How WikiLeaks Gags Its Own Staff

robbyyy writes "The New Statesman has just revealed the extent of the legal eccentricity and paranoia that exists at the WikiLeaks organization. The magazine published a leaked copy of the draconian and extraordinary legal gag which WikiLeaks imposes on its own staff. Clause 5 of the Confidentiality Agreement (PDF) imposes a penalty of £12,000,000 (approximately $20,000,000) on anyone who breaches this legal gag. Sounds like they don't trust their own staff."

Comments

Actually, that's not what it says...

[black3d]

It appears nobody RTFPDF.

It nowhere states that anybody is going to be fined any amount of money.

E ... any breach by you is likely to cause loss and damage to Wikileaks including..
  d. loss of value of information
5. The parties agree that a genuine and reasonable pre-estimate loss to WikiLeaks from a breach of this agreement based on a typical open market valuation for the information for a significant breach of the agreement is in the region of £12,000,000.

Nowhere does it state that the signee will be liable to that value. Only that they agree they'll be terminated for a breach thereof. Agreeing to that value of a breach may open the path TO be sued for a figure in that region, however the summation that anyone who breaches will be fined £12,000,000 is a blatant falsehood.

Re:Actually, that's not what it says...

[black3d]

No it doesn't.

8. You agree and accept that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary information, the misuse or unauthorised disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage, and accordingly you concede that, without prejudice to any other rights and remedies that may be available to us in respect of Breach of this agreement, we are entitled to relief by way of injunction including any interim order available from any competent court having jurisdiction over its terms.

An injunction is not a £12,000,000 fine. It's an injunction. The injunction is the only legal remedy offered directly by the agreement. David Allen's (and New Stateman's claim) that "It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached." is completely false.

Re:As opposed to the armed forces..

[black3d]

As I noted later on (http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2146120&cid=36100472) it appears New Statesman made up the entire angle that staff would be fined £12,000,000. Read the entire agreement start to finish, and the only penality implied by the confidentiality agreement for a breach is employment termination. Employment termination IS enforceable. The £12,000,000 fine never existed. All smoke and mirrors from folks trying to muddy Wikileaks.

Re:As opposed to the armed forces..

[krizoitz]

You're right, the military and government should just let anyone leak whatever confidential information they want without consequence, no matter how much that information harms anyone else. Anyone who thinks that governments don't have legitimate reasons to limit who knows what information is out of touch with reality. What if all the intel about tracking bin Laden had been made public? Would kind of defeat the purpose of hunting someone down if you were basically broadcasting how you were doing it so they could find out. There is an old saying, knowledge is power. Well giving away all your knowledge for free puts you in the position of being exploited and powerless. Do governments sometimes take secrecy too far? Absolutely. But indiscriminate leaking of information ala WikiLeaks isn't the solution. It undermines those times when information is legitimately leakworthy, such as the Watergate scandal.

Re:Psychological Warfare

[rtb61]

Why exactly would this document hurt Wikileaks image. For people who wish their identities to remain confidential when they release information, this penalty would be very reassuring.

So you have, the 'New Statesman' and a junk journalist DAG, trying to put a negative spin on what many whistle blowers would find very comforting.

So how great is the penalty that many whistle blowers suffer, well you need look no further than the psychological abuse suffered by Bradley E. Manning. So what value does that rag New Stateman and DAG, put on that, apparently nothing.

Obviously the term 'confidential source' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidential_source means absolutely nothing to that hack DAG or the New Statesman.

Re:As opposed to the armed forces..

[Vintermann]

No, he did not. There are some obligations you can't sign away, among them the obligation to not perform human rights abuses or war crimes.

According to Lamo's logs (a known liar who has every reason to demonize Manning, by the way), Manning was asked to assist in a human rights abuse - rounding up peaceful dissidents who merely published a scholarly article criticizing the Iraqi government. You are not allowed to obey an illegal order, so he tried to alert his superiors. When they told him to shut up and get back to work, rather than blowing the whistle on them, he concluded that the whole system was rotten and needed to be exposed.

Now you may disagree about that (though if you have never been in such a situation, I don't value your opinion much) but it was not done "[out of loyalty to] to [the nations's] enemies, to give them aid and comfort" - which is the ONLY definition of treason the US constitution permits short of declaring war. Manning did what he thought was necessary to uphold his obligations to the US constitution and binding international agreements on human rights, and action taken for that reason, no matter how misguided, can never consitute treason in the US.