Openleaks Goes Live 158
Underholdning writes "Ars technica leaks the story of OpenLeaks launching. OpenLeaks is an alternative to WikiLeaks, with a few differences. 'OpenLeaks will not accept or publish documents on its own platform, but rather create many "digital dropboxes" for its community members, each adapted to the specific needs of our members so that they can provide a safe and trusted leaking option for whistleblowers.' Time will show if this will live next to WikiLeaks, or they will compete. For more information, check out the OpenLeaks website."
FL (Score:5, Funny)
First leak : Obama is really an American.
Egypt just turned off all Internet access (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Egypt just turned off all Internet access (Score:4, Insightful)
So Julian Assange and WikiLeaks work brought about what Dubya said he wanted to do by attacking Iraq: spread democracy in the Middle East. For a lot less than the trillions of dollars and tens of hundreds of lives (including the much more valuable American lives).
Suck on that, Dubya..!
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So Julian Assange and WikiLeaks work brought about what Dubya said he wanted to do by attacking Iraq: spread democracy in the Middle East. For a lot less than the trillions of dollars and tens of hundreds of lives (including the much more valuable American lives).
Suck on that, Dubya..!
George Walker Bush was actively supporting the government of Egypt. Since many US presidents before him, although he and his father is perhaps the ones that has most utilised their services, Egypt have been a place where people is sent to be tortured on behalf of CIA and other US acronyms, or where people have been sent when the US government want them to be behind lock and shackle with no questions asked. [ This has of course never happened to anyone born in USA, just dirty foreigners, according to US pol
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If only the backbone's disconnected, what's to keep someone from setting up their own twitter-like system (I'm assuming it's too late to grab the identi.ca source, but one programmer can whip up a quick n' dirty twitter clone in a matter of hours) or just using an IRC channel served locally?
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Does he have a beautiful mane of white hair? Cause that's what I want in a leaker....
I'd prefer he wear heavy duty incontinence pads if he were visiting me.
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Looks like OpenLeaks is propped up by the Knight Foundation ... http://www.knightfoundation.org/ [knightfoundation.org] ... I demand talking cars! Damn It! Where are the talking cars!
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This second step makes him not "natural born."
Yeah but he is white.
Re:FL (Score:4, Funny)
Just hold on there, buster. I saw that so-called "birth certificate" with my own two eyes and I don't know about you but I could not feel that official seal no matter how hard I rubbed my screen (which ended up killing a whole bunch of them little pixies, something like 768 or so, that make up one-a them flat screens and even though the 14" LCD monitor that I bought at the Wal-Mart has a whole passel of them pixies, a bunch of dead ones right square in the middle of the screen kinda messes up the picture. Now it looks like that Bree Olsen (who is 100% white, by the way) has an extra nipple what with all them dead pixies, and an extra nipple does tend to spoil the mood, if you get my meaning). So not only did that Hussein Adolph Obama take my country, but now he's soiled Bree Olsen on top of it. Sumbitch.
But getting back to the so-called "birth certificate" of our phony-baloney president (man, I don't know a soul who voted for that muslin boy) you can tell it's phony because not one single true patriotic web site showed it. That's right. Not a one of them. Don't you think that if it was really his birth certificate then they'd want to clear this mess up with how it's got every right-thinking American ready to go to the mattresses and all?
No-sir. No citizen, No way. (by the way, I've copyrighted that phrase, so don't even think about putting it up on a bumper sticker without you send me a little taste first.
And by the way, I may be a dumb cracker, but I'm smart enough to know that the new Slashdot Zero looks like seven kinds of shit. I'm thinking of having a little talk with that Captain Tacobender or whatever that yankee pudknocker calls hisself and see if I can't persuade him to switch it back to something a little more loser-friendly.
When will they learn? (Score:3, Insightful)
Row row row FIGHT THE POWAH!
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Pretty much. Anything with enough demand just ends up turning into a game of Whack-a-Mole, internet or otherwise.
See the war on drugs as an example.
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My personal favorite is the war on alcohol, because that one was lost.
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Re:When will they learn? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Several of these new sites are honeypots for various governments.
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the grey hair principle... kill one and ten will come to the funeral.
and just look at Assange's hair. there's no stopping that flood.
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Wikileaks isnt down; Openleaks folks simply werent satisfied with how Assange was running things.
Lets not make this something it isnt.
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Seeing how not even the RIAA learned this lesson from fighting torrent sites, I'd think it translating to anybody else should be quite unlikely.
But maybe it did. The Egypt governemnt has simply cut all of the internet inside the country, that way no other site can appear and replace Twitter. No way that could backfire...
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I predict that OpenLeaks goes down hard because the organizational st
A long term trend? (Score:1)
This is something I wouldn't have predicted, and I'm wondering if it's going to be along term trend. It's potentially a powerful game changer, and with such power, comes massive responsibility and impact. I hope that those pushing the leaks keep a fairly balanced view of the world so the cause doesn't consume them and push them to the extremes. Because if that happens, it becomes worthless again (and very damaging).
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Like the social networking trends of the past few years, I believe the most widely-used leak site will end up being one that limits you to 140-character leaks, called "leets"
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You mean "tweeks"?
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Sort of like -- well, classical Journalism and it's past masters playing in the rarified air of honest, unbiased, confirmable reportage.
Ah, Edward R. Murrow, we do truly miss you.
And, P.J, we do truly revere you. It would be a sad, sad day if Groklaw ever left the tracks.
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This will happen. And the rationale? "teach those people not to do business with a company that does evil"
(hmmm...I saw this exact sentiment here today, regarding the wikileaks DDOS)
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dont leak to the wrong people (Score:1, Redundant)
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And see who they're coming from.
Re:dont leak to the wrong people (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Wikileaks system is set up so that Wikileaks does not know where the leaks came from. Even if the fate of the world depended on it, Julian Assange would not be able to prove that Bradley Manning was the one who sent the leaks that he allegedly sent.
Re:dont leak to the wrong people (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sort of like if Shakespeare or Mark Twain had chosen to write one act or chapter from each work before moving onto the second. Both men almost undoubtedly had a back log of ideas at various points and only a limited amount of resources with which to realize them.
Where is the advertising ? (Score:5, Insightful)
if you think material will just get carried into headlines and prime time news because of the contents, dont fool yourself - entire american public is unaware of what ACTA is, even as of now, despite it has been internationally fought over by all major players in the world. so, its indeed possible to keep public ignorant.
wikileaks is using the publicity assange generates through media and publicity stunts. in case you noticed, assange is always making the opening for a new leak a few weeks before it is published, and continuing to generate publicity for the upcoming leak.
you just dont create a dropbox and expect leaks to be seen by people. corporate contolled media WONT use it. they have successfully kept any potential leak in the dark since watergate, until wikileaks.
openleaks must find a way to make advertising.
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you just dont create a dropbox and expect leaks to be seen by people. corporate contolled media WONT use it. they have successfully kept any potential leak in the dark since watergate, until wikileaks. Openleaks must find a way to make advertising.
From their FAQ [openleaks.org]: "OpenLeaks is not involved in the direct editing and release of documents. Our intention is to function, as much as possible, as a mere conduit (akin to the telephone exchange and the post) between the whistleblower and an organization of their choice. This means that OpenLeaks does not accept submissions or publish leaked material directly. "
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Either case does not bode well for the organization.
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WL does not verify the authenticity of leaks by trusting the leaker, it normally verifies them simply by asking the original owner of the document if they are genuine*. Unless were talking about people who are trained to neither confirm or deny, the reaction of the owner is usually enough to confirm if the mater
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"...dont fool yourself - entire american public is unaware of what ACTA is, even as of now, despite it has been internationally fought over by all major players in the world. so, its indeed possible to keep public ignorant. "
You're probably right. But a good question is -- how the hell are the population of the US ever going to learn the truth if there isn't an unfiltered source of news they can read, thus forming their own opinions?
Curiosity, access, the whispered word -- people will find out if they're n
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Corporate-controlled media is controlled by corporations. They'll follow any action that will make them profit in the long term. If being the first to break a scandalous story to the world costs them two advertisers, but brings in enough viewers to make other advertisers more profitable, they'll do it. Their competitors will be forced to broadcast the story, just to keep up appearances. Sure, the government can ask for some story not to be reported, but any attempt to actually enforce such a request is just
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no megacorp will allow a syndicate under its reach to publish information that would damage billions of more profits in other sectors and guaranteed deals, dirty dealings, to gain a
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While there may not be any large independent media, each company does effectively operate independently. I doubt AOL Time Warner would particularly worry about publishing information damaging to News Corp, or vice versa. There also Gannett, Disney, and Comcast, and they all effectively hate each other. In fact, being such a large company is detrimental, because each division of each company must work with every other company, and nobody wants to make nice deals with the competition. Pay attention to any of
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While there may not be any large independent media, each company does effectively operate independently. I doubt AOL Time Warner would particularly worry about publishing information damaging to News Corp, or vice versa.
wow. excuse me, but you are WAY too naive. and your focus is off.
aol time warner wouldnt worry about publishing information damaging to news corp. but, both would not publish information that would damage bigger interests of their holders. just like how they acted in conjunction with acta et al.
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As an exercise in naivety, I searched [google.com] for reports on ACTA. The first results are from Ars Technica, which is run by Condé Nast Publications, and CNET, which is a part of CBS Corporation. It seems to me that both of those ought to be significant and reputable enough to become a trusted outlet for OpenLeaks.
Perhaps you'd like to provide a different example of this great conspiracy?
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Most of the general public is not touched by the ACTA directly. Especially the US public as it's primarily an attempt to spread existing US legislation to the rest of the world. It's the rest of the world that's actually really affected by this. For that alone it's no wonder the American public doesn't know/care about it.
And then the ACTA doesn't involve killing or violence against persons. That's also what keeps the general public less interested. Even with ACTA, bittorrent will continue to work and they
Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this argument is utter crap. Wikileaks offered an unedited version of Collateral Murder, and what they did edit they did to clarify things and in my opinion they didn't distort the content in any significant way.
Other documents they have edited have been to remove people's names and they'd have gotten more criticism if they hadn't done it.
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Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
A reporter, newscaster or presenter will report on the facts, a commentator gives opinion.
Fox News is all commentary and skew and flip stories. BBC News is mostly news casting, and only report on the fact, with no biased slant, in most cases.
Only time you see reporting getting slightly skewed at the BBC is when they are dealing with very sensitive subjects, for example they have embedded journalists in Iraq where the story is that given to them by the American and British forces, and is not representative of what is really going on. 'Collateral Murder' went through the press as the story given by the USA army that was totally inaccurate to what happened. The embedded journalists have to obey the news given out by the forces, if not agencies such as the BBC wont get on the front-line of what is happening. Wikileaks served to undo the PR machine that the US government have.
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Many facts have two faces, when seen from the opposite parties. Wars primarily so - even journalist reporting what they see will see and hear different things whether they are on the American side or on the Iraqi side. Even when reporting about the same facts. It is really really difficult to stick to pure observations without any interpretations, think the difference of "that child is shouting" and "that child is angry". The first is really an observation; the second could very well be an interpretation of
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Also Orwell was writing about the USSR in such a way as to get the message across that it could happen in your hometown if everything went wrong. He also sidestepped the ideologies that really are irrelevant if there is totalitarianism hiding behind them by setting it in a fictional place. It wasn't really prediction but extrapolation of the sort of thing that was already occurring and presenting it in such a way that people would take it seriously without bringing in their own ideological baggage.
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With the greatest possible respect, Orwell was writing about the UK.
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For example, the perpetual war with former allies who can change from one day to the next was directly modeled on the cold war which quickly followed WWII. The extreme rationing was directly modeled on the UK's rationing pol [wikipedia.org]
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Sorry to be blunt, but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
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A lot has been written about why 1984 is a lot like what Orwell learned of totalitarian USSR and Orwell's arguments a
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Are you dancing around the idea that it is possible to live in a world (inhabited by humans) where no secrets are necessary?
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It is quite obvious that I wrote nothing remotely related to what you have suggested LordLimecat.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry for double post... But I just went and watched the "full" video here [collateralmurder.com], and around 4:35-4:45, I very clearly see a cut. Is that how such videos generally work? Is there any reason to believe that too was not edited, or can we trust that THIS time, it was the full video?
And I thought the point of a site like wikileaks was to be a neutral, thrid party publishing site; sticking orwell quotes onto a video doesnt seem very neutral to me.
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Is there any reason to believe that too was not edited, or can we trust that THIS time, it was the full video?
You will be disappointed to find that you can't trust anyone. It is that simple. Even if Wikileaks is totally honest, the source could have distorted the documents. Or the original material was a honey pot.
And I thought the point of a site like wikileaks was to be a neutral, third party publishing site;
Where did you get that idea? Imagine, that wikileaks is a news organization, which publishes the original material. You can get one perspective from them directly, other perspective form other news organizations who republish their material, or you can see for yourself. If they just dumped the video, woul
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They should not insert commentary into the leaked material. It does immense damage to their credibility to claim "this is authentic war footage" and then have numerous cuts, tributes to the fallen, and drawn in lines etc inside the video.
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The full version has no drawn in lines, only extra is the subtitles. If you have problems with those, you are nitpicking. Now, why couldn't you download the frikin' video and verify yourself? That is the whole point of WL – you can see for yourself. But what is the point for them to do it, if even you can't be bothered to check.
It does not matter if you see it as manipulation (Score:2)
Almost nobody else is doing that. I'm
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THAT IS WHAT THEY HAVE DONE
There is also the other stuff that pisses you off with probably a heavy handed bias that you do not agree with (I have not seen that version). That doesn't really matter much because they are preaching to the converted and the "information as found" is also there. They should have taught you fairly early on in school that different news sources have a bias and I'll bet that just about everyone that has followed a link t
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Give it up and go after something real and not something better directed at any other news source on the planet.
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The point that IMHO renders your argument worthless is that for the moment wikileaks is about the only place where you CAN see their original source information for the information they distribute. To use your analogy it is the equivalent of a sober guy pointing at the drunks.
My point, which you keep pretending to miss (or maybe it's late or something), is that the argumen
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It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.
What news organization does do that? For that matter, what other news organization would also publish the raw footage (as wikileaks did)?
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The "collateral murder" highlights reel was all that was needed. When the soldiers shot the van that was collecting the bodies, that was a war crime.
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The US military has admitted the video is genuine by trying to defend the actions portrayed on it.
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It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views.
I disagree with the notion that wikileaks did edit the video to fit their personal views. They gunned down innocent civilians. Nothing in the longer version I saw changed that.
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It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views
Yes. The first is called a leak. The second is called journalism. Wikileaks has consistently done both at once; the unedited version of the Collateral Murder footage was released within seconds of the edited version, which as anyone who has compared them can attest does nothing more than remove dead time. Well, that and a rocket attack on a building which was occupied by families who lacked the option to leave at the time. Nice anti-wikileaks propaganda, though.
Re:Politics (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one thing to post documents on-line that Governments would rather keep secret. It's another to do like Wikileaks did and edit video to fit their personal views. If these sites would just post and not add their opinion; credibility would improve.
It's not unlikely you're trolling, but I'll respond just to be on the safe side.
The US military didn't just classify the video where a US attack helicopter shoots down journalists in Iraq - they lied to the court and claimed it didn't exist.
Wikileaks exposed that lie by leaking the video. They published both an edited version with commentary, and the complete, unedited version, so everyone could see for themselves that they didn't distort anything. That Wikileaks bothered to publish the unedited version, proves that they were honest. It's more than what a regular news agency does.
Of course, when they release unedited material, they get criticised for that too. It's used to argue that they're not "a real news agency", since "real news agencies" provide reports, not raw data, and this in turn is used to support bizarre arguments that they shouldn't have the same right to free speech as other news providers.
So whatever Wikileaks does, they get criticised. I think it's amazing they haven't made more mistakes than they have, considering the sheer amount of material they've received and the controversies surrounding it.
Openleaks is not what we need... (Score:4, Insightful)
So these guys plan to release only to 'need-to-know' news organizations, approved by themselves and some sort of vote process? Yeah, that'll work well. If the media won't touch a certain story shopped around by OpenLeaks, we'll never know about it. I don't trust OpenLeaks; I hope they fail hard.
Wikileaks had it right - public disclosure with a reasonable attempt to scrub names not directly responsible for the crimes being exposed.
Re:Openleaks is not what we need... (Score:5, Insightful)
So some people want to try their own hands at helping.
I hope they fail hard.
You want them to fail because they're not helping in the way you want them to.
Rush Limbaugh, is that you again?
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No, he's right. They need to fail. Basically, they're setting themselves up as a "more responsible" place to leak your information. But if the media doesn't want to air that information (because it goes against their own agenda), then it just goes nowhere. Hopefully the leaker won't have been caught by that time, and can leak it to someone better (WikiLeaks), but if they get caught before then, then the public will never see that information.
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What's to stop someone from leaking to multiple places?
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Simple: what's the point of leaking to OpenLeaks, if you're also going to leak to WikiLeaks? Presumably, you'd want to leak to OL because they're supposedly more "responsible" and will make sure the information is vetted or whatever and only released "responsibly" by mainstream news sources (yeah right), whereas WL will pretty much just throw it right up on the website, perhaps after redacting some names. Releasing to both would be pointless.
Now, you could also release to some other leaks site, but how ma
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The part about "Even goes so far as to brag the Times publishes documents too, not just editorial gloss of them. Then carefully preens shamelessly about how the Times met repeatedly with US government representatives to vet Wikileaks documents before publication." ie from
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
"Dean Baquet, our Washington bureau chief, gave the White House an early warning on Nov. 19. The follo
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I believe that while it's small initially, they're looking at scaling it up, such that there will be a LOT of different users (organizations), which are trusted.
This then allows them to "safely" disseminate the raw information to the various parties, as opposed to having to filter and censor it like WikiLeaks does.
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I suspect most leakers:
a) Favour wide dispersal of the leaks.
b) Will trust Wikileaks, who put their own asses on the line, over some largely anonymous information brokers with no direct capability to publish.
I also think the OpenLeaks strat
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I concur. I tried to become a member and wasn't allowed to. OpenLeaks is not open but closed. Useless.
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I
hmmm (Score:3)
Where's the Open ? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's nothing really open about openleaks. Its more a dropbox which is then piped to news agents.
Should have called it closed-except-to-journalistleaks , but I expect the domain was already taken.
Its only a matter of time (Score:2)
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Freenet? (Score:2)
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I guess that's it. Maybe if Freenet had a moderating system...
Let the leak war begin! (Score:3)
5 minutes later, Wikileaks retaliated by posting Openleak's SQL database password.
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It's exactly what they're are doing! Lemmings!
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Why can't whistleblowers just post their dirt to facebook? With their commitment to protecting users' data, it'd be all over the place in no time.
Unless Zuckerberg grabs it up to auction to the highest bidder.
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Because whistleblowers need the protection of anonymity. That's why we have whistleblower laws.
Re:Legit or Government sponsored? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikileaks did not expose Manning -- Manning did by being an idiot and talking about it. Assange did not blow the whistle, he merely published it, and is deliberately non-anonymous in order to be the Wikileaks Drama Lightning Rod, or something.
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Because the people making leaks would rather not be thrown in prison, sued for everything they could ever earn, have a mysterious accident, have their families brutally massacred or be disappeared through extraordinary rendition. The whole point of wikileaks was to protect the source from identification and therefore harm.
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Just because you don't like what's been leaked does not mean that there's a political bias involved. It's much more likely that the decisions are being made based upon the levels of interest and an attempt at providing for the
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Wiki-Leaks seemed to be a bit one sided. Leaking information that fits with their agenda, and keeping out other information.
I have no idea where you're coming from with this statement. Wikileaks is exposing the corruption of power, be it in politics, bureaucracy, the banking sector, wherever. The information they've released is relevant for all Americans to understand their power structure -- regardless of any political stripe (note they don't favour the Democrats over the Republicans), as well as those whose countries wheel and deal behind closed doors with the United States.
While I think it would be very helpful to have a
It won't be FARE but will be FAIR (Score:2)
Can we stop this nonsense right here. We're an English centric community, which WikiLeaks is apart of. Is it surprising then, that most of the leaks, involve us? In these instances we've been behaving badly, and as such, they're mostly going to be negative.
Would you employ some sort of rating and quota system, such that we release 1 for every country, and go out of our way to balance it? What if we don't have access to material?
We're more interested in ourselves, and not our neighbours, because of this you'