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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."
I wonder how they like their documents being leaked. It would make my year if they sued over this.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Which threaten court martial and execution for breaching confidentiality, or a lifetime in prison. I'd take a $12 million fine which I can default on, any day of the week.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
How, er, ironic.
Well, I guess it's actually just hypocritical, but it sure smells like irony to me...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
and found something damning (like Assange is a paid lackey of Putin), I sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to leak it to the press. Confidentiality agreement be damned.
Why do these groups think these things hold any power? It's just words on a page.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Given that WL 'clean up' the documents before they leak them to the media, don't you think someone who'd leak the top secret information to the media, or the entire batch of uncleaned files... would be both dangerous and would ruin WL's credibility?
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.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Discredit WikiLeaks, Shoot the Messenger, Covert Operation Game Plan - as we were warned.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Oh great, here we go with the "Ironic" or "Hypocritical" comments again, another poster fails to realize the difference here.
I'll try to explain secrecy within wikileaks once more, hopefully before a hundred other comments spout the same nonsense. Wikileaks gets information from people within the organizations. These documents or memos they receive may have the submitters information on there. Maybe they have an IP, or email address, or mailing address or something that the submitter didn't hide. So wikileaks goes to the trouble of redacting this information from these documents so the submitter doesn't get identified.
Lets say Company A offers to bribe Country B's corrupt government to allow some dumping of chemical waste near some poor neighborhood in that country, but someone gets wind of this information floating around and submits it to wikileaks.
Now when these two entities find out their plan was leaked, they're going to be very pissed off. There may not be that many suspects for this leak, so they might start investigating to see who sent this information. Well guess who has this information? The wikileaks staff! Company A and Country B probably have deep deep pockets and wouldn't mind getting to the bottom of this, and who knows what the hell they'll do to the guy if they ever found out who it is (see : Bradley Manning detainment conditions).
Well the wikileaks staff are still human, and despite whatever moral integrity they have, maybe one of them can be tempted by large sums of money (as my dad used to say, Everyone has their price). So the best solution for the wikileaks organization at this point is to enforce a confidentiality agreement with an astronomical sum of money, as to potentially discourage any of their staff from leaking sensitive information that governments and organizations would love to get their hands on. Make it so whatever they might receive clearly isn't worth the 20M they'd have to pay back (assuming it was enforceable). This agreement isn't there to prevent the staff from disclosing the wikileaks budget, or to hide the fact that Julian assange uses Rogaine, or stays in 5 star hotels for conference visits. This is prevent the leakers from "mysteriously disappearing" because someone at their organization found out what they leaked.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Whilst I agree (and I'd mod you up if I could), I think it is also important to be cautious that the measures taken to "prevent the leakers from "mysteriously disappearing" because someone at their organization found out what they leaked." is not also used to cover up Mr. Assange's hotel expenses and other luxuries. Donators have a right to know if their money is being used to combat wrongdoings and expose corruption, or if it's being used to give Mr. Assange a yacuzzi in his hotel room.
Yes? It's a standard confidentiality agreement, upheld by courts worldwide.
Considering the value, and danger related to the documents they handle, 12 million seems like a reasonable sum.
I normally do not comment here normally. But did *anyone* even click on the PDF?. Confidential is spelt as "confiential" (below the bolded 2010). A real life legal document that is not spell checked? Doh?