLeaks launching. OpenLeaks is an alternative to WikiLeaks, with a few differences. 'OpenLeaks will not accept or publish documents on its own platform, but rather create many "digital dropboxes" for its community members, each adapted to the specific needs of our members so that they can provide a safe and trusted leaking option for whistleblowers.' Time will show if this will live next to WikiLeaks, or they will compete. For more information, check out the OpenLeaks website."

Comments

FL

[Anonymous Coward]

First leak : Obama is really an American.

Re:FL

[jeffrey.endres]

This second step makes him not "natural born."

Yeah but he is white.

Re:FL

[PopeRatzo]

But Obama voluntarily placed a copy of his official birth certificate on his campaign web site during the entire 2008 campaign

Just hold on there, buster. I saw that so-called "birth certificate" with my own two eyes and I don't know about you but I could not feel that official seal no matter how hard I rubbed my screen (which ended up killing a whole bunch of them little pixies, something like 768 or so, that make up one-a them flat screens and even though the 14" LCD monitor that I bought at the Wal-Mart has a whole passel of them pixies, a bunch of dead ones right square in the middle of the screen kinda messes up the picture. Now it looks like that Bree Olsen (who is 100% white, by the way) has an extra nipple what with all them dead pixies, and an extra nipple does tend to spoil the mood, if you get my meaning). So not only did that Hussein Adolph Obama take my country, but now he's soiled Bree Olsen on top of it. Sumbitch.

But getting back to the so-called "birth certificate" of our phony-baloney president (man, I don't know a soul who voted for that muslin boy) you can tell it's phony because not one single true patriotic web site showed it. That's right. Not a one of them. Don't you think that if it was really his birth certificate then they'd want to clear this mess up with how it's got every right-thinking American ready to go to the mattresses and all?

No-sir. No citizen, No way. (by the way, I've copyrighted that phrase, so don't even think about putting it up on a bumper sticker without you send me a little taste first.

And by the way, I may be a dumb cracker, but I'm smart enough to know that the new Slashdot Zero looks like seven kinds of shit. I'm thinking of having a little talk with that Captain Tacobender or whatever that yankee pudknocker calls hisself and see if I can't persuade him to switch it back to something a little more loser-friendly.

When will they learn?

[Deathnerd]

When you bring down or threaten one site, six more pop up in its place. I would have thought that the lessons learned from fighting torrent sites would translate to government. I guess they'll never really learn.

Row row row FIGHT THE POWAH!

Re:When will they learn?

[mirix]

Pretty much. Anything with enough demand just ends up turning into a game of Whack-a-Mole, internet or otherwise.
See the war on drugs as an example.

Re:When will they learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Several of these new sites are honeypots for various governments.

Re:When will they learn?

[mug funky]

the grey hair principle... kill one and ten will come to the funeral.

and just look at Assange's hair. there's no stopping that flood.

Re:When will they learn?

[Velex]

My personal favorite is the war on alcohol, because that one was lost.

Re:When will they learn?

[LordLimecat]

Wikileaks isnt down; Openleaks folks simply werent satisfied with how Assange was running things.

Lets not make this something it isnt.

Re:When will they learn?

[TheRaven64]

My least favourite is the war on alcohol, because after vast amounts of wasted money and a dramatic increase in organised crime, politicians still refuse to learn any lessons from the outcome.

Where is the advertising ?

[unity100]

and who will do its advertising, so that the mass media will HAVE to carry the leaks into the headlines ?

if you think material will just get carried into headlines and prime time news because of the contents, dont fool yourself - entire american public is unaware of what ACTA is, even as of now, despite it has been internationally fought over by all major players in the world. so, its indeed possible to keep public ignorant.

wikileaks is using the publicity assange generates through media and publicity stunts. in case you noticed, assange is always making the opening for a new leak a few weeks before it is published, and continuing to generate publicity for the upcoming leak.

you just dont create a dropbox and expect leaks to be seen by people. corporate contolled media WONT use it. they have successfully kept any potential leak in the dark since watergate, until wikileaks.

openleaks must find a way to make advertising.

Re:Where is the advertising ?

[Anonymous Coward]

you just dont create a dropbox and expect leaks to be seen by people. corporate contolled media WONT use it. they have successfully kept any potential leak in the dark since watergate, until wikileaks. Openleaks must find a way to make advertising.

From their FAQ: "OpenLeaks is not involved in the direct editing and release of documents. Our intention is to function, as much as possible, as a mere conduit (akin to the telephone exchange and the post) between the whistleblower and an organization of their choice. This means that OpenLeaks does not accept submissions or publish leaked material directly. "

Re:Where is the advertising ?

[hedwards]

Which officially makes it worthless. People looking to leak can't trust them because they have to have someway of keeping track of where leaks are coming from and if that's not the case the journalists can't trust them because they have no way of verifying the sources are legit.

Either case does not bode well for the organization.

Re:Where is the advertising ?

[TapeCutter]

"they have to have someway of keeping track of where leaks are coming from and if that's not the case the journalists can't trust them because they have no way of verifying the sources are legit."

WL does not verify the authenticity of leaks by trusting the leaker, it normally verifies them simply by asking the original owner of the document if they are genuine*. Unless were talking about people who are trained to neither confirm or deny, the reaction of the owner is usually enough to confirm if the material is genuine or not.

(* - This is not the only method, WL also uses other simple verification "tricks" that are part of the toolbox of any competent investigative journalist).

Re:Where is the advertising ?

[Sarten-X]

While there may not be any large independent media, each company does effectively operate independently. I doubt AOL Time Warner would particularly worry about publishing information damaging to News Corp, or vice versa. There also Gannett, Disney, and Comcast, and they all effectively hate each other. In fact, being such a large company is detrimental, because each division of each company must work with every other company, and nobody wants to make nice deals with the competition. Pay attention to any of the content-provider contract battles, and this is obvious.

Advertising revenue is usually not tied to the number of sponsorships. It's tied to the number of viewers. Irritating one sponsor, but increasing viewership by 20% is a profitable move for the network. A single network with an exclusive story can also extend favors a targeted company, offering to release rebuttals and host spokespersons.

Given that the world's largest entertainment conglomerate only brought in $38 billion last year, I find it hard to believe that a shady deal's profits would measure in the billions. A hundred million, perhaps, but then that's well within the range of a smart advertising move.

The conspiracy theory, like all such theories, also requires far more cooperation than is feasible. Anyone involved in a large secret deal would also be suitably above the day-to-day dealings of the news branch to not know about the leaked story before it's released. If the news branch were told not to release any stories about certain rivals, that lets a few hundred people know that a secret deal is taking place. People don't keep secrets that well.

Re:Where is the advertising ?

[wvmarle]

Most of the general public is not touched by the ACTA directly. Especially the US public as it's primarily an attempt to spread existing US legislation to the rest of the world. It's the rest of the world that's actually really affected by this. For that alone it's no wonder the American public doesn't know/care about it.

And then the ACTA doesn't involve killing or violence against persons. That's also what keeps the general public less interested. Even with ACTA, bittorrent will continue to work and they will still be able to order their counterfeit handbags from Hong Kong based e-bay shops like they do now. It will take years for such a regulation to start to bite, and then it's too late. We're frogs in a pot of water.

Your US corporate-controlled media may be slow to follow; luckily there is still the BBC and many other independent European news agencies that do pick up those stories, that do their homework, and that will bring it out to the masses. And remember WikiLeaks exists for many years already, me as long-term /. reader (some 9-10 years by now - no my ID doesn't reflect that) knew about it from the beginning, but the general public and major news agencies only much more recently picked it up really. I've seen their name in the newspapers occasionally, but only with the Iraq war files they really got well known.

OpenLeaks is "advertising" where they should: primarily the media outlets that would want to use their material. That's likely the core of their marketing - it seems to me WikiLeaks has done the same. Make sure your organisation is known in the geek-scene, and to the outlets. Make sure also that your "drop-box" is secure, secure as in guaranteed anonymity for leakers. That may be the hardest part even, because you know affected parties will chase you for any traces left for where a leak comes from, and that potential wistleblowers want to be sure that they can leak safely and truly anonymously. Those things you don't advertise, those things you have to be, and over time prove so.

Re:dont leak to the wrong people

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, my thought exactly. For all the limitations of Julien Assange, he's not a narc, he won't pass your name to the authorities, and he will try to get your leak out there and make sure that people actually notice. Alternatives to Wikileaks might also do the same, but I wouldn't want to be the first to test the waters. I definitely hope that these guys turn out to be legit though. Competition in leaks would be a very good thing for everybody. Still, let's not ignore that Assange and Wikileaks have a huge head start.

Politics

[Q-Hack!]

It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.

Re:Politics

[jez9999]

I think this argument is utter crap. Wikileaks offered an unedited version of Collateral Murder, and what they did edit they did to clarify things and in my opinion they didn't distort the content in any significant way.

Other documents they have edited have been to remove people's names and they'd have gotten more criticism if they hadn't done it.

Re:Politics

[dbIII]

With the greatest possible respect (watch "Yes Minister" if you don't know that this is a polite way of saying you may be very good at something but have no clue about this subject) they had both an edited version that can be considered "highlights" and the full version. That renders your complaint pointless nitpicking that could be applied to nearly any media source on the planet but can not be applied for this video.
Also Orwell was writing about the USSR in such a way as to get the message across that it could happen in your hometown if everything went wrong. He also sidestepped the ideologies that really are irrelevant if there is totalitarianism hiding behind them by setting it in a fictional place. It wasn't really prediction but extrapolation of the sort of thing that was already occurring and presenting it in such a way that people would take it seriously without bringing in their own ideological baggage.

Re:Politics

[Anonymous Coward]

The "collateral murder" highlights reel was all that was needed. When the soldiers shot the van that was collecting the bodies, that was a war crime.

Re:Politics

[SimonTheSoundMan]

A reporter, newscaster or presenter will report on the facts, a commentator gives opinion.

Fox News is all commentary and skew and flip stories. BBC News is mostly news casting, and only report on the fact, with no biased slant, in most cases.

Only time you see reporting getting slightly skewed at the BBC is when they are dealing with very sensitive subjects, for example they have embedded journalists in Iraq where the story is that given to them by the American and British forces, and is not representative of what is really going on. 'Collateral Murder' went through the press as the story given by the USA army that was totally inaccurate to what happened. The embedded journalists have to obey the news given out by the forces, if not agencies such as the BBC wont get on the front-line of what is happening. Wikileaks served to undo the PR machine that the US government have.

Re:Politics

[wvmarle]

Many facts have two faces, when seen from the opposite parties. Wars primarily so - even journalist reporting what they see will see and hear different things whether they are on the American side or on the Iraqi side. Even when reporting about the same facts. It is really really difficult to stick to pure observations without any interpretations, think the difference of "that child is shouting" and "that child is angry". The first is really an observation; the second could very well be an interpretation of the shouting behaviour. Very easy to misinterpret observations because of an expectation/opinion about a situation.

Yet of course all good journalists will do their best to separate fact and opinion. And proper news outlets will mark articles that are not plain reporting as opinion or analyses

Re:Politics

[LordLimecat]

Sorry for double post... But I just went and watched the "full" video here, and around 4:35-4:45, I very clearly see a cut. Is that how such videos generally work? Is there any reason to believe that too was not edited, or can we trust that THIS time, it was the full video?

And I thought the point of a site like wikileaks was to be a neutral, thrid party publishing site; sticking orwell quotes onto a video doesnt seem very neutral to me.

Re:Politics

[metacell]

It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.

It's not unlikely you're trolling, but I'll respond just to be on the safe side.

The US military didn't just classify the video where a US attack helicopter shoots down journalists in Iraq - they lied to the court and claimed it didn't exist.

Wikileaks exposed that lie by leaking the video. They published both an edited version with commentary, and the complete, unedited version, so everyone could see for themselves that they didn't distort anything. That Wikileaks bothered to publish the unedited version, proves that they were honest. It's more than what a regular news agency does.

Of course, when they release unedited material, they get criticised for that too. It's used to argue that they're not "a real news agency", since "real news agencies" provide reports, not raw data, and this in turn is used to support bizarre arguments that they shouldn't have the same right to free speech as other news providers.

So whatever Wikileaks does, they get criticised. I think it's amazing they haven't made more mistakes than they have, considering the sheer amount of material they've received and the controversies surrounding it.

Egypt just turned off all Internet access

[h00manist]

Egyptian authorities apparently pulled the backbone plugs. As a result of the Egyptians protesting, because the Tunisians protested, because of a Wikileaked document, from a US Embassy saying the truth - there was an old, fucked up dictatorship, that is no more. Egyptians have their work laid out for them.

Re:Egypt just turned off all Internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

So Julian Assange and WikiLeaks work brought about what Dubya said he wanted to do by attacking Iraq: spread democracy in the Middle East. For a lot less than the trillions of dollars and tens of hundreds of lives (including the much more valuable American lives).

Suck on that, Dubya..!

Re:Egypt just turned off all Internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

So Julian Assange and WikiLeaks work brought about what Dubya said he wanted to do by attacking Iraq: spread democracy in the Middle East. For a lot less than the trillions of dollars and tens of hundreds of lives (including the much more valuable American lives).

Suck on that, Dubya..!

George Walker Bush was actively supporting the government of Egypt. Since many US presidents before him, although he and his father is perhaps the ones that has most utilised their services, Egypt have been a place where people is sent to be tortured on behalf of CIA and other US acronyms, or where people have been sent when the US government want them to be behind lock and shackle with no questions asked. [ This has of course never happened to anyone born in USA, just dirty foreigners, according to US policies, people born in USA are the only human beings on this planet and the only ones that get a humane treatment. ] Many of the Egyptian government employed torturers have been trained by CIA or the US military in their profession.

I doubt Dubya ever had any interest in spreading democracy in Middle East. Most US presidents only want the oil of Middle East and that the countries there stay in a constant state of weakness and US dependency because of internal conflicts.

Re:Legit or Government sponsored?

[PopeRatzo]

Why can't whistleblowers just post their dirt to facebook?

Because whistleblowers need the protection of anonymity. That's why we have whistleblower laws.

Openleaks is not what we need...

[neiras]

So these guys plan to release only to 'need-to-know' news organizations, approved by themselves and some sort of vote process? Yeah, that'll work well. If the media won't touch a certain story shopped around by OpenLeaks, we'll never know about it. I don't trust OpenLeaks; I hope they fail hard.

Wikileaks had it right - public disclosure with a reasonable attempt to scrub names not directly responsible for the crimes being exposed.

Re:Openleaks is not what we need...

[poity]

So some people want to try their own hands at helping.

I hope they fail hard.

You want them to fail because they're not helping in the way you want them to.
Rush Limbaugh, is that you again?

Re:Openleaks is not what we need...

[AHuxley]

Yes read http://cryptome.org/0003/nyt-robs-wl.htm
The part about "Even goes so far as to brag the Times publishes documents too, not just editorial gloss of them. Then carefully preens shamelessly about how the Times met repeatedly with US government representatives to vet Wikileaks documents before publication." ie from
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
"Dean Baquet, our Washington bureau chief, gave the White House an early warning on Nov. 19. The following Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, Baquet and two colleagues were invited to a windowless room at the State Department, where they encountered an unsmiling crowd. "
"Before each discussion, our Washington bureau sent over a batch of specific cables that we intended to use in the coming days. They were circulated to regional specialists, who funneled their reactions to a small group at State, who came to our daily conversations with a list of priorities and arguments to back them up."

hmmm

[Charliemopps]

So, after watching the video... it looks like they've invented a wiki... for leaks... amazing concept really.

Re:dont leak to the wrong people

[hedwards]

Assange for all his weaknesses is in some respects a realist. Those complaints weren't particularly valid. He's got a limited number of people that he can trust to do the redactions and other work necessary to release the material. There's a lot of material in the world that can be leaked. I don't think it's a fair criticism of him or the organization that there's a huge backlog. Choosing to prioritize the materials that are the most interest to the general public is hardly unethical. Organizations have to make priorities or they get nothing done.

It's sort of like if Shakespeare or Mark Twain had chosen to write one act or chapter from each work before moving onto the second. Both men almost undoubtedly had a back log of ideas at various points and only a limited amount of resources with which to realize them.

Re:Legit or Government sponsored?

[gknoy]

Wikileaks did not expose Manning -- Manning did by being an idiot and talking about it. Assange did not blow the whistle, he merely published it, and is deliberately non-anonymous in order to be the Wikileaks Drama Lightning Rod, or something.

Where's the Open ?

[Haedrian]

There's nothing really open about openleaks. Its more a dropbox which is then piped to news agents.

Should have called it closed-except-to-journalistleaks , but I expect the domain was already taken.

Re:A long term trend?

[Darkness404]

Quite honestly, part of me hopes that stuff like that happens to show how stupid our culture is. First off, SSNs weren't designed for identification, older ones will even say "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" on the card. SSNs aren't secure and it is utter crap to think that it is a secure password. Seemingly everything uses it for no real reason, it used to be that large universities used it rather than your name or a different ID number, thankfully most of them have stopped using that. Rather than using SSNs, we should focus on making secure forms of identification so identity theft is unlikely.

Let the leak war begin!

[zill]

Openleak's first leak was Wikileak server's root password.

5 minutes later, Wikileaks retaliated by posting Openleak's SQL database password.

Re:Its only a matter of time

[xero314]

Yes because there is no way that any news agency would possibly publish false news reports.