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Former Wikileaks Spokesman Destroyed Documents

Posted by samzenpus on from the shredding-the-leaks dept.

bs0d3 writes "Former Wikileaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims to have destroyed more than 3,500 unpublished files that had been sent from unknown informants and are now apparently lost irrevocably. Among the files destroyed are the US gov's 'no-fly list' and inside information from 20 right wing organizations. Daniel Domscheit-Berg is now known as one of the founders of openleaks."

11 of 469 comments (clear)

  1. Tragic... by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would really like to have seen the No-Fly list. My older brother has been "randomly selected" for several flights in a row and I strongly suspect it is a name association with someone else. But our democratic republic uses "secret lists" now to persecute people. What can you do?

    1. Re:Tragic... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      No. You must be wrong. The Democrats stand for truth, justice, the American way, jobs and transparency. What you've described is those low down scum teatard fucking teeeee-bagger bible beating thugs who've ruined the entire nation in less than two years of interaction with the guberment. The Democrats have been fighting those guys and the neo-cons tooth and nail to restore your freedoms and tax the rich. It's just that they can't do it because of the nasty evil right who can wave a wand and stop any legislation even when the Democrats had a majority in the legislature and the whitehouse on their side.

      So don't lie to us. It's not the democrats. It's those republifuckinteabaggers. They're the ones to blame for everything. The new boogeyman to keep your dumb asses in line and voting for the two party scam.

    2. Re:Tragic... by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Consider this:

      Before the Republican party allied itself with the bible-thumpers, the Republican party was considered the Liberal side while the Democrats were the conservatives. The democrats didn't change. The Republicans simply swung even further to the extreme than the Democrats... enough to make them look "liberal" by comparison. It wasn't always the way we see it today you know.

    3. Re:Tragic... by moonbender · · Score: 5, Informative

      Is there a reason he destroyed it?

      This is just the latest in an epic series of back-and-forths between DDB/OpenLeaks and Julian Assange/Wikileaks that has been going on for a year or so, particularly in the German scene/press. The first order of business seems to be: Don't believe everything you read, there has been a lot of misinformation spread by both sides, by other people who are involved and, worse yet, speculation by those that are not. Despite the fact that DDB looks like the bad guy, and I'm virtually certain he will be absolutely crucified here on Slashdot, DDB might just be a tragic figure and it's likely that there are no really good guys involved; Wikileaks and OpenLeaks were caught in a crossfire of Egos.

      DDB left/was fired from Wikileaks because he felt the organisation was in some way corrupted/they felt he was a corrupted. Other people left along with him, people that were apparently important to the basic functionality of Wikileaks. DDB subsequently wrote about about Wikileaks and started to talk about an alternative leak sites, OpenLeaks. The book contains fairly serious allegations against Wikileaks and Julian Assange.

      Purportedly, DDB (or possibly: one of the other people leaving WL) took those files because he did not think they were safe at Wikileaks. Note that the files do not contain any information on the identity of the leakers, Wikileaks simply does not store or even collect this information. They wre removed, not copied, and apparently Wikileaks did not have an extra copy (or the extra copies were all taken or destroyed). They were, of course, encrypted and he (or his allies) may or may not have access to some or all of them. Sidenote: At least one of the datasets he may have destroyed now (60k emails of a German neo-nazi party) made their way to the German media in some way, months ago. That may have been a coincidence, however, the newspaper involved is now a "media partner" of OpenLeaks. End of sidenote.
      DDB says he never had any intention of looking at or publishing the stolen data himself, and that he intended to return the files to WL, once WL has shown itself to be trustworthy (whatever that means). He also once intended to hand over the files to a trusted third party, people from Germany's Chaos Computer Club. He never followed through with this promise. He was recently thrown out of the CCC, an extraordinary measure, due to this but mostly other events related to a sorta-kinda security audit of OpenLeaks (this alone would require several paragraphs of explanation).

      Anyway, DDB had this very sensitive data, which he didn't want to give to WL, and pretty much no one else either. He also had the encryption keys. I think initially he talked about just deleting the encryption keys in order to prove that he has no intention of using the leaks himself. But if you don't trust him, why would you believe he deleted his keys? And now he apparently figured the only course of action left was to "simply" delete the files themselves. I don't quite understand that final bit, either.

      I have tried to summarize a very complex situation full of half-truths and unproven allegations to the best of my ability. Note that I have absolutely zero inside information, I know no one involved, this is all public information (though fairly inaccessible to many Slashdot users due to the language barrier).

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    4. Re:Tragic... by guruevi · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, they're not using 'secret' lists anymore. They're just going after people because they have been granted the authority to do so. I live about 100 miles from a US border (within the 200 mile from any border that the DHS has been granted full authority) and even though it was promised to only be used for external threats, recently the US Border Patrol in conjunction with local police recently used heat seeking drones to find pot plantations in the area and made arrests.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    5. Re:Tragic... by erroneus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is "right" and there is "lawful." They are not always the same things.

    6. Re:Tragic... by forty-2 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Eyah, been there. 5 weeks of traveling as a single male passenger on one way tickets, booked by a 3rd party.
      I might as well have been wearing a "Death to Infidels" T-shirt.

      --
      never drink kool-aid from a big vat
    7. Re:Tragic... by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Certainly though, if a cop is lawfully arresting you, and has his gun drawn, you shouldn't pull yours out and open fire. That's not self-defense.

      Not necessarily true.

      What if the current law says that you need to be hauled away to a concentration camp and murdered, and the cop is "just doing his job" in arresting you and sticking you on the train bound for the concentration camp?

      In this case, you're entirely justified in shooting the cop, whether he's arresting you, or anyone else. In fact, you're not just justified, but you're doing the right and moral thing by executing him. He deserves to die for upholding such an evil law.

      Personally, I think punishments for police and other government officials should be much, much, much harsher than for regular people. If you can't even trust your own government, then your society is failing, so strong protections should be put into place to protect the people from government abuses.

    8. Re:Tragic... by djlowe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh sure. The federalists thought it was a slur. But once the unformed masses realized that the federalists were a bunch of elitist prigs, the Democratic Republicans took over.

      And now, both the Democrats *and* the Republicans are "Extreme Federalists", and they are ALL elitist prigs now.

      Regards,

      dj

  2. /rage by drobety · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If what DDB claims are true, he also destroyed five gigabytes of internal documents from the Bank of America. Seriously, how can anyone trust OpenLeaks when one of his founder completely disregarded the wishes of the whistle-blowers to expose what they perceived as wrong, immoral, and/or of public interest? His excuse that he wanted to "protect the sources" is over-the-top ridiculous given that the track record of Wikileaks is impeccable regarding source protection (alleged cablegate leaker outed himself as per alleged chat transcript.)

    I was really looking forward to have Bank of America being exposed, especially after reading this piece.

    In the end, DDB exposes himself as ultimate retarded prick.

  3. Domscheit-Berg has just killed OpenLeaks by Crouty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are two things an architect of a whistleblowing platform must never do: revealing the identity of informants and accepting submissions without publishing them. I despise Domscheit-Berg for keeping WikiLeaks from publishing that data. Who knows what risks were taken to get this information on that hard disk.

    --
    On se Internetz nobody noes your German.