Wikileaks Plans To Make the Web Leakier 94
itwbennett writes "At the Hack In The Box conference in Kuala Lumpur, Wikileaks.org announced a plan to enable newspapers, human rights organizations, criminal investigators, and others to embed an 'upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks' form onto their Web sites that would give potential whistleblowers the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organization or journalist they trust over a secure connection. The news or NGO site would then get an embargo period in which to analyze the material and write the story, after which Wikileaks would make the leaked material public. At the same time, the receiver would have greater legal protection, says Julien Assange, an advisory board member at Wikileaks 'We will take the burden of protecting the source and the legal risks associated with publishing the document,' said Assange. 'We want to get as much substantive information as possible into the historical record, keep it accessible, and provide incentives for people to turn it into something that will achieve political reform.'"
Re:Who verifies the source? (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes you simply cannot risk exposing yourself as the source of a leak.
While a random leak about how a bank's managing board essentially granted themselves free loans [wikileaks.org] might raise investigative pressure, the most they can do is use the justice system to get at the journalist, and they have quite iron clad protections in a lot of countries.
Now imagine a leak about how a government's covert espionage agency has been conducting kidnappings, torture and murder on its country's own soil and against its country's own citizens, and it becomes easy to imagine that the journalist won't have any kind of protection other than the fact that it was leaked via Wikileaks.
While torture is problematic at best, I sincerely doubt that any kind of journalist would keep their mouth shut about who their sources are, once their kneecaps are being slowly crushed by a vice. And if Wikileaks have no records of who uploaded this information either, then that also protects the source.
Once you have uploaded the information to Wikileaks you then either have to wait for someone else to stumble upon it and notify the relevant media OR you contact them yourself. The latter risks exposing you - having a "leak through Wikileaks" contact form will be more secure.
I just hope it isn't implemented as a trackable link on the journalist's website. Then the offended parties can "just" get their hands on a list of IPs and other info that used that link.
Re:Political reform? (Score:5, Informative)
"Anything leaked is leaked deliberately with a concrete reasoning behind it. " - This is not true at all [nytimes.com]
Re:Political reform? (Score:1, Informative)
The problem is that there is a ton of stuff leaked to WL, but WL lacks the resources to publicize or analyze the contents of those leaks. A leak does its best good when it's contents is known by the people with the ability to act on it.... and publicizing the contents is the way to get the existence of those contents know to the most people. The system works best when a leaked document falls into the hand of a person who has incentive to publicize it. A leak will get the most exposure by giving it to an opponent, which enhances the public's knowledge the most.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Straw Man (Score:5, Informative)
Everything should be published. Obama's travel schedule/routes, secret codes, locations, troop movements, etc. Everything...
This is a straw man [wikipedia.org] fallacy, and completely irrelevant to the discussion, or to the purpose of Wikileaks.
Go to the about wikileaks [wikileaks.org] and have a read. Look at the slashdot article itself. Both use the work 'embargo'. The Advisory Board [wikileaks.org], and the staff of Wikileaks, are not going to release the information you are suggesting. It's not the purpose to reveal future troop movements, travel plans or secret codes. They reveal what has happened in the past, and how it was ignored, or hushed up, and allowed to continue.
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
It's exactly the opposite : wikileaks protects the identity of the whistleblower.
When the whistleblower can't do it anonymously , then he actually risks his life ( or , more likely , his job , depending on the situation ).
So wikileaks is actually saving lifes this way.
That is offcourse , if they can ensure everything is anonymous. The problem is that wikileaks is a single point, where all the information is, so it's a big target.
If wikileaks is compromised, that means information on a lot of whistleblowers gets out.