OpenLeaks Founder 'Crippled' WikiLeaks

SETIGuy writes "Former WikiLeaks programmer Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers, according to a WikiLeaks spokesperson. Since leaving WikiLeaks, Domschiet-Berg has become one of the cofounders of OpenLeaks. This raises the question: if you had material to leak, would you trust it to someone who has already jeopardized the anonymity of leakers at a site where he worked?" Domscheit-Berg denies claims by WikiLeaks that he damaged the organization or 'stole' material, but did say he took roughly 300,000 documents with him when he left. An anonymous reader notes related news that WikiLeaks is attempting to get around donation blocks by selling a line of T-shirts.

Comments

Bitter from competition?

[Stregano]

Now that WikiLeaks has competition, it would make sense to try and stop that competition. When you have a site like OpenLeaks that is all about anonymously leaking information, trying to say that they are not trusted with that would possibly hurt them. I think it is good there are multiple sources doing this. I don't see what WikiLeaks problem is with it. If they are truly in this to spread information to the masses, then the more sites that do it, the easier it will be for the information to get released.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Monkeedude1212]

I don't see what WikiLeaks problem is with it. If they are truly in this to spread information to the masses, then the more sites that do it, the easier it will be for the information to get released.

All the more evidence to suggest that either
A) Wikileaks is right in that Domscheit-Berg sabatoged Wikileaks and they don't want you to trust him
B) Wikileaks is not truly in this to spread information to the masses.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Sarten-X]

Having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity, but we cannot assume Wikileaks cares about what's good for humanity. A normal organization hides from slander, moving controversial figures away from the public spotlight and replacing them with new faces. Regardless of Wikileaks' benevolent message, it seems intent on parading Assange around as a sort of "martyr for the rebellion" figure. OpenLeaks stand to take attention away from that image, and in doing so, cut off the stream of revenue from donations.

Wikileaks hasn't acted like a normal charitable organization in quite a while. Now they're just capitalizing on controversy, and trying to make a profitable business out of it.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Spy Handler]

Well whatever Wikileaks is alleging Domscheit-Berg of doing (stealing wikileaks' info, sabotaging their server), it happened a while ago. They're only throwing a fit NOW and threatening to sue because Berg's new book about his experience in Wikileaks hit the bookstores today.

Apparently the book alleges that Assange once threatened to kill Berg over their differences, was intensely paranoid and began travelling with bodyguards, and ruled over his followers as an "emperor".

Re:Bitter from competition?

[sznupi]

A normal organization hides from slander, moving controversial figures away from the public spotlight and replacing them with new faces. Regardless of Wikileaks' benevolent message, it seems intent on parading Assange around as a sort of "martyr for the rebellion" figure.

"Normal" is basically just another word for "average"...that's not the best approach regarding activities which could be, how you put it, good for humanity.

Especially if the organization could be forced into constant reorganizations just by new slander & controversy directed at every new face.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[poetmatt]

Are you retarded?

You don't just take leaked information and leak it to the public. The reason wikileaks doesn't do this is to protect the people who leak info. Believe it or not, they actually do this. There is no such guarantee from openleaks.

Wikileaks never said anyone else couldn't do this, just that they need to be cognizant of what it takes to anonymize stuff before it's released.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[DarkOx]

The only value though in getting the information out there is if someone sees it. Pleople know wikileaks, people watch it, if you have 100s of little leak sites out there nobody will pay any attention and your important relase may go un noticed. If you try to leak the data to multiple place you increase your expose by having to transfer sensitive data multiple times.

So while I don't think its good to have just one whistle blowing site for the whole of the WWW, to many might prove detrimental to the objective.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Beardo the Bearded]

My view is that if you aren't set up in such a way that a programmer can't sabotage you, then you deserve it.

Maybe someone could leak the names of some CMS their way.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[elrous0]

I suspect it's less about competition and more about Domscheit-Berg being a deep-cover plant.

All I can say is there is no fucking way I would ever submit any secret government documents to OpenLeaks. That site smells way too much like honey.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[GooberToo]

Wikileaks generates revenue and prestige (which directly fuels Assanage's ego) by leaking secrets. Someone else leaking "their" secrets means Wikileaks suffers.

"Killing people is fun." - Julian Assanage

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to elaborate, bankster? Yea, I saw the memo.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Wyatt Earp]

No, wikileaks isn't doing this because it's not wikileaks anymore, it's wikiassange now, have you been over to wikileaks.ch lately? It's got more Assange branding on it than wikipedia had Jimmy Wales.

Its all about Assange and keeping wikileaks and Assange's name in the press.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[TubeSteak]

Having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity, but we cannot assume Wikileaks cares about what's good for humanity. ... OpenLeaks stand to take attention away from that image, and in doing so, cut off the stream of revenue from donations.

OpenLeaks seeks to change the one thing that makes WikiLeaks effective:
Releasing the source documents.

Our media has always been only as honest as they needed to be.
Without source documents being put out in the public eye, there's nothing forcing news organizations to be as honest as they should be.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[cold fjord]

Now that WikiLeaks has competition, it would make sense to try and stop that competition. When you have a site like OpenLeaks that is all about anonymously leaking information, trying to say that they are not trusted with that would possibly hurt them. I think it is good there are multiple sources doing this. I don't see what WikiLeaks problem is with it. If they are truly in this to spread information to the masses, then the more sites that do it, the easier it will be for the information to get released.

So far the publicly available formula for Wikileaks has been:
1. Accept stolen documents
2. Put them on the web for people to download.
3.?
4. Profit!

Maybe #3 really isn't a blank, and competition from other sites would endanger it unless they coordinated what documents to make available, and when.

WikiLeaks sold classified intel, claims website's co-founder
One of the early members and co-founders of the tight-knit, secretive WikiLeaks operation charged today that the website and its co-founder, Julian Assange, sold intelligence information the site had obtained.

John Young, whose name was listed as the public face of WikiLeaks in the site's original domain registration, also alleged that the website is a lucrative business.

Young said he left the site in 2007 due to concerns over its finances and that WikiLeaks was engaged in the selling of documents.

Young was speaking today to WND senior reporter Aaron Klein on Klein's radio program on New York's WABC Radio.

"I think it is a money-making operation, no doubt," Young said of WikiLeaks.

"It follows the model of a number of other business intelligence operations. Selling intelligence information is a very lucrative field, and so they are following that model, usually cloaked in some kind of public benefit," he told Klein.

"But they are far from being the only one that does that," Young added. "It's a well-known business model.

See the inside story in "Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11"

Asked specifically whether he was charging WikiLeaks with selling classified information and documents, Young replied, "Yes."

Klein then asked, "When you were at WikiLeaks initially, was your impression they were trying to sell information?"

Young responded, "Well, it only came up in the topic of raising $5 million the first year. That was the first red flag that I heard about. I thought that they were actually a public interest group up until then, but as soon as I heard that, I know that they were a criminal organization."

Now Wikileaks suffers its own leaks
Wikileaks is facing questions over its finances as lawyers for its alleged main source, Pte Bradley Manning, said they had not seen a penny of tens of thousands of dollars raised by the site to help pay for his defence and promised to them three months ago.
The development comes as a senior WikiLeaks activist told The Sunday Telegraph that she and others had resigned from the organisation because of their deep concern about its treatment of sources and "lack of transparency with relation to large sums of money".

This newspaper has learned that one of WikiLeaks's main funding channels, the Germany-based Wau Holland Foundation, has been issued with two official warnings by charity regulators after failing to file financial records.

It has also emerged that the online payment service PayPal, which last week cut off donations to WikiLeaks, suspended the site's account twice before, once under money laundering regulations.

WikiLeaks, which says its operating costs are about $200,000 (£125,000) a year, claims to have raised more than $1 million (£625,000) in donations

Re:Bitter from competition?

[commodore6502]

Yes buying this T-shirt to support a worthy cause. Although I'd rather have the hot woman wearing the T-shirt! (sung to tune of How much For the Doggie in the Window)

How much is that blondie in the T-shirt? (wolf whistle)
The one with the bouncy chest
How much is that blondie in the T-shirt? (oh yeah!)
I do hope that blondie's for sale

I must take a trip to Southern Sweden
And leave my poor sweetheart alone
If she has a vibe, she won't be lonesome
And I'll give the blondie a good home.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[icebike]

The fact that Wkileaks is making a big deal of the stolen stash of documents suggest they are NOT in this to provide information, but rather to further a specific agenda.

Forget for a moment about the irony of bickering over "ownership" of stolen documents. The fact that Wikileaks still HAS a copy of those documents means they weren't harmed.

As for the anonymous submission system being deactivated, the story seems long on allegations and short on detail. Even the alleged sabotage is only Wikileaks characterization of what is in Domscheit-Berg's book:

"In (his) book Domscheit-Berg confesses to various acts of sabotage against the organization. The former WikiLeaks staffer admits to having damaged the site's primary submission system and stolen material," Hrafnsson's statement said.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Sarten-X]

How is a source document inherently better than a properly-scrubbed document? If a hypothetical leak indicates that the CIA meets North Korean arms dealers every Tuesday at 4:00 PM at the Starbucks on Main street, does it really matter that the released version says the meeting takes place on Friday at an old warehouse?

If an OpenLeaks submitter doesn't like what is finally released, they're welcome to try again with a different outlet. OpenLeaks just makes connections, and it's up to the submitter to determine what kind of outlet they want to deal with. WikiLeaks takes on the whole job itself, and if a submitter doesn't like the way they do business, tough.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[icebike]

My view is that if you aren't set up in such a way that a programmer can't sabotage you, then you deserve it.

Maybe someone could leak the names of some CMS their way.

You missed the part where the programmer is one of two key spokesmen for the whole organization. There was no one higher than him to put these practices in place.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[tobiah]

I seriously doubt Domscheit-Berg purposely infiltrated Wikileaks, but I agree with you that I don't trust him or Openleaks. Compromising the security of wikileaks contributors shows he does not respect them, and is unlikely to do so at OpenLeaks. Assange is clearly loyal to his ideals and willing to take great personal risk for them. I might not trust him with my cat, but I'd trust him with my leaked data.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Martin Blank]

NYT Editor Bill Keller was on NPR's Fresh Air last week. Here's what he had to say about Assange and redaction:

GROSS: You say: We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator. But he was a man who clearly had his own agenda. What do you think his agenda was?

Mr. KELLER: Well, as I said earlier, I think it was a little murky. He professes a kind of ideology of transparency, that, you know, information should be free.

He, at the outset, even resisted the idea - when we and the other news organizations put it to him that we were going to redact the names of ordinary Afghans and Iraqis who had talked to the American military because it would put their lives at risk, he seemed quite indifferent to that. And over time, he, I think, came around to the view that at least, from a public relations point of view, it was maybe better to allow for a certain amount of editing out of things that could cost lives.

GROSS: Really? He seemed indifferent to the fact that publication with those names could cost lives?

Mr. KELLER: You know, the Guardian is also publishing its own book on the WikiLeaks episode, mostly a profile of Julian Assange based on their considerably more detailed and extensive interactions with him. And what they report in that book was that - in one of the early conversations, when they said, well, you know, the Times and the Guardian would want to edit out the names of, you know, ordinary Afghans, Assange's reaction was essentially: Well, they're informants. You know, there's no reason for protecting them.

GROSS: Do you think it was you and the editors - like, you and your people and the staff of the Guardian that convinced him that he needed to edit out some names?

Mr. KELLER: I think probably not. I mean, I think we may have played some role, but I think two other factors eventually convinced him to try and redact the documents in that way.

One was there were a number of people within WikiLeaks who felt very strongly that you should not just put this raw material out, that it would get people killed, and they had some raging fights within WikiLeaks over that issue.

Another was that when WikiLeaks posted its first batch of documents, which were the Afghanistan war logs, they did, in fact, include a number of un-redacted names of ordinary Afghans who had spoken to the military. And there was quite an outcry about that - not just from the United States government, which I think Julian Assange could not have cared less about, but from organizations like Amnesty International, which I think he did care about.

Essentially, until it looked like certain organizations were going to start considering it a bad idea, he resisted the idea of editing out names. He didn't care if people got killed if they were working with the US or NATO.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[icebike]

"Normal" is basically just another word for "average"...that's not the best approach regarding activities which could be, how you put it, good for humanity.
Especially if the organization could be forced into constant reorganizations just by new slander & controversy directed at every new face.

You miss the point entirely.

Why should there be a "Face"?

The mission (allegedly) of Wikileaks is to establish openness of information. Putting ANY face on it simply makes it a personal vendetta mostly aimed at the U.S. (Assange has admitted as much himself).

If they were true to their mission statement, they would not put any face forward, and would simply put the information out there.

Oh, you HAVE read the mission statement haven't you?

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances - the internet, and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered.
Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to stronger scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency can provide. Wikileaks provides a forum for the entire global community to relentlessly examine any document for its credibility, plausibility, veracity and validity. Communities can interpret leaked documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document comes from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community and diaspora can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document arrives from Iran, the entire Farsi community can analyze it and put it in context.

Somehow they seem to have wandered off track somewhere along the line.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[BlackSabbath]

Are you fucking kidding me? You'd take the self-serving words of the editor of a paper which has for years been a pro-war propaganda machine?
 

Re:Bitter from competition?

[bug1]

How is a source document inherently better than a properly-scrubbed document?

How is a free person inherently better than a properly manipulated person ?

Re:Bitter from competition?

[slashdot_commentator]

The "threat" from openleaks.org is not that they will attract attention away from wikileaks. In fact, its the opposite of what they want to do. According to Domscheit-Berg, they plan to only be a "leak collector" and move the information through existing journalism organizations for review/release.

No, the threat of openleaks is that they will take away the "good scoops" from wikileaks.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[BlackSabbath]

If having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity then I'm afraid Domshit-Berg doesn't agree with you as he very handily sabotaged WL before taking 300K documents and setting up his own tent across the street.

In Australia, this behaviour is colloquially referred to as a "c*nt's act".

You claim that WL hasn't acted like a "normal charitable organisation". I'm sorry? What? They are an organisation trying to change the way governments (of all flavours) deal with their citizenry - i.e. they want to make it impossible for governments to continue to operate on the basis of subterfuge on a grand scale. Capitalizing on controversy is part and parcel of making people (not just geeks) aware. Tell me, how many people on the street had even heard of WL 2 years ago, let alone were aware of the stuff they had released?

As for making a "profitable business" - give me a break. From what? Selling t-shirts? Do you have any idea how much it takes to fund a decent legal defence when multiple state actors are out to get you? I don't either but it sure as hell won't be cheap.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[slashdot_commentator]

Well then, you'd be a gullible, unemployed, and potentially dead fool. What makes you think the whole wikileaks system was secure in the first place? Which I believe was part of Domscheit-Berg's point. Wikileaks is not taking in new leaks, because they have to re-engineer their whole system. In other words, the original setup was suspect even before DB's "sabotage".

Re:Bitter from competition?

[elrous0]

All I can know about him is his background is very thin, he came into Wikileaks late, he sabotaged their software before he left, he has actively participated in the campaign to discredit Assange, and his OpenLeaks site does not actually publish the materials submitted (*supposedly* they're routed directly to news sources, or maybe they're routed directly to the NSA or FBI, who knows?). That does not sound like a guy I would trust with jackshit.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[BlackSabbath]

OK - I've done the search and can't find a reference at all for your tag line in which JA is quoted to have said that "killing people is fun". If it was said, it wasn't reported or Google haven't indexed it - which would imply. If it wasn't said (as I suspect), then you are just making shit up to smear the guy.

FWIW, the search string I used was:
+"julian assange" +"killing people is fun"

The head of CENTCOM on the other hand HAS admitted that shooting people is fun...
http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/09/killing-people-is-fun-says-head-centcom-head/

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Obfuscant]

If having multiple avenues for whistleblowing is good for humanity then I'm afraid Domshit-Berg doesn't agree with you as he very handily sabotaged WL before taking 300K documents and setting up his own tent across the street.

According to someone at WikiLeaks.

It is not unusual for a company with idiot or malicious employees to try to blame the last guy who left for all their troubles. "Oh, we weren't bad admins, it was George who left a year ago breaking in and causing trouble..."

For every one city admin who locks down the routers when he leaves there are probably 10,000 admins who are accused out of spite of hacking by ex-employers.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[rel4x]

The fact that Wkileaks is making a big deal of the stolen stash of documents suggest they are NOT in this to provide information, but rather to further a specific agenda.

Forget for a moment about the irony of bickering over "ownership" of stolen documents. The fact that Wikileaks still HAS a copy of those documents means they weren't harmed.

They are in this to provide information, but part of their self-given task is also to get the information as much coverage as possible. Controlling the flow of information is part of this in their eyes.

As their relationship with their formal partners(Guardian, NYTimes, etc) deteriorate, the leaks have been released differently. Instead of trying to create the news, they latch onto existing stories and ride on their coat tails. In Egypt for example: News about Mohamed ElBaradei and Egypt would have been ignored had it been in the original dump of releases. But by releasing the information as Egypt starts to get international attention, the information ends up showing up in a huge variety of articles on the topic. The information spreads without being the cause of the news. It compliments it instead.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Sarten-X]

I believe that no person is inherently better than anyone else, free or otherwise.

A free person's lifestyle may indeed be better for that person, and similarly, a source document may indeed be more useful in the pursuit of a fully-transparent government.

However, I also believe that limits must exist. Humanity does not benefit if a psychopath is free to kill anyone they want. Likewise, humanity does not benefit if troop positions, informant identities, or even commenters' names are published.

Given that humans cannot natively process public-key encryption in a reasonable amount of time, plain old secrecy is the best mechanism we have for security. One mistake in the leak's sanitizing, and people can die. It's not hard to imagine hypothetical examples:

• A North Korean diplomat confidentially speaking out against Kim Jong-Il. With a public name or even title, he and his family disappear.
• An informant mentioning helping a man with a sunflower tattoo execute a mob hit. If you're a mobster with a sunflower tattoo, your partner isn't going to last long.

Personally, I'd rather have options on where to send my information. In the case of the North Korean diplomat, it'd be best released to an outlet familiar with North Korea's political and military structure, so they can be sure that no harm will come from my leak. I certainly wouldn't trust an outlet like Gizmodo, for example, who would have no idea what mundane details need censorship. I could try to redact the information myself, of course, but if I don't have the time or knowledge, I'll do a horribly bad job of it.

Because Wikileaks has, ironically, so little transparancy regarding its structure and expertise, I simply don't trust it to clean out all of the important details from a leak. OpenLeaks is intentionally removing themselves from the responsibility, passing it on to the outlets as with more traditional secret-phone-calls-to-journalists leaks.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[blair1q]

Then have no face. Anonymous never seems to need to reorganize. Only Assange's little band of troublemakers does.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[blair1q]

While wikileaks was anonymizing its sources, it wasn't anonymizing anyone else in the documents who deserved not to be revealed.

That simple failure to apply the same standard to strangers as it does to its resources makes wikileaks incompetent to be the conduit for such information.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[rtfa-troll]

Mod AC parent up. Anke Domscheit-Berg really does appear to be working for Microsoft and married to him. Interesting.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Elektroschock]

Wikileaks wasn't first. It is just a mediawiki site which publishes leaks. The whole submission infrastructure, the concepts and so forth are much older.

And there is Cryptome.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Doomdark]

Forget for a moment about the irony of bickering over "ownership" of stolen documents.

"Stolen" should be in quotes -- it may unauthorized copying, but as far as I know, original owners still have said documents and what Wikileaks has are copies.

This may sound like nitpicking but it has real life implications, whatwith MPAA's "pirate" labeling of unauthorized copying and other incidents where owners of "intellectual property" are abusing legal system.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Martin Blank]

I don't have a lot of reason to trust Assange, either. I like the idea of Wikileaks. Properly done, it can help to keep governments in line. But that doesn't mean that Assange isn't a self-righteous bastard whose desire to see the US get its comeuppance means that he doesn't care if a few people get trampled along the way. Considering that Wikileaks did post unredacted material, what Keller said is believable. In any case, Keller isn't the only one claiming things like this. The Guardian has made similar public claims regarding their interactions, and other papers that have had contact with him have also expressed their frustration in getting him to comply with basic journalistic principles.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[GooberToo]

Its a quote from a documentary. When asked why people might kill others in a war zone, that's his statement which is completely unfounded other that him asserting his own personal opinion and rational. Her presumes that people no can make the distinction between video games and reality and therefore, killing people is fun - such as one might do in a video game. While he's attempting to project this world view onto others, one is forced to understand its his own view given that his assertion that its more or less, the only possible explanation.

IIRC, he says it in an interview roughly half way into the documentary.

While I don't have anything I can point you at, the psychology behind soldiers in a war zone is fairly well understood at this point and his explanation is not only completely refuted but is completely unfounded. Which in turn is why it hints at projection of his own world view, which is exactly that, "Killing people is fun." Frankly, you'd be hard pressed to find any mental health care professional who, at the very least, will support this rational is a sign of some type of serious mental health issue.

So even if you're not willing to take my word for it, serious think about what it is he's saying given the context provided in the documentary. If you have any psychology background, you'll quickly see he's got some issues and is very much projecting them.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Belial6]

I don't particularly agree with your statement as a whole, but calling him "paranoid" is just plain bizarre. The guy has multiple world powers out to get him. It isn't that he THINKS they are out to get him, they are publicly stating that they are. Thinking that governments are out to get you when they publicly say so isn't exactly what I would call 'paranoid'.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[horza]

When you have a site like OpenLeaks that is all about anonymously leaking information

From what I have read, OpenLeaks is about restricting leaking information to the public and making it accessible to an approved list of their choosing (ostensibly for now 'approved news outlets'). Wikileaks lets anybody read the information. Has this changed?

Phillip.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[horza]

Ignoring the sabotage and theft for a moment by 'Openleaks', do people think that Assange asked to be accused of crimes (in this case the random charge of rape, but it could be pretty much anything they invent)? It seems extremely dubious he forced himself into solitary for a week, then decided to spend hundreds of thousands he doesn't have on lawyers, deliberately to achieve martyr status.

Who would you trust? A CEO who is prepared to face execution for the principles he believes in? Or a theft, saboteur, sneak, somebody that rips off another person's web site, and who blurbs the internal details of his organisation in the press? (ignoring Assange's biography to pay off his legal bills, that I can understand)

He may not be perfect, but considering the alternatives he would be my first port of call if I was a whistle-blower.

Phillip.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[horza]

Ok I went there just now. Went to the about page and found... 0 references to Assange. On the front page, it has his picture as part of a banner... but amazingly nothing about the court case on Assange.

Er, are you sure you went to the right page?

Phillip.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[horza]

Duradin = Domscheit-Berg?

Phillip.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[martin-boundary]

Wrong.

You can't expect a document where everything is redacted to be taken seriously. There's a balance to be had where a document needs to convey some kind of information, and there needs to be enough of it there so that ordinary people can check it and trust it's the truth.

Journalists tend to err on the fairy tale side of things. They take bits out, reorganize quotations and generally try to turn raw material into a "story" with their own editorial "slant". That's why newspapers have a bad reputation these days, and nobody trusts them and they're losing money.

Wikileaks needs to be trusted to do what it says it does, otherwise there's literally no point to it existing or anyone leaking to them. Trust comes from truth and verification, and that means keep names and places in the clear, as much as possible, unless there's a compelling reason. And compelling reasons shouldn't exist more than 1% of the time, or else they doing it wrong.

Journalistic standards are a bad baseline to take for this stuff. Maybe 50 or 100 years ago newspapers were doing things right, but these days they've dropped the ball.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone leaks some documents to Wikileaks, it's an act of trust - that they can remain anonymous, and that the documents will be carefully collated and published. If someone illicitly copies some documents from Wikileaks, it's potentially a breach of that trust. If I were Wikileaks, I'd be pissed too.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

OpenLeaks own website says that they specifically are not in competition with Wikileaks, but compliment what Wikileaks does.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[icebike]

Possession of a copy (of a copy of a copy) of a document does not necessarily reveal the source.

Submitting anything to Wikileaks and trusting THEM to remove any possible links back to you is just foolish.
A rational person would remove any in-document linkage before leaking it.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

DB says he was one of two key spokesmen for the organization. Wikileaks says he was not. DB says he was one of the main programmers. Wikileaks says he was not. Also, when Assange fired him, he was already in possession of the server and documents. So, DB didn't actually sabotage anything. He kept what was in his possession. Finally, the very things that Wikileaks is complaining about are the things that DB and others wanted to change. DB wasn't in position to put these practices into place, because only Assange could and he wouldn't.

So, either DB is right in all of this, or Wikileaks is. The problem is that if Wikileaks is right, DB couldn't have sabotaged anything and it was internal incompetence with regards to security that was the problem. Either way, Wikileaks looks bad in all of this.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

When someone leaks some documents to Wikileaks, it's an act of trust - that they can remain anonymous, and that the documents will be carefully collated and published. If someone illicitly copies some documents from Wikileaks, it's potentially a breach of that trust. If I were Wikileaks, I'd be pissed too.

Nobody illicitly copied the documents in question. They were already on the server that was already in DB's possession. Then when he was canned, he kept what was already in his possession. The fact that Wikileaks was not even aware of any of this until DB went public about it really makes one question how can they guarantee anonymity to anyone, when they don't even know where their servers and documents are.

As for the assurance of collating and publishing, that was the whole reason Openleaks was formed. Evidently, there was no guarantee that what was leaked would ever see the light of day. It was all up to Assange. Openleaks provides a platform where anonymity is assured AND your leaked documents go to the outlet you want them to. Then, if your outlet chooses not to publish, at least your leak got to them.

Personally, a system that gives the leaker more control in where the documents goes seems preferable to a system controlled by just one person who may have a different agenda than the leaker.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

While I agree with almost everything you've said, I'm afraid you will not win the argument. Your sig says it all:

Facts destroy so many good opinions...

In this day and age, it seems facts don't matter any more. It's a shame, too.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[blair1q]

You can't expect a document where everything is redacted to be taken seriously.

Yes you can. As long as it's not literally everything.

But I can't expect an organizaton that pretends to be fighting tyranny and human rights abuses to be taken seriously when it acts in such a way to cause mass murder and torture.

Which is why I protested the American government's actions in rendition and torture following 9/11, torture in the Iraq war, etc.

And why I protest Wikileaks' hasty and careless releasing of information that can be used by the tyrants to identify people who have given information to the tyrants' enemies.

I can't take Wikileaks seriously if it's more interested in publicity and ego gratification than in keeping good people from dying.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

Ignoring the sabotage and theft for a moment by 'Openleaks', do people think that Assange asked to be accused of crimes (in this case the random charge of rape, but it could be pretty much anything they invent)? It seems extremely dubious he forced himself into solitary for a week, then decided to spend hundreds of thousands he doesn't have on lawyers, deliberately to achieve martyr status.

Who would you trust? A CEO who is prepared to face execution for the principles he believes in? Or a theft, saboteur, sneak, somebody that rips off another person's web site, and who blurbs the internal details of his organisation in the press? (ignoring Assange's biography to pay off his legal bills, that I can understand)

He may not be perfect, but considering the alternatives he would be my first port of call if I was a whistle-blower.

Phillip.

Assange's charges are basically statutory in nature. At least in some places of the world, stop really does mean stop. However, this notion of the charges being made up falls apart when the time line is reviewed. The sexual relations occurred and the complaints filed before diplomatic leaks occurred and were released. So, unless the CIA or the government is somehow clairvoyant, it is unlikely that the US was behind any of Mr. Assange's legal problems. And if the CIA and the US really are clairvoyant, then they would have known that the material was being leaked and would have stopped it.

As for the accusation of ripping off another person's web site, if you do a little research you will see that Openleaks was formed because former staff members were concerned with what was going on at Wikileaks internally. Again, the key players left Wikileaks long before Mr. Assange's legal problems. Finally, the only evidence of sabotage is from the PR person at Wikileaks saying it occurred. If it was revealed that you fired somebody while they were legally in possession of 300,000 of your documents and you never asked for them back, what would you tell the public? The story of hacking into Wikileaks and stealing the documents falls apart, since they are actually on the server he had in his possession. DB is not accused of breaking and entering, which would be required to get physical possession of the server, but hacking and sabotage. Wikileak should think out the public relations strategy in a little more detail the next time.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[TheCarp]

However, there is a C.

C) Each side sees things the way that they do for their own reasons, and they have a genuine disagreement over how they see the events

Two people, can interpret the same event in wildly different ways. Add in a bit of distrust of motives, and things can really get skewed.

Perfect example. When I was in HS I spent a lot of time waiting for public busses. At one point, I used to go get a burger and drink to eat while I waited for the bus home (usually after wrestling practice when the busses ran slower too, and I was pretty hungry). Anyway, I come up to the stop one day, and the newspaper stand machine that I set my drink on while I waited was tipped over....so being generally a nice guy and wanting a place to set my drink... I decide to help out and pick it up.

Well, this was difficult because the thing wasd chained to a light pole and tightly, so the chain would bind after 2 inches.... anyway....

So a cop saw me and decided to come over and harass me "What are you doing?" (in the standard dickhead cop accusatory tone that I just have no tolerance for being addressed with unless there is damned good reason) "trying to pick this up" I tell him.

So I bend back down and go back to struggling with the chain. To which he, still sitting comfortably in his cruiser, feels the need to quip "its not that heavy"

At which point, you can probably see the difference in perspective right here as I drop the thing back down look at him and say "can't you see the damned chain".... and he.... obviously not knowing how to respond politely to being shown what an abusive retard he was being, just drove off without another word.

Clearly, I know what he thought, he looked at the situation and assumed the worst.... I really don't know enough about the details of this situation to be able to say that it was any different.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[martin-boundary]

Yes you can. As long as it's not literally everything.

If there's no names and places in the document, then you just have a template anyone could have written about anything.

Remember when $PERSON went to the $PLACE to tell us there were $BADTHINGS in $BADPLACE? All he did was waste our time in the end, and he was the $OFFICIAL of $SOMETHING in $SOMECOUNTRY. He never gave any real $DETAILS and after going to war, it was too late to call him out on them.

Trusting a document can only be done two ways. Either you trust the source and take the contents on faith, or you don't trust the source, and check out the contents yourself. Usually, it's a mix.

Since you talk a lot about taking Wikileaks seriously, I'm going to propose that your mix involves more of the trusting the source, and less of the checking out the contents yourself.

My mix involves checking things out for myself. I don't care if Wikileaks does the leaking, or anyone else. But I do care if there are names and places I can check out for myself, when the leak is something important that I care about.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[moortak]

DB looks pretty bad if he leaks the material anyway. People who submitted that information chose to submit it to Wikileaks. It would be a breach of their trust on his part to use any of that information.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[moortak]

It might be preferable in your eyes, but maybe not in the eyes of the submitter.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[rtb61]

Properly done means one thing and one thing only. People leak documents to wikileaks and wikileaks publishes them, end of story. No censorship, no editing, no adjusting, no claims that the documents are valid, however if the documents are substantiated as invalid they are withdrawn.

If the leaker wishes to redact documents they should do it prior to release. Likely the diplomatic release is a one off simply based upon US security incompetence and should not be the basis for future management of a internet publishing site for leaked documents.

So wikileaks is opposed to censorship, the hiding of the truth and lies, categorically in can not turn around and commit those same infringements upon the truth as it is directly opposed to their philosophy of being. The problem is not the truth the problem has always been lies and the conflicts those lies create.

So expose the truth and let the cards fall where they may. If the truth threatens people, then they should be informed prior to release or their handlers and those people can be removed from harms way.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[bug1]

In your previous post you mentioned "properly scrubbed" document.

I was taking issue with your use of the word "properly", it destroys any objective meaning behind your arguments because "properly" is subjective, it reduces your statement to merely an opinion. (now you can call me pedantic if you like)

Understand wikileaks structure and expertise is only usefull if you have reason to question there previous work, if deaths could be blamed on them, im sure the US Gov would have done that by now.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[BlackSabbath]

> unless the CIA or the government is somehow clairvoyant

The Swedish prosecutor's abuse of legal process may pre-date the leaking of the diplomatic cables but it sure as hell doesn't predate the 2008 US Army Counterintelligence plan to discredit Wikileaks:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2259550/military-plan-destroy-wikileaks

"The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site."

Re:Bitter from competition?

[BlackSabbath]

> The Guardian has made similar public claims ...

I've said it before. The Guardian do not have clean hands in this saga:
http://wlcentral.org/node/839

As someone else here put it, I wouldn't trust Assange with my life but I would trust him with my leaks. More importantly, I would trust him with my leaks well ahead of the vast majority of bottom-feeding scum in the mainstream press.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[ToasterMonkey]

You claim that WL hasn't acted like a "normal charitable organisation".

Do you have any idea how much it takes to fund a decent legal defence when multiple state actors are out to get you?

That pretty much says it all.

Capitalizing on controversy is part and parcel of making people (not just geeks) aware.

Right, because they can't just pass the information on, they have to dramatize it. So you're more aware. And they don't have an agenda, they're just making sure you're really, really, really AWARE of something inside something that was leaked to them.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

DB looks pretty bad if he leaks the material anyway. People who submitted that information chose to submit it to Wikileaks. It would be a breach of their trust on his part to use any of that information.

I think it is just the opposite, as do many others. People submitted the information to be leaked. Assange/Wikileaks only leaks, apparently, what is in their best interest. Now the information will be leaked and it will be up to the publishers of information what gets used/published or not.

Wikileaks has one main flaw that many a newspaper has had to deal with. You cannot be a good editor and a reporter at the same time. Wikileaks tries to do both, but their own internal bias interferes. Openleaks, since they don't actually publish the articles have removed themself from the editorial role.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

As I responded in to another of your posts, why does a submitter submit the information? Isn't it to get the information out there? So, why would a submitter care whether Wikileaks gave it to the NYT or Openleaks did? More importantly, wouldn't the submitter who had a lot to risk in getting the information prefer the information had a chance to see the light of day? With Wikileaks the submitter has no control in that. With Openleaks, the submitter can even indicate which media outlets they want it to go to.

Think of the submitter as a manufacturer. Wikileaks is JCPenny and Openleaks is poised to be Walmart. Which one is going to give your "goods" a greater market?

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Dcnjoe60]

> unless the CIA or the government is somehow clairvoyant

The Swedish prosecutor's abuse of legal process may pre-date the leaking of the diplomatic cables but it sure as hell doesn't predate the 2008 US Army Counterintelligence plan to discredit Wikileaks:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2259550/military-plan-destroy-wikileaks

"The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site."

I'll grant that. However, even if the swedish prosecutor is abusive, you still need the victims to testify. The facts of what happen, at least what has been reported, are not disputed, even by Assange. Assange escalated it by refusing to cooperate, he even admitted that.

For this to be a government conspiracy against him requires a number of players -- the Swedish government, the Swedish courts, the Swedish prosecutor, the US government, the two victims and who knows how many others. Since the Swedes don't depend on the US for aid or protection, it is difficult to see what power the US would have to influence so many Swedes in the process.

A much more reasonable answer is that Assange screwed up. Because he's famous, it is big news. Just like Lindsey Lohan shoplifting. Thousands of people shoplifted that day in LA, the only one that makes the news is Lohan. Why? Because she's famous.

As much as we want to believe there is a conspiracy against Assange, there is no evidence that one exists nor does it appear to be logistically possible in this specific case.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Sarten-X]

You're being pedantic. The example in my original post indicates that I consider "properly scrubbed" to mean "having all sensitive details altered or hidden".

There are easy ways to sanitize documents. Wikileaks has not done so. The State Department has criticized them for it.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[HereIAmJH]

Pleople know wikileaks, people watch it,

No they don't. People watch ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox for news. I know many people who are well versed on current events that have no idea about Wikileaks or who Julian Assange is. They've heard about the controversy, but couldn't tell you who the players are. My (retired) mother can tell you daily where the stock market closed, what the price of crude oil is, what is being reported about the economy, and what congress has done to affect the stock market. We regularly discuss things like TARP and ARRA, the housing market (for instance, what will the dissolution of Fanny and Freddy do to house prices), and whether we're going to see a spike in gas prices because crude prices are up. Last night we were discussing North American oil reserves because she read an article that stated the US had more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. But if I mention a story about Wikileaks, I have to explain who everyone is and what is happening. She'll never look at Wikileaks websites, although she'll probably see the story when it hits cable news.

And as far as that goes, I've never been to Wikileaks. I get my news through aggregators like Slashdot and Google News. Wikileaks can post documents all day long, but if none of the wire services write an article about it, the majority of the world will never know.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[poetmatt]

where was the part of actually interviewing assange, eh?

he's been interviewed before and says that he protects people on this stuff. way to propaganda that shit.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[poetmatt]

Who said wikileaks hastily and carelesly released anythng?

1: you cannot redact everything, or it's not a document. That's worse than a FOIA redaction, in which case people can't figure out a goddamn thing.

2: the only people they allow to be identified are the tyrants who should be identified, not anyone else. Military has already admitted that just about nobody has been harmed from wikileaks releases, if you'd take your head out of your ass and read.

From the second article:

when Congress asked the State Department to back up those statements, officials told them it really wasn't that big of a deal:
"We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging," said the official, who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.

so who are they causing to die, exactly?

Re:Bitter from competition?

[poetmatt]

go read the government's statement that this stuff doesn't harm shit and then try to tell me that keller's being factual.. They're focusing on "OMG assange is putting names on the documents" which is both a: a lie, and b: prevents the focus on the fact that it's been corporate pressure that has moved government's hand to attack wikileaks, who doesnt' damage shit and merely brings out true transparency.

Go read what Assange said himself instead of propaganda and what do you see? from the article:

Kroft: The Pentagon said that they’ve gone through all of these documents and they found the names of 300 people.
Assange: Well, that’s new public information to us. It’s possible that there are 300 names in the publically released Afghan material. We don’t pretend that that process is absolutely perfect. We did hold back one in five documents for extra harm minimization review and we also improved our process. So, when Iraq came around there was not even a single name in it.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[Martin Blank]

And that and the interview were done after the events that Keller alleges, after Amnesty International condemned the release of names.

I'm not sure about the idea that this does no damage, though. Israel and the Palestinian Authority have both appeared in Wikileaks documents saying that they are willing to concede certain things that they have publicly said are not on the table, where Israel's Netanyahu has reportedly supported land swaps and the PA's willingness to concede the right of return. Putting these things out in the public can damage standings and further delay what little there is of the peace process.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[moortak]

That may be true for some, and maybe even all of the submitters, but we don't know that. All we know about the submitters' motivation is that they chose Wikileaks. They may have chosen them simply because they are the best known leak outlet, or they may have chosen them because they love the picture of Assange on the main page. They bought into the game at one price, it isn't my place, your place, or DB's place to change the rules of that wager.

Re:Bitter from competition?

[sznupi]

A "Face" will be there regardless, will be found by others if that's necessary. Hey, in fact, be happy how Assange provides such convenient "anti-US vendetta" one... (which does put the focus on him in one more possible perspective...)

Re:Bitter from competition?

[sznupi]

Anonymous isn't much organised in the first place (plus... ;) ). Plus - a face would be probably found by others anyway, if some focused "band of troublemakers" won't provide one.

There are limits...

[sznupi]

Assange abused my cat: WikiLeaks insider

"Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt,"
"Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat's throat."

...and Assange broke those limits, as far as I am concerned.

(it even sheds some light on Swedish investigation: Assange touched my pussy)

Re:There are limits...

[Anonymous Coward]

So not funny, but:

Does this mean there will be another extradition hearing in order to try Assange in Germany, for cat molestation without a condom?

Re:There are limits...

[spun]

There are limits, and an ex associate of Assange's claims he broke those limits. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, we don't know. How do we know Assange is the wingnut, and not Domscheit-Berg? It's pretty clear that at least one of them is a monomaniacal loon, if not both.

Re:There are limits...

[FuckingNickName]

So he knowingly let an animal abuser stay with him while he was housing a cat?

Assange might be guilty - we have no evidence. But this tit has just confessed to aiding in cat abuse. Isn't this the bit where /b/ turns up?

Re:There are limits...

[spun]

Damn it, monomaniacal? Megalomaniacal. Teach me to accept the spellchecker's suggestions without looking more carefully.

Re:There are limits...

[FuckingNickName]

I thought the word was intentionally placed there - it sounds nice as people /expect/ to accuse him of megalomania but the problem (if any) may be monomania, causing him to disregard the effect on people (and animals?) around him. Like Churchill said, a fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

This all remains drama bullshit to detract from the actual purpose of Wikileaks to release pertinent information on misbehaviour. Disliking Assange and his seconds in command doesn't make Wikileaks' aim any less worthwhile.

Re:There are limits...

[spun]

Good point, but people like their myths in black and white, thank you very much, we'll have no shades of gray here. If someone is a hero, they must be all hero, and if a villain, they must be pure evil. Anything else just confuses people. They just want to know whether they should love or hate someone.

Re:There are limits...

[Stregano]

"Only a sith deals in absolutes"

Re:There are limits...

[Belial6]

One of the many many ironic scenes in Star Wars. The irony of course being that Obi-Wan Kanobi was revealing that he was actually a Sith Lord.

Re:There are limits...

[sznupi]

Well yeah, that was roughly what I was aiming at / it starts to look a bit like a farce.

I'd say

[shoehornjob]

That Wikileaks may have just found themselves a new revenue stream. Provided of course that this guy has money. He did a pretty sleazy thing and should be called out for it.

Re:I'd say

[Wyatt Earp]

So its wrong to steal documents from someone who trades in stolen documents?

It's like a thief calling the police on the thief that robbed him.

"Officer, Daniel stole the stolen documents I had!"

Re:I'd say

[tobiah]

1) Domsheit-Berg took the documents and deleted the copies out of spite, Wikileaks stole nothing, they received the documents with the higher objective of exposing corruption and wrong-doings. Morally and legally their actions are very different. Wikileaks actions are legally indistinguishable from news organizations, and they have yet to be convicted of a crime. There is plenty of precedent that taking documents from a former employer with the intent to harm them IS a crime.
2) Betraying the whistle-blowers of a rival organization is morally suspect and unlikely to encourage anyone to trust Openleaks.

Re:I'd say

[shoehornjob]

Thank you. I couldn't have said it better.

Re:I'd say

[Magic5Ball]

It's more subtle. WL claims that such documents should belong to the public, but seeks to prevent D-B, now a member of the public, from publishing them.

Re:I'd say

[Elektroschock]

So its wrong to steal documents from someone

What makes you believe DB stole documents from WL?

FUD all around

[Sarten-X]

So first, Wikileaks is a great boon to democracy, then it's a threat to security, then it's the victim of a multi-government conspiracy, then it's the noble banner over coordinated multinational attacks, and now it's the victim of sabotage, and perpetrator of its own slander campaign!

The theatrics continue.

Re:FUD all around

[Sarten-X]

That was the funniest thing I've read on here in a while. I sincerely wish I could mod you up, even if you are an AC.

Re:FUD all around

[Anonymous Coward]

So first, Wikileaks is a great boon to democracy, then it's a threat to security, then it's the victim of a multi-government conspiracy, then it's the noble banner over coordinated multinational attacks, and now it's the victim of sabotage, and perpetrator of its own slander campaign!

The theatrics continue.

Nope, first nameless, then a terrorist, then still a terrorist, then, yep, still a terrorist organization - today, still a terrorist organization. The one good thing Assuage has done is try to be the scapegoat for his whole organization, in truth they all deserve death.

Re:FUD all around

[Steauengeglase]

Kind of reminds me of that Maple Street story from the Twilight Zone.

You don't need government assassins and moles to ruin and slander you, at least not when you have your own healthy dose of paranoia.

Re:FUD all around

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, anyone who criticizes the government deserves death. After all that's what America is all about: Unquestioning obedience and loyalty to the government.

I sincerely hope you failed US Government if you grew up here.

Re:FUD all around

[slashdot_commentator]

I don't think you get it. Everyone in America fails "US Gov't" even when they get a passing grade. They didn't have a "civics" class when I was in high school. Classes are basically ground up, spoon fed propaganda. You spout slogans, you are not taught what they mean.

And I don't see the point of being an AC over such innocuous, uncontroversial comments.

Re:FUD all around

[chimpo13]

So, wait, Yoko Ono destroyed wikileaks?

Re:FUD all around

[Sarten-X]

That's interesting. My civics class had a few particularly memorable moments.

First was when my local representative came for a visit. He explained his decision-making process: when it came time to vote, he thought for a moment on what faction gave him the best reasons to side with them. He talked about lobbyists: When a company wants something, they could either take a trained employee off their normal post, send them on a road trip to the state capital, and spend a few days fumbling through a presentation, or the company could hire a lobbyist to present on their behalf. He talked about petitions: His assistants would tally up letters for side of an issue, and present a listing of the number of supporters with their reasons.

After that, the class had an assignment: Within the next month, pick an issue, pick a side, and write your representatives. My issue was the local river's water quality, which was about to be made worse by an incoming development. Citing a few water-quality studies and doing some of my own testing (with help from the science teacher), I wrote a nice detailed letter. I certainly wasn't the only one to voice such concerns, but I was also in direct opposition to most local (pro-development) businesses. The representative pushed legislation to require better runoff control, which was eventually rejected by the rest of the legislature. It did manage to scare the developers enough to protect the river during construction.

Democracy still works. If it doesn't agree with you, that just means you're either in the minority, or just not convincing enough. Write more letters, sign more petitions, and join more protests. In the history of the United States, corrupt politicians have done far less harm than apathetic citizens.

Re:FUD all around

[bstender]

a terrorist organization

our poor little helpless elite, terrorized by accountability! just imagine their shock and horror. we can only thank gawd they have excellent health insurance.

Damn that thief

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed (not really) that anyone from Wikileaks has the gall to bitch about someone 'stealing' information from them.

Re:Damn that thief

[icebike]

Do you have anything to back up your claim that they do not guarantee the sources the same level of anonymity?

Re:Damn that thief

[Elektroschock]

The issue is that they stole the information and aren't guaranteeing the sources the same level of anonymity that Wikileaks was promising.

What is your evidence for the claim they stole information?
What is your evidence for the claim they weren't guaranteeing the sources the same level of anonymity.

What makes you assume or imply that DB was to about to publish these document on his openleaks platform while he constantly told the opposite.

Obligatory xkcd

[drb226]

Obligatory xkcd

Wikileaks leaks...

[HockeyPuck]

Not sure what the big deal is... People leak documents from the gov't to wikileaks and so people are now leaking documents from wikileaks to another site... ...Karma...

Re:Wikileaks leaks...

[Decessus]

I don't know whether it's a big deal or not, but from reading the article it is more than just about documents from Wikileaks being leaked to another site. This Domschiet-Berg guy did something that compromised the anonymity of people who submit things to the Wikileaks website.

Re:Wikileaks leaks...

[DNS-and-BIND]

So, an organization dedicated to leaking information was in possession of certain information that it preferred to keep secret. Then, someone leaked the info.

I'm pretty sure this is the definition of literary irony. It certainly contains the classical elements of comeuppance.

Re:Wikileaks leaks...

[Elektroschock]

This Domschiet-Berg guy did something that compromised the anonymity of people who submit things to the Wikileaks website.

Who ever claimed that?

Domscheit-Berg said the programmer of the WL submission system disabled it and took it with him because it was insecure and JA was using it in an irresponsible manner. The programmer is another defector of WL.

It is very typical tactics for an experienced bully to accuse the other side of the same. The bully is not DB.

Re:Wikileaks leaks...

[horza]

Only in the Alanis Morrisette version of irony. An organisation dedicated to publishing information, was required to retain confidentiality. Some disgruntled employee stole the information and may or not compromise the integrity of all the informants. He hasn't leaked the information, yet, which rather blows a hole in your pathetic argument.

Phillip.

Re:Wikileaks leaks...

[ToasterMonkey]

I don't know whether it's a big deal or not, but from reading the article it is more than just about documents from Wikileaks being leaked to another site. This Domschiet-Berg guy did something that compromised the anonymity of people who submit things to the Wikileaks website.

Who is naive enough to think their own confidentiality is secure while violating another's? This is like a the married woman you're having an affair with wouldn't cheat on you. Duh.

Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[Bing Tsher E]

So the news is that information about contributors may have 'leaked' from Wikileaks? The kind of organization that will release information to serve their political agenda might leak information?

Say it isn't so!

Re:Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[RazzleFrog]

Well the risk of leaking the names of contributors would be the right-wing nutcases in our government who want those people executed for treason. If a contributor even has a hint that their name might get out there they are more likely to shut up completely.

Re:Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[Americano]

Yes, that's right, it's only right wing nutcases like John Kerry, Diane Feinstein, and Clair McCaskill who believe that an organization like WIkileaks is a danger. And let's not forget Atty General Eric Holder, appointed by President Obama, who is expending a great deal of effort to build a case against Assange and Wikileaks.

My god, it's just a bunch of neocons after him, it MUST be a right-wing conspiracy!

Re:Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[RazzleFrog]

Big difference between saying it is a danger and saying he should be put to death for it. I'm sorry but it was a Republican from Michigan who first suggested it.

As a matter of fact - John Kerry is against he death penalty in general.

Re:Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[Americano]

First: Your point assumes that only right-wing nutcases are capable of killing people in return for revealing some secret that is damaging or embarrassing to someone in power. This is demonstrably false, as even a cursory examination of history will show.

Second: You assume that the only people a leaker would have to fear are right-wing people, as if liberals and left-wingers never have secrets they want to keep that others might want to know about. This too is demonstrably false, as even a cursory examination of history will show.

Third: As far as the death penalty in this situation, a Republican legislator from Michigan doesn't have the authority to do anything *except* make public statements about his opinions. In fact, it's a Democratic appointee (Eric Holder, the US Attorney General) who must oversee the Justice Department's efforts to build a case against Mr. Assange. All reports indicate that he's doing so, and most reports say that charges could include "espionage" - which can carry a death penalty sentence. If it was only the right-wing who was interested in prosecuting, he wouldn't be wasting time with trying to build a case, since I doubt very much that John Boehner and Eric Cantor have a lot of leeway to order Mr. Holder around.

Fourth: The Democratic senators who are chiming in with their support have specifically used the term "espionage" - are you suggesting that they're completely unaware that - under current law - it can carry a death sentence as a penalty? Or are you suggesting that since they object to the death penalty, a life sentence would somehow be a "good" alternative for a leaker to be facing? "Right wingers want to kill you, left wingers want to lock you in a 10x10 concrete box for the rest of your life." "But what about not going to jail or dying?" "Sorry, that's not in the cards."

In summary: Leakers embarrass authority. It is a natural reaction to react strongly to being publicly embarrassed, and that has nothing to do with being "right wing" or "left wing" - it has to do with "I'm in charge, and you just made me look bad."

Re:Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[RazzleFrog]

You still seem to be missing my point (even with all that verbiage). Maximum penalty CAN be death penalty or it can be a life sentence. You are right - the republican from Michigan doesn't make the ultimate decision but you can't argue that the right wants death pretty much without a trial and the left wants a trial which may end in life imprisonment.

And personally I prefer life imprisonment because you never know what future president might come along and pardon you.

Re:Information 'leaking' from Wikileaks?

[Americano]

No, your original comment was this: "Well the risk of leaking the names of contributors would be the right-wing nutcases in our government who want those people executed for treason. If a contributor even has a hint that their name might get out there they are more likely to shut up completely." -- in essence, that the "right wing" would deter contributors if leakers' anonymity wasn't guaranteed properly.

If you don't think that "life in prison, no parole" would be a pretty fucking effective deterrent to leaking, then you're kidding yourself.

Where's the provenance?

[FtDFtM]

While I wholeheartedly support free speech, "it must be true because it is on wikileaks" is as worrisome as efforts to quell free speech. Would it be too much trouble to get an independent eye to validate the charge before making an accusation?

Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[jpmorgan]

So WikiLeaks is angry that their former member stole 300,000 documents, and plans on leaking them to the world? That's the finest example of irony I've heard all week.

It's also the finest example of organizational inertia I've encountered for a while, where an entity is created to further some basic principle, but slowly mutates into something more interested in its own survival and aggrandizement.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, learn to read. Wikileaks doesn't care about who copies the documents, they are angry because he sabotaged their submission system.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[trollertron3000]

We should have known the site would be full of drama the moment the out Wiki in the title. Just like Wikipedia, it's turned from something cool to a haven for the pedantically-challenged,

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[calmofthestorm]

They should be thankful for the help; aren't they always bitching about lack of manpower? After all, if you really care about releasing the information responsibly (like they do, Pentagon lies aside), rather than just publicity, wouldn't you be glad for 300,000 items off your to-do list? I would.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[Elektroschock]

Not he, but another defector who wrote the code disabled access to it because of security concerns. WL so to speak is Assange himself. WL as a core team is gone.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[mcvos]

As I understand it, WikiLeaks' submission system used to be full of holes. Some guy ("the architect") took it upon himself to fix it. Then Assange went on an ego-trip and Domscheit-Berg left, and the architect joined him and founded OpenLeaks with him. And yes, took his code with him.

Maybe Assange should have realised a bit earlier that he doesn't run WikiLeaks on his own. WikiLeaks depends on a lot of people, and if he kicks them out, the organisation crumbles.

By the way, WikiLeaks is also suing Domscheit-Berg over a number of documents that Domscheit-Berg has been trying to give to Assange for quite some time now, but Assange keeps ignoring him. At least, that's what my newspaper said about it.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy sabatoged their website and took data to start up his own competing site, then writes a book to advertise it.

Doesn't this say enough? I mean, I'm sure there is more to the story than this - but this is too obvious. He wants a piece of the action.

Look, you might be sick of hearing about Assange - and I'm sure some of his peers are irked by his star status.

But the world needs heroes and right now, for many he is that hero.

The government and corporate attacks - which I'll argue are also happening on this site - keep his status elevated.

Its too late.

No going back.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[DRJlaw]

Wikileaks doesn't care about who copies the documents, they are angry because he sabotaged their submission system.

In the absence of evidence of a copyright assignment, a license agreement, or an employer-employee relationship, I'm not going to agree with the assumption that it is their submission system.

It sounds to me like the programmer who wrote the system decided to take his ball and go home. If he owned it, that is more or less his right. Considering that Wikileaks didn't even register as a legal entity until three months ago, the assumption that Wikileaks owns much of anything is a bridge too far.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[gambino21]

So WikiLeaks is angry that their former member stole 300,000 documents, and plans on leaking them to the world? That's the finest example of irony I've heard all week.

You should at least read the first sentence of the summary.

Former WikiLeaks programmer Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers, according to a WikiLeaks spokesperson.

They are upset because they believe he jeopardized the anonymity of the sources.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[slashdot_commentator]

Assange understands that he needs volunteers and teamwork in order for wikileaks to run. He has no problem with that, as long as everyone understands he is the "Great Leader", he gets all the attention, everything he decrees goes, and everyone working for wikileaks makes sure his ass is licked clean every day. What problem? Its only these troublemaking saboteurs like Domscheit-Berg who must be silenced.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[Elektroschock]

According to DB
- approx 3500 documents
- submission system was disabled by its developer (not DB) because it was insecure. Developer is another WL defector. DB only revealed in his book that he was aware of that.
- he does not intent to use the documents for openleaks but wants a safe method to return the data

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[Elektroschock]

"The guy sabatoged their website and took data to start up his own competing site, then writes a book to advertise it."

The "evidence" for that is a misinterpretation of an excerpt from his book.

Re:Wikileaks bitter about stolen documents?

[Elektroschock]

Where DB said he has not even actual access to the material himself.

Hmmm

[koan]

Wasn't the American government consulting to find a way to discredit Assange and Wikileaks? Didn't defense contractors and Bank of America work together with Palantir Technologies, and Berico Technologies to discredit Wikileaks?

I can't wait till all the bank info comes out, I got a nice long section of hemp rope I've been saving.

I welcome it all, let everyone come forward and spill the secrets.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You're gonna have to wait a while because Assange is currently trying to ransom out the BoA material for cash from news publication.

You want leaks? You're gonna have to pay for it.

Re:Hmmm

[trollertron3000]

How much for that hemp rope?

Re:Hmmm

[jgtg32a]

[Citation Needed]

Re:Hmmm

[blair1q]

This guy says that the bank info is not all that impressive or important.

  Doubtful it's worth a hanging. Maybe an egging during a G8 summit. Maybe.

Oh

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel so sorry for wikileeks.

sounds like karma to me

[Fujisawa Sensei]

So let me get this straight, Wikileaks is upset that someone did to them, what their informants have been doing to others?

Re:sounds like karma to me

[blair1q]

1300 Wikileaks employees were killed?

http://www.anorak.co.uk/267106/politicians/wikileaks-killed-1300-people-and-counting.html

Re:sounds like karma to me

[xclr8r]

Yes because the informants trusted wikileaks not OpenLeaks with the documents. (However misplaced that trust was I do not know). An inforant would be sweating bullets right now.

Re:sounds like karma to me

[xclr8r]

informant*

Drama Queens Run Our World

[BJ_Covert_Action]

The more I pay attention to all the news surrounding wikileaks the more I realize that the only people who get air time anymore are drama queens. On the one side, we have Assange acting like a pissed off idealistic teenager (not necessarily a bad thing) making comments about how it is his duty to end two wars in the world. In another corner, we have the dumbshit media pundits in America calling for his head on a platter without even having a crime to charge him for. Then there is the Swedish legal system, which is dumping money and time into investigating rape charges that are spurious at best, but more like a downright "he says she says" game from prom night. Then there are all the other wikileaks employees, or volunteers, or whatever, that have to compete with Assange's ego, like this guy who swiped a bunch of data and intends to use it to start his own project ("I don't like your secret club anymore! I'm starting my own!")

Hell, the only folk who seem to act rationally when it comes to this issue are the folks in the Middle East that read a few cables relevant to their lives and said, "Fuck it, it's time to change things for the better!"

I mean, seriously, look at this shitfest. This is something straight out of Freddy Prinze Junior movie, complete with all of the hyperbolic, dramatic characters. And yet, these are the people delivering our news, getting voted into the leadership roles of our society, and generally steering the direction this world moves in.

What The Fuck? Why do we tolerate this kind of bullshit? Maybe I am just clinging to a pipe dream, hoping to one day see our world led by people with some god damned sense and humility, but this has gotten ridiculous.

I don't know. Maybe there are some other countries out there where these issues are less glaring (or nonexistant?), but here in the States, I am afraid we've turned world politics into a fucking high school based reality T.V. show. It makes me nauseous. Maybe we really should just vote the retard beauty queen Sarah Palin into office already and get it all over with.

Re:Drama Queens Run Our World

[vadim_t]

Well, people with a sense of humility probably don't start a lot of things like Wikileaks. I mean, it's the hell of a bold move, with the implicit statement "I know what's wrong with the world (lack of transparency) and I will do something about it". It's not very humble.

Re:Drama Queens Run Our World

[gambino21]

On the one side, we have Assange acting like a pissed off idealistic teenager (not necessarily a bad thing) making comments about how it is his duty to end two wars in the world.

Citation needed. Maybe you are referring to the quote from Domscheit-Berg's book. Not exactly the most objective source. AFAIK, Assange never said this in public.

Any other fans of RASL read the Reuters article...

[RevWaldo]

...and think "Whoa. Déjà vu"?

.

Re:fail

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Dumbshit-Borg is an "asset", bought-out by corporate proxies, for the TLA's that want this crushed.

His splitting "OpenLeaks" is pure playbook from the US Gov plan to destroy WikiLeaks:

US Intelligence Planned to Destroy Wikileaks What! Past-tense?

CIA, State Department Apparently Acting on Plan to Destroy Wikileaks

The guy is a stooge, or a pawn. He serves the purposes of State and Corporate collusion in secrecy, to manage their globalist Empire.

OpenLeaks sucks

[brillow]

The problem I have with OpenLeaks is that, as far as I can tell, they don't make information public. You leak them info, and put yourself at risk for doing it, and then they just give it to journalists. This process is not unambiguously indicated to be free. They do not guarantee an audience for your information. They don't make the information publicly available. They expect us to trust journalists to go through this information and report what we plebes need to know about it. The problem being of course that even with the Wikileaks documents received by the NYT, the journalists worked with the gov't to decide what they would report. Luckily though, WL lets us all see the original material, we need not trust the journalist more than we care to since we have access to the same information they do. OpenLeaks would not allow that. So I guess if you're going to risk your life or your livelyhood to leak information, you'd probably not want to give it to someone who can't guarantee that the information will be available to people. So in the process this guy sabotaged, and likely stole, anonymous submission software from his competitor before going out and starting his own business. Which he seemingly did because he didn't like Assange. Assange being mean or asinine is a red-herring meant to deceive you.

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[hey!]

Well, any such guarantee would be a double edged sword at best, so far as the security of the source is concerned. If you can get a trustworthy journalist to stand between the public and the source material, you as a leaker are much safer from identification and retaliation. The reporter has both an ethical and a selfish interest in protecting his sources, and should have some knowledge about how to do that.

Any documents this guy may have taken and whether he sabotaged Wikileaks' servers are of course entirely different matters. If he did sabotage their servers, that is reprehensible. If he took documents, it really depends on what the documents are, how they came into his possession ad and why he took them. If he received them as an agent of WIkileaks and he took them to get a jump on his competition, that is also reprehensible.

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[slashdot_commentator]

For "desirable" effect, the information supplied needs to be vetted (for veracity), and presented in a manner that does NOT burn the whistleblower, or create unintended victims by release of the information. You don't achieve that with a bunch of UNPAID volunteers, of wildly varying competence, and no way of providing quality control OR security. Its INEVITABLE you're going to need news media organizations to provide those functions.

There is nothing in the openleaks model that indicates it will EXCLUSIVELY award information to a single journalist or agency. If the news is a bombshell, it will get released, in fear of being "scooped" by some other competitor. Worst case scenario, openleaks could release the information by itself, or other websites, including wikileaks. WL only releases information it wants to release; its known to be holding a large backlog of leaks.

Common sense. If I were a potential whistleblower who put job security as a priority, there's NO WAY I would deal with either organization. But I'd probably put more faith into openleaks, based upon what I've seen with wikileaks so far.

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[Dalambertian]

By the way, the whole point of OpenLeaks is that you choose who gets your submission. So, if it's a local news story about your school board, you can send it to your local paper, and if they don't run the story within your time frame then you can choose for it to go public. This avoids the problem of only catching the biggest leaks. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsIhiUHoNLA5

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[kbdd]

How much can you trust a guy named Domscheit anyhow?

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[brillow]

OL says they don't publish info. So when they say "public" do they mean they will put it online, or allow any of their members to see it?

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[brillow]

OL says explicitly it will not publish information only make it available to members. Only those they chose can be members. As in, you need permission to see this information, permission only they provide. They take information stolen from the elite, and transfer it to a different elite. Do you think the US gov't will get permission to be a member? How will OL decide who is good enough to see the information? The difference I see is that OL wants to control who sees the info. WL gives it to everyone.

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[Dalambertian]

I'm guessing they mean 'put it online', except they don't intend to publish by default.

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[bstender]

i know, it smells so bad that it is almost a parody. my money's on it being a black box 'leak' operation, easy to disperse dis-info, easy to snag the leakers. it's gotten lots of free publicity for no particular reason, it'll probably be touted by the pundits as a 'good' leak operation for no good reasons-maybe bc it is more 'responsible', or just bc it is in opposition to that bad man Assange.

Re:OpenLeaks sucks

[brillow]

I suppose that could be ok. However I find it ironic that people who are leaking info because of the oppressive gov't and state controlled media might want to turn around and trust media to put out the story. The beauty of WL is that it cuts the media out of the equation, only giving them limited pre-access to the content before they give it all away anyways. This only exists as necessary evil of fundraising.

Linking to Wikileaks

[Huckabees]

Slashdot Editors: Please refrain from placing direct links to Wikileaks in your articles (or at least please mark them with a follow on disclaimer) in consideration to members of our armed forces who are prohibited from visiting the website.

Re:Linking to Wikileaks

[Huckabees]

My mistake the link is actually hosted by the spreadshirt domain. I retract my comment.

Re:Linking to Wikileaks

[Dcnjoe60]

Maybe because if you are in the military, and quite a few military personnel use slashdot, that going to Wikileaks can get you in big shit trouble. Just like an article talking about porn is different than linking directly to a porn site. People lose their jobs over stuff like that. So think of it as a service that the slashdot editors can provide in protecting their readers from unintended consequences from following innocent appearing links on slashdot.

Re:Linking to Wikileaks

[Matje]

you're aware of the [domainname] feature right? this shows you where a link is pointing...

Re:Linking to Wikileaks

[Dcnjoe60]

Yes, I am aware of that, but do you pre-check every link on slashdot that you click? Even the editors point out that when linking to the NYT that a subscription is required to view the document. Couldn't the editors extend a similar courtesy by either not linking directly or noting that it is linked directly?

Re:fail

[Wyatt Earp]

Is anyone who forks a project a stooge or pawn serving the "purposes of State and Corporate collusion in secrecy, to manage their globalist Empire."?

Microsoft lobbyism and more

[Elektroschock]

Trivia: Domscheit-Berg is the husband of a Microsoft top lobbyist.

Domschiet-Berg means Cathedralshit-Mountain. His name is Domscheit-Berg.

"Former WikiLeaks programmer"

--- he was a German spokes person, an one other Wikileaks guy working closely with Assange, he didn't claim to be a programmer.

"Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers,"

-- A colleague of Daniel who also left wikileaks disabled the submission tool because they had security concerns over the submission system and found it irresponsible. The claim that he threatened the anonymity of leakers or sabotaged wikileaks is without any evidence.

"Since leaving WikiLeaks, Domschiet-Berg has become one of the cofounders of OpenLeaks. This raises the question: if you had material to leak, would you trust it to someone who has already jeopardized the anonymity of leakers at a site where he worked?"

-- Obviously he has not done this and you cannot name a single case where he did. You cannot confirm your allegation by referring to your former mentioning of the statement. It works for FOX news but not for educated discourse.

Domscheit-Berg also never said he would use them in his openleaks project.

Re:Microsoft lobbyism and more

[Elektroschock]

There is a difference between "taking" and "having in your possession" and "locking Assange out".

DB says its the documents they got in the interim. You can expect a public wikileaks speaker like DB to get documents for wikileaks via geeks.

One of the reasons for leaving wl was an alleged cooperation of Assange with a holocaust denier. That is an impossible thing to do in Germany, it doesn't even matter if Daniel Berg is a jew or not. You simply can't support that.

Ridiculous

[MoldySpore]

This has really gotten out of hand.

1) Of course WikiLeaks is pissed. They were the ones who took up the banner for having a reliable place to leak data. I am sure they had some sort of process to gauge people's reliability and willingness to be part of WikiLeaks before they "hired" anyone to be part of the organization. It was a matter of trust. Which Daniel Domscheit-Berg has violated and betrayed. The only way a leak operation like WikiLeaks can work right is if it's members see beyond their own issues. So he didn't like Julian Assange? Really? Huge news? What employee ever likes their boss?

2) The irresponsibility of Daniel Domscheit-Berg for trying to make a name off WikiLeaks and Assange is sad at best, and dangerous for people at worst. Specifically for the leakers. WikiLeaks is already a known, trusted organization for handling leaked information. The new OpenLeaks crap and Daniel Domscheit-Berg are only going to confuse this very NEW process (leaked information over the internet to a central source). Having more than 1 organization right now isn't good timing. It is only a publicity stunt that is meant to harm wikileaks credibility and to confuse their leakers into trying OpenLeaks.

3) If OpenLeaks had opened by itself without any connections to WikiLeaks, then maybe it would have been ok. But for it to open the way it did, I can't see it ever being as trustworthy or "open" as WikiLeaks.

4) Those claiming that it is all theatrics are right, on the part of OpenLeaks and Daniel Domscheit-Berg making a scene merely for the sake of attracting attention away from WikiLeaks. It is literally like walking into a crowded movie theater and screaming "Quick! Look over here! Don't pay attention to the movie you were all already enjoying! We've written a play for you all to watch instead!"

5) Rather than pushing forward and just shutting up for the good of the world (or rather, the good of the people of the world who live under governments that use secrecy and shady deals to accomplish their goals) Daniel Domscheit-Berg decided it was a better idea to gather as much media attention as possible, steal from and disrupt the image of WikiLeaks, while conveniently writing books that make him $, which I'm sure won't be funneled into helping people expose leaks and rather funneled into his own pocket. If that doesn't make people realize he is a douche, I don't know what will

6) People who claim, such as Daniel, that Assange's ego blah blah blah are bad are missing the point. Assange's job was to draw the ire of the governments they were leaking about. He is the media spokesperson, and the figure head. Regardless if he started WikiLeaks or not, that was his role and he has played everyone like a fiddle when it comes to this. Granted his liberties and freedom are on trial right now in Europe, but he had to of known that might be the repercussions.

Re:Ridiculous

[BitZtream]

Citation needed, for all of your points.

Just because you say them doesn't make them true.

1) What did berg do? What trust has he violated ... where is said proof?

2) ... I'm sorry ... have you been living under a fucking rock? Assange LIVES to make a name for himself. He's the fucking definition of an attention/media whore. If he cared about the leaks and not attention we wouldn't know his name.

3) So a bunch of people see the way somethings work and don't like it ... so they go start their own ... and their the assholes? WTF? They are 'bad' just because they went and started their own site? What did they take from Wikileaks? Some documents ... that were going to be leaked ... and that changes anything how?

4) ... okay, so you do live under a rock. Its really hard to take anything away from the 40 year old moron hiding in England because of the idea that Sweden is going to put him in a box and ship him to the US. The US REALLY DOESN'T CARE that much, yes some loud mouth politicans may be capitalizing on it, but they really haven't done any damage to the US and the recent diplomatic communications leak made it rather clear that most of the time when we look like assholes to the public of the middle easy or east ... its because everyone over there doesn't have the balls to say it themselves ... including the very people who hate publicly. Assange is more of a media whore than Lindsey Lohan.

5) Shutting up just for the good of the world ... I'm sorry, who brought this up? Wasn't it wikileaks? You want openleaks to shut up ... but Wikileaks is the one who started this latest drama fest ... do you even know whats going on?

6) No, you are missing the point. It is entirely possible to get media attention without being a public spokes person and media whore. I realize you weren't around for Watergate ... but it seemed to work out just fine without a figure head in the public drawing attention. He has no need for public attention, he just enjoys it.

You've pretty much gotten every single point you made backwards.

Its one thing to be a fanboy but holy shit you're Sarah Palin retarded and ignorant.

Re:Ridiculous

[slashdot_commentator]

The problem is that Assange is not the figurehead. He's autocratically calling the shots for what supposed to be a volunteer group effort. He's the one who's releasing tons of unedited Afghanistan war logs potentially jeopardizing the lives of Afghani "collaborators" with the US military. Assange didn't put that to a vote.

Some people believe an autocratic cult is a good thing, with the right dictator on top. I'll take a pass.

Re:Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the various bullet points is that any defense for Assange is also a defense for Dormscheit-Berg, and any attack on Dormscheit-Berg works just as well against Assange.

1) ... It was a matter of trust. Which Daniel Domscheit-Berg has violated and betrayed. The only way a leak operation like WikiLeaks can work right is if it's members see beyond their own issues. ...

"It was a matter of trust." Much like the same trust that *every* employer puts in their employees and that Wikileaks encourages those same employees to betray? Wikileaks is based on "if you're aware of corruption, let the world know." Dormscheit-Berg saw his organization corrupting, and he has departed and let the world know.

2) The irresponsibility of Daniel Domscheit-Berg ... is sad at best, and dangerous for people at worst. Specifically for the leakers. ... Having more than 1 organization right now isn't good timing. ...

I hope you got equally excited about all the people that Assange endangered when he refused to redact their namesin leaked documents. Many people in the arab world leaked information to the US military forces, and were then outed by Assange... should they be placed in harm's way simply because they leaked their information to the "wrong" entity?

3) If OpenLeaks had opened by itself without any connections to WikiLeaks, then maybe it would have been ok. But for it to open the way it did, I can't see it ever being as trustworthy or "open" as WikiLeaks.

Please help me understand. Do you want an "open" company for "leaks" to start by being secretive?

4) ... It is literally like walking into a crowded movie theater and screaming "Quick! Look over here! Don't pay attention to the movie you were all already enjoying! We've written a play for you all to watch instead!"

Assange's whole act is based on theatrics. It didn't used to be, but that's the only way to get attention. This is how the game is played - why criticize Dormscheit-Berg while ignoring Assange's use of the same techniques?

5) Rather than pushing forward and just shutting up for the good of the world ... Daniel Domscheit-Berg decided it was a better idea to gather as much media attention as possible, steal from and disrupt the image of WikiLeaks, while conveniently writing books that make him $, ...

You neglected to mention Assange's penchant for writing books too.

If this is really about exposing governments, WHY DO WE EVEN KNOW WHO JULIAN ASSANGE IS? Assange could have taken measures to feed his info to the papers & news networks while protecting his anonymity, but instead he's a household name. Think about that.

6) ... Assange's job was to draw the ire of the governments they were leaking about. He is the media spokesperson, and the figure head. ...

Don't you think it's a bit petty to complain that your guy's antics are getting less attention because of someone else's antics?

Re:Ridiculous

[MoldySpore]

1) What did berg do? What trust has he violated ... where is said proof?
Apparently you didn't read what I wrote fully. I said "I am sure they had some sort of process to gauge people's reliability and willingness to be part of WikiLeaks before they "hired" anyone to be part of the organization." The sentence, itself, doesn't say I have any proof. But when you are joining an organization like WikiLeaks, which itself needs it's secrets to survive (which Assange freely admits in his interview with 60 Minutes) and continue pouring out the information without being hindered by stupid people revealing their internal processes and drumming up a media circus, it kinda goes without saying, no? But never did I claim to have proof. In fact, most of my comment was prefaced with "I's" which inherently makes it an opinion piece, does it not? Perhaps getting some grammar and language skills should be in your near future...

2) ... I'm sorry ... have you been living under a fucking rock? Assange LIVES to make a name for himself. He's the fucking definition of an attention/media whore. If he cared about the leaks and not attention we wouldn't know his name.
Really? I'm sure that he started this leak organization, from which he was very behind the scenes for many years, just to feed his ego and get accused of rape falsely and get threatened by almost every major governmental power on the face of the planet. Yea. I'm sure that was his goal. LOL. And you say I'm under a rock? You must be SMOKING rock. It was only after the Collateral Murder video that he was forcibly thrust into the limelight because of all the media attention it gathered. That is when you started seeing him out and about because the media and the people demanded it. He was/is the spokesperson for WikiLeaks. But when there isn't much media attention, that of course means that he isn't in the media! How can you call him a media whore when the only reason he has become this "media whore" as you and others call him was BECAUSE the media and others started attacking wikileaks and he had to DO HIS JOB, which was the field the media response and be the public figure head? If it wasn't him, it would have been someone else. If he DIDN'T care about the leaks, he never would have started or persisted with WIkiLeaks. There are many other ways to get in the media spotlight.

3) So a bunch of people see the way somethings work and don't like it ... so they go start their own ... and their the assholes?
Actually...yes! The fact is, beyond Bradley Manning (who got himself caught on his own by disclosing what he was doing to Adrian Lamo) no WikiLeaks sources have been revealed. They have been air tight. Their data has been kept under lock and key with nobody cracking the released, encrypted "Big Leak" file distributed on BitTorrent, nor any of their actual data servers or information stores compromised. Then along comes Daniel and OpenLeaks. Bam. Instantly fucks up their track record. Who knows what else he brought with him? Also, it is well known that when a high-profile person leaves a corporation and then tries to go start or work for another company that does essentially the same thing using information from the previous, more often than not the first company will have some kind of guidelines and agreement so that they basically can't use anything they did/got from their previous job. While this certainly isn't the exact same situation, it is frowned upon. When Danial essentially did was get "Fired" from his first job (WikiLeaks), stole information and internal documents, and started a new company doing the exact same thing using stolen information, while writing books and being just as much of a "media whore" as Assange in order to do it. If this were a real, paying job he would be in court right now.

4) ... okay, so you do live under a rock. Its reall

Re:Ridiculous

[Dcnjoe60]

To bad you posted anonymously, I would have modded you up for that post!

Re:Ridiculous

[Dcnjoe60]

I bet you just read the first article - the one put out by Wikileaks.

Re:Ridiculous

[b4dc0d3r]

You are ridiculous. You're implying that no one had ever gotten fed up by management and left their job to join, or run, a similar organization. "I worked at WikiLeaks" is no different from putting your current employer on your CV, except that most media outlets won't report on your CV. Point 4 is especially silly given your own point 6, and 5.

I see no validation of your opinions here, and you seem to be bending over backwards to make points. I'm not saying you're wrong because I don't know, but you actually managed to push me further away from your conclusion rather than convince me.

Re:fail

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

National Security Inc.

"The American intelligence community is an important market for our company," said General Dynamics spokesman Kendell Pease. "Over time, we have tailored our organization to deliver affordable, best-of-breed products and services to meet those agencies' unique requirements."

In September 2009, General Dynamics won a $10 million contract from the U.S. Special Operations Command's psychological operations unit to create Web sites to influence foreigners' views of U.S. policy. To do that, the company hired writers, editors and designers to produce a set of daily news sites tailored to five regions of the world. They appear as regular news Web sites, with names such as "SETimes.com: The News and Views of Southeast Europe." The first indication that they are run on behalf of the military comes at the bottom of the home page with the word "Disclaimer." Only by clicking on that do you learn that "the Southeast European Times (SET) is a Web site sponsored by the United States European Command."

Mubarak Obama or Barack Honecker?

Monitoring America

Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Remember, this is in the hands of people who have done things like improve the quality of your air travel experience, over the last 10 years.

I don't believe in the "trade-off" we have had no choice in making. I'd rather risk the chance of a bomb on my plane. The odds are greater that I'll drown in the pool at my destination, or die in a taxi to the hotel, than any so-called "terror" incident.

Lets try to get it straight

[drolli]

Domscheit-Berg gave an very interesting interview (on netzpolitik.de, in German).

a) Assange assumed that everybody who worked with him has to follow his orders

b) Assange rejected to give wikileaks any legal structures or organizationl structures

c) Assange assumed that everybody works for WL, but left the modalities of influence or money completely undefined.

Domscheidt-Berg was "suspended" (from what exactly, if i may ask if there is no organizational structure behind?) and he decided to keep the hardware with the information in his possession (where it was) until wikileaks can give him convincing instructions what to do. Since there is no organization the ownership of the servers in unclear, and he askes Wikileaks to settle it with the foundation which collaborated with them to return the servers.

Endangering of the infromers was due to Assanges unwillingness to restrict themself in a meaningful and planned way and due to his promis to the newapapers to redact the documents, a task far beyond WLs capacities at that time, and DB claims he warned of that ans got increasingly frustrated with not having a organization structure behind.

DB describes the personality structure of Assange consistently with the other persons who have met Assange personally and gave interviews.

If you would ask me to hand over a server with unclear ownership containing critical information into the hands of some person coming in a due to circumstances strongly fluctuating non-organization based on the need and the evaluation of a self-proclaimed leader with a personality structure which for sure is prone to the usual tricks used during infiltration, at a time when this leader is under big stress and may be even more leaning towards no fully rational decisions, i would seriously *not* transfer that.

So while some personal connotations of the whole story may be irritating, i can follow DBs thoughts and arguments.

To put it in a nice way: Assange is somewhere on the line between madman and genius; i would say he is a case for a therapy (a mild ambulant one) to fight the problems he seems to causing constantly in personal interactions and his Hybris.

Re:Lets try to get it straight

[drolli]

Actually he state stated that he will keep them in possession until ownership has been settled. He claimed he owned the servers. He said the servers were bought using money transferred by some dutch foundation which - among other things - also funded WL partially. He said in the interview that he will turn to that organization and settle the situation with them; how far that plan has proceeded i dont know.

Re:Lets try to get it straight

[drolli]

More important is - even if the ownership of the HW in unclear, if he put his face in the public and advertised WL at that moment to be a way of safe leaking, he also has the moral duty to at least that the harddrive into his possession until he is convinced that it does not fall into the wrong hands. How that Assange is effectively in jail and that the organization go a large amount of supporters, i am pretty sure that some of the newly won supporters may be from some secret service. Upon evaluating Assanges personality structure i think it would be rather easy to gain access right now; since WL needs programmers and also to fill other functions and Assange seems not to declare standard procedures since this would restrict his power, my personal estimation is that they are now infiltrated with a non-negligible probability on some level.

Re:fail

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

When they cripple the functional technical operation of efforts to equalise asymmetrical dynamics of government and corporate power?

Yes.

Now, go obfuscate the issue with another fallacy.

Re:fail

[Wyatt Earp]

Does that mean Assange is a pawn or stooge for putting wikileaks in a bad light with his sexual misadventures in Sweden?

Or no, those women are stooges, pawns and or assets of the government and corporate powers.

all the hallmarks of a "cult"

[peter303]

A movement grows very fast and becomes powerful. It is run by an eccentric ego with delusions of grandeur and possible sexual proclivity. Then it collapses on itself from infighting and external pressure. This is not to say the goals of Wikileaks are bad, but its execution may have fallen short.

Re:all the hallmarks of a "cult"

[horza]

What is with you, and some other weird people, that a man might want to have sex with women is somehow abnormal? I won't go into details about the birds and the bees, but without sexual intercourse none of us would be here. It's not like he was going through groupies like your average rap or rock singer.

As for 'delusions of grandeur', causing panic in the world's largest governments and banks, and felling dictators, is not a bad level of grandeur In fact, Wikileaks might have even made some of the national papers!

If you want weird, you should look up some of the billionaires running empires like Ross Perot or Rupert Murdoch. Or if like peter303 and are obsessed with sex, then Berlusconi.

Phillip.

Re:fail

[I8TheWorm]

I don't think you're really reading what Jeremiah is saying. This guy admits to removing a component guaranteeing the anonymity of leakers. On top of that, he's taken with him backlogged (read: not yet published) leaked documents. Assange's alleged wrongdoing has nothing to do with the functionality and business model of the site/company.

Now, strangely, if this guy was a programmer and the component was software, all they would need to do is go to their SCR and put the code back in.. and possibly some data cleanup (redaction of names of leakers). If it was hardware, then plug it back in. If it's damaged, the author of the story needs to report that.

Obligatory goatkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory goatkcd

Re:Obligatory goatkcd

[YoshiDan]

hahaha thanks, tjis is the funniest thing I've seen in ages!

Disinformation Campaigns

[PraiseBob]

We know from leaked emails that security companies hired by Bank of America and working with the FBI explicitly had the following plan to destroy wikileaks: Turn wikileaks insiders against each other, and spread FUD to dissuade people from trusting wikileaks as both a source of information, and as a safe haven to give information to.

Fast forward six months after those emails, and we have: Wikileaks insiders fighting against each other, splitting off due to distrust, and spreading information about a compromised safe upload system, and spreading various rumors and personal attacks against the frontman for the group.

Now, those rumors may or may not be true, but they certainly are an amazing coincidence considering the the leaked emails from HBGary. I'd personally wager that 99% of news stories about wikileaks have some level of disinformation involved to try to negate the impact on existing power structures. They have after all, decided to take on every government and multinational corporation in the world.

Res ipsa loquitur

So what?

[MarkvW]

A leak "superstore" is a stupid idea. A centralized repository is a centralized target. A centralized target is bad for everything except Assange's need for attention.

Assange is a pig. He hoards information so that it can be disclosed for maximum benefit for himself, rather than sharing it freely with others. He is only a conduit--he doesn't provide any analysis.

He created publicity for a service category that has social value. Great. His 15 minutes are up. Now, maybe a more responsible service, or better yet a distributed amorphous cluster of unlinked services will take up the slack.

Domscheit-Berg's group appears to be just another competitor in an endeavor that should be open and non-competitive. If these people are commercial, I hope they all go straight to hell.

Re:fail

[Enderandrew]

Domscheit-Berg has also said the whole point of Wikileaks was supposed to be transparency and leaking of documents. Under Assange, a lot of stuff seems to sit on a shelf without being released. Wikileaks itself has no transparency, so no one knows why certain things get leaked whiles others aren't. Domscheit-Berg said he didn't approve of Assange's direction and wants to continue the concept of leaking documents under new management.

Wikileaks supporters supposedly want more transparency and more leaks. Shouldn't they support this?

The only real problem I have with any of this is whether or not he revealed the names of anonymous tipsters. And there is no proof he did that. There is an accusation that he crippled a system that was designed to help protect their innocence. And I'm not sure whether or not to believe that accusation.

Re:fail

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The real matter is that Dumbshit's actions are exactly in line with the CIA/Military playbook for discrediting Wikileaks.

You could have predicted his split from this.

He produces ad-hominem about Assange, some of which may have basis in fact. His team then cripples wikileaks anonymity and responds with vapourware.

He's promising an improved alternative or replacement which has not produced any output, nor fully disclosed the technology or methodology on a point-by-point basis that demonstrates improvement.

If this is not enough to have serious concerns that Dumbshit-Borg is either an agent, or a useful idiot? He gives his press release from the retreat at Davos, aligning himself with the forces of oligarchal global corporate power.

Re:fail

[Enderandrew]

People keep suggesting that anyone who speaks out against Assange or Wikileaks must be pawns of the CIA. Logically that doesn't hold nearly the water you imagine it would.

I personally don't care for how Wikileaks editorializes. I don't care for how they've been irresponsible in leaking names of innocent civilians, names that came under death threats because of their negligence. When Assange was directly asked about how he failed to react civilian volunteer names that were threatened, he said it is an expensive process and people should give him $200,000 if they wanted it done.

Reputable organizations that call for government transparency and accountability (like Amnesty International) have ripped Wikileaks and Assange. Are you going to next insinuate they must be part of the CIA playbook? Last time I checked, Amnesty International and the CIA aren't exactly pals.

And when everyone assumed Assange was being set up by the CIA on rape charges (because European governments love to throw their citizens under the bus just because we ask), it turns out these are very real charges by real people (though in all fairness, this isn't necessarily the American view of rape).

The same simplistic view I keep hearing is that Assange criticizes the US government, which many people like, so that must make him a fucking hero. Let's just conveniently overlook everything else.

Re:fail

[I8TheWorm]

From TFA

"In (his) book Domscheit-Berg confesses to various acts of sabotage against the organization. The former WikiLeaks staffer admits to having damaged the site's primary submission system and stolen material," Hrafnsson's statement said.

Damaging the primary submission system could be a range of things, but given the accusation I'd say they sound more than suspiciously similar.

So I suppose you can believe his own words or not... up to you.

The most disturbing thing is

[zrbyte]

that, this whole bickering has a negative effect on the willingness of potential leak sources to actually leak information. I sincerely hope this war of egos will not escalate any further.

Re:The most disturbing thing is

[garompeta]

That's precisely the point of all this scandal. And precisely it strengthens my point of being a carefully planned smear campaign by the CIA. If it becomes an untrustworthy source, no matter what they publish, it won't matter. the "core collectors" in the clandestine service of the CIA are precisely experts on these kind of operations.

Re:fail

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Amnesty didn't reduce Wikileaks technical capabilities for privacy.

They didn't break a site, leaving a vacuum and vapourware.

Re:fail

[Enderandrew]

I'm not sure Domscheit-Berg did either.

You're assuming that Wikileaks is telling the truth and that Domscheit-Berg lied. You're stated reasoning behind that was anyone criticizing Wikileaks must be working for the CIA. I pointed out why that was faulty reasoning.

We don't know the facts of the matter. One side is lying. You've contended that no one is allowed to question Assange without being a government pawn. That makes you exceedingly objective.

Most dangerous website?

[mr100percent]

The book title is "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time With Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website"

Most dangerous? Moreso than 4chan?

Truth is probably in the middle

[Dcnjoe60]

Two posts from different sides of the same story make for interesting reading. I believe the truth will be somewhere in the middle. It does make me wonder, however, if D-B was really not involved in any part of Wikileaks like the article from the Wikileak's spokesperson claims, it would have been difficult to remove the key piece of software that they claim he did and therefore sabatoged Wikileaks. It seems, from reading between the lines that D-B was actually much more involved in Wikileaks and since his characterizations of Assange have been corroborated by other ex-Wikileaks staff, there may very well be some truth to his side of the story.

Personally, I like the idea of having a leak repository and other outlets decide what to release or not. Putting editorial control under the caretaker of the source documents (as in Wikileaks) seems to allow for quite a bit of abuse of power.

It has been said that information is power. Wikileaks and Assange have accumulated quite a bit of information/power. Too bad, it has also been said that power corrupts.

Re:FUD campaign

[Dcnjoe60]

So the FUD campaign already has its wheels in motion...

Actually, Domscheit-Berg's group has been quite open and upfront about what has happened. It's been Wikileaks that has been spreading FUD.

Re:fail

[MrNaz]

I read the summary. I read the article. I'm familiar with the issue. I'm not usually immature. I tried and tried to take this article seriously. I don't usually thread hijack to say something dumb. I tried and tried to come up with a sensible post.

However, all I can see here is that this guy has "shit burg" in his name.

That is all.

Re:fail

[MrNaz]

Dumb shit burg no less! OMG I can have hours of fun with this cocktard's name!

Re:fail

[Belial6]

I wouldn't count too heavily on Amnesty International as evidence. Amnesty International and the Ford and Toyota. Technically they are adversary, but they are adversaries in the same game. Neither of them want a third party showing up that changes all the rules.

Re:Opean leaks...

[Elektroschock]

DB adds some info why he believed in the merits of the young women's case, regardless of the prosecutor interpol extradiction farce. Simply because JA bragged about fathering children.

Re:Summary

[Elektroschock]

DB says he estimated its about 3500 documents and he has no access himself to the actual data, probably they are encrypted. The documents are from summer 2010.

Re:FUD campaign

[Lehk228]

talking does not mean open when what you are saying is lies

Re:FUD campaign

[Dcnjoe60]

talking does not mean open when what you are saying is lies

True, but as with any divorce, how do you know which side is telling the truth or not? Only time will tell which side is being more truthful.

Data set size is its own security?

[bussdriver]

So, clearly government should pepper documents with critical data so they can attack any leaks for not filtering out all the data at great expense. Sounds like they could do this with minimal damage but maximum spin.

If Wikileaks spent more time with less money to deal with filtering they could be DoS attacked by this method of requiring heavy processing of all leaked documents. Delaying releases until they are unable to be effective for the public. Plus they are BOUND to have errors in their filtering process.

The EU let the USA kidnap, fly around, and had safe houses for CIA ops --kidnapping people etc. Until they found out about SOME of it publicly.

Its just fine when the military kills a few innocent people (daily) but when the press leaks something that puts a few people at RISK (not even death) its a big big deal. Why? You know, in the USA the free press doesn't have to actually worry about collateral damage - by constitution; but the military does not have anywhere near that protection yet its perfectly ok for them to continue with their collateral damage. A free press isn't going to be pleasant and easy; democracy isn't a spectator sport either.

You ever end up in court? Plenty of collateral damage goes on in there; but its needed for the greater good. Press damage works the same way - sure, our "press" isn't doing its job even remotely well, but that is another issue.

Assange's rape scandal is the most political "legal" scandal I've ever seen - its blatantly inept and exactly what you'd do if you wanted to send a message to others just how little the LAW can protect you. Its not just hero worship; its obvious what is going on if you look beyond the sound bites. REAL ACTUAL CHARGES should have been made before he left the country; this was exploited for political impact according to plan - which is why many people reasonably assume its without merit. Once its over, we might get more truth about it-- but while its active don't expect anybody to risk more trouble with any truth.

Re:Opean leaks...

[blahplusplus]

Nerds with high ideals may make jokes but they don't rape women. I know the type Assange is and he is one of the last people you'd find hurting women on purpose. Jaded and cynical about women? absolutely... but that's entirely different thing altogether.

Guess we can't expect the ability to discern subtlety between the two when it comes to the average human being.

Re:Opean leaks...

[Elektroschock]

This case is not about rape but a case of intercourse without consent which qualifies as a kind of crime in Sweden. Of course the Swedish prosecutor acts over the top and that is very questionable, including the smear to accuse him as a rapist in public.

Re:fail

[Ihmhi]

I personally don't care for how Wikileaks editorializes.

This is a non-issue since you can basically view the source material.

If you think Collateral Murder is editorializing (and it is), then you can always show people the unedited video which Wikileaks provides.

Re:Typical CIA maneuver

[garompeta]

You are getting all conspirational, and that hypothesis shows how little you know about the intelligence world. I am not saying that they had covert agenda from the beginning, that's not how it works.

What usually happens is that they (CIA or whatever intelligence agency) find the best candidate by studying the one who has enough access in the company/organization AND has grudges, dissatisfaction, unsatisfied needs, economic struggles, legal problems, etc... and they try to offer a seduce the insider a solution to their problems if they are willing to do them "a favor". Another way is to keep pushing the wounds inciting them to do it for honor, patriotism, morals, values, or whatever ideological reason. The latter case is obviously the most economical method and so the preferred one. The traitor/snitch/saboteur who accepts the deal are known as "CIA agents". (In the CIA jargon the one proposing the offer representing the agency is known as "CIA officer")

This is what always have been the basic modus operandi of all the intelligence agencies in the world. Also creating disinformation, discredit and confusion is also a very old counterintelligence tactic. It happened in the past, it is happening in the present, and it is not really that unreasonable to consider that it is also happening in the Wikileaks case.

Yep

[Sycraft-fu]

If their goal is to release information to the public, for the public good, then their only concern over someone else having a copy of the documents is that it could be used to harm the public good, not Wikileaks themselves.

So suppose they have documents that they are looking over, because parts of them they feel shouldn't be released because they would be harmful. Now someone else gets a copy, and intends to leak everything in them. Well that could be a concern, but not to Wikileaks. In that case their claim would be "These guys are going to cause more harm than good, they intend to leak things that are dangerous, and not in the public interest to be out there."

That isn't what they are claiming though, they talk about harm being done to them. Well that implies they see these documents as their property, and that their plans require exclusive use of them. Maybe they want to monetize them, or use them for extortion/blackmail of some sort.

Whatever the case that would mean they aren't in it for the public good, they aren't trying to get things, review them for harm, and then release what the public needs to know, it would mean they have their own agenda and feel that someone else knowing what they know could hurt that agenda.

Media trust

[dewexdewex]

How can we now be asked to believe this news if it's not leaked in an unofficial manner?