11 ms·
If they really have something that important, why would they drum up attention and wait like sitting ducks, instead of publishing it ASAP?
by andr 17y ago
If they really have something that important, why would they drum up attention and wait like sitting ducks, instead of publishing it ASAP?
- Confusion 17y agoBecause publishing something takes time and computer access, both of which they may not have had.
- SlyShy 17y agoWikileaks publishes memos, reports, that sort of concrete evidence. I don't think they would officially publish their first hand reports without first trying to get some kind of confirmation through a leaked government file on them, for example.
- eob 17y agoTwo reasons: First, the "confession" -- whosever they are trying to elicit -- has more value if given out of paranoia. Think about it this way: you have a brief glimpse into something wrong that happened, but you don't know the full story. Let's say you know 10% of the full story. If you come forward with the evidence, the accused party need only acknowledge or refute the 10% that you've divulged. However if you make them think you know a whole lot more than 10%, you might end up pressuring them to give a confession that will reveal a much larger amount of the wrong deed. Second, pressuring a government to admit wrongdoing is better PR for Wikileaks than disclosing leaked information. Wikileaks is treading on delicate territory already with their mission statement. When classified information becomes whistleblower-deserving information is a debatable topic. Because of this, Wikileaks has to manage their PR very carefully, lest they be viewed as the enemy-to-all, friend-to-none. By pressuring organizations to admit wrongdoing rather than publicly accusing them of it, it's a win-win: the information gets out, and WikiLeaks doesn't have to be in the press again for leaking "stolen" information.
- eob 17y agoStill, I think the idea of a small amateur (as far as spycraft is concerned) organization pressuring the DoD like this is insane. They're risking their own wellbeing.
- rbanffy 17y ago> They're risking their own wellbeing. For a good cause, that is. One that benefits us all.
- runinit 17y agoInformation in the ultimate weapon and the internet is the ideal vector for attack.
- Estragon 17y agoI don't understand why this comment is being voted up. What does it mean, and how does it relate to the comment it's responding to?
- k33n 17y agoIt means that the free and open exchange of information is the public's best weapon against corruption.
- dkimball 17y agoIf that's so, why is Africa still a mess? We have no shortage of knowledge about the scale of corruption south of the Sahara (and north of it); the problem is that those who are prepared to fight in, let's say, Nigeria and those who want to stop corruption in Nigeria are seldom the same people. In the end, weapons are the most important weapons. If a group of people no longer care about anything but their own power, and they're armed, the thing to do is to deprive them of those arms -- not to catalog their abuses and trust in the power of words.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoPossibly to draw more attention and support. They've been having funding issues lately; they might think this is a good way to get out from under that. Of course, it'll backfire if this turns out to be insignificant, a la the recent documents that they claimed were evidence of the U.S. trying to "shut them down".
- barrkel 17y agoI'd feel a lot more inclined to donate if they were clearer about where the money went and why they need so much for what amounts to a moderated and anonymized public file share.
- rms 17y agoIt seems quite likely that they have extraordinary legal costs and that they can't afford to release new info without the safe funds for their their legal defense.
- smackfu 17y agoIIRC, it was basically funding a couple of salaries. Which uses up money a lot faster than hosting costs. Edit: Oops, it's apparently $600k to fully fund with salaries, and $200k to just fund operations. Still seems crazy high.
- biafra 17y agoIt seems high but they are not hosting this information on an easily rented server. First they have to anonymize the data but keep it as authentic as possible. Second (and this is directly from one of the operators of WikiLeaks) they have to host it in a way that it crosses at least 3 jurisdictions from them to you. They were operating this out of their own pockets. Donations were scarce when they just asked (for years for it) but were still online. When they took away the information and asking for donations they went way up. I did not like this to but he explained it, and it made sense to me. The one person I personally know from WikiLeaks has been online 20 minutes ago. So at least he seems to be fine.
- trin_ 17y agoi think they talked about this in the past. they thought it was a problem that almost nobody picked the storys up in depth so they thought about changing the release model. they talked about releasing stuff a few days earlier for the press so that they can have people digging through the (often enormous amounts of) releases to prepare articles.
- dunk010 17y agoYeah, I read that in a wired article. It makes sense, and if one press organisation is going to put the time in to comb over the data then they usually need an incentive, like getting the exclusive.
- barrkel 17y agoWhen you submit something to Wikileaks, you can set an embargo date. But this current stream of tweets is a bit dramatic. If it's just some random infrared kill shot like that old Apache hit ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/audiovideo/apachehit.mpg http://www.globalresearch.ca/audiovideo/apachehit.mpg ), then it'll hurt Wikileaks' credibility to some degree.
- molesy 17y agoAlways love when people show that video without the several minutes of verification, obvious tossing of the RPG, etc.