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The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters
- rdl 17y agoI still am confused by the WikiLeaks budget request -- $200k minimum exclusive of salaries per year just to keep the lights on? $600k with a couple salaries? JYA did this with cryptome for YEARS as a hobby.
- pavs 17y agoI pointed this out on Reddit and am getting accused of being a spook. http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/bj7x5/wikileaks_is_still_down_i_have_just_donated_25/c0n1oqz http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/bj7x5/wikileaks_...
- avar 17y agoI posted something similar there yesterday which wasn't too ill received: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/biz27/all_the_recent_news_about_wikileaks_has_reminded/c0n06pa http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/biz27/all_the_re...
- viraptor 17y agoEven though I agree that the figures are strangely high, I wouldn't actually hold it against them if they just said they want to keep some for themselves. If they're really followed by spooks, detained and threatened - I guess they could use some reward for all of that. It's not something you sign up for with the minimal wage. (when they went public about those incidents, I assumed they're at least a bit worried about "disappearing") But yeah - showing what is the money spent for would be a good idea.
- netcan 17y agoWell normally I would say that I don't like that line of thinking, how much they deserve to keep, but this is a nonprofit. Isn't it? I wouldn't be surprised if people don't want to pay them high salaries voluntarily.
- Andys 17y agoPerhaps someone will leak their budget document.. if only there was a suitable place to leak it to.
- p0ppe 17y agohttp://www.wikileak.org http://www.wikileak.org did publish a Wikileaks partial financial donors list. It also ended up on wikileaks.org. See https://p10.secure.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/wikileak/2009/02/follow-the-money---wikileaksorg-partial-donors-list-email.html https://p10.secure.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/ssl/wikil...
- ErrantX 17y agoNo, keeping money for themselves is a massive conflict of interest. If they were doing that I don't think I could really trust what they had to say any more.
- mixmax 17y agoJournalists are paid too, can't you trust them either?
- ErrantX 17y agoNo. Not blindly anyway. But they are being openly paid by X media organisation with Y leanings. It's possible to adjust for bias etc. For a start no one knows who funds Wikileaks.
- borism 17y agothat is just not true
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- ErrantX 17y agowhich part? Im happy to be proven wrong but you need to give me a bit more of a clue :)
- youngian 17y agoNo, it's very clear who funds Wikileaks. Individual donors do. They make it clear that they do not accept money from governments or corporations. They are, in general, very open about their finances, and the information is not difficult to find.
- ErrantX 17y agoI apologise because I struggled to find anything but the leak from a little while ago. I couldn't find a comprehensive list of donors. No Governments and corporates is obviously a good policy. But that does not mean individuals with an agenda are not involved. What if it came to light that, to pick a random ott example, senior Chinese officials were personally donating? All I'm pointing out is that it is unclear where their complete funding comes from; making it difficult to filter for any bias. If they take no personal payment that becomes a little easier, for me anyway, to sync.
- noodle 17y agothey incur some pretty massive legal fees, afaik. i saw a thing where they justified the numbers, at some point, but i can't find it. will edit once i find.
- apsec112 17y agoNot true. "We don’t have to pay for our lawyer’s time. Hundred of thousands or millions dollars’ worth of lawyer time are being donated. But we still have to pay things like photocopying and court filing. And so far we have never lost a case, there were no penalties or compensations to pay." - http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-economy-of-wikileaks/ http://stefanmey.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/leak-o-nomy-the-ec...
- Retric 17y agoA solid fraction of 200k, massive legal fees, and things like photocopying and court filing can be the same thing. Court costs add up fast. If they where paying for everything then you would expect 10's of million / per year in legal fees.
- ismarc 17y agoI personally lost all respect for how WikiLeaks does business after I offered several servers and was told that they didn't even want me maintaining login access to them. So I offered my development skills to help improve their setup and never heard back. I especially dislike the holding of their information hostage until they reach their donation limit. If it's server/capacity, just let it be slow, go down to only a couple of servers.
- rdl 17y agoThe only real value they provide is the anonymization of submissions -- there are technical ways to do this, but most people with information won't know about those technologies beforehand. Authenticating the information could be done with a cryptographic signature, possibly by an unknown signer. Operate on the "last 100 0-days signed by this key when initially published were good, #101 is probably good too" basis, to build a brand. The problem of maintaining a nice repository for the information is much much simpler, once it's already online. Google could do this for most data (just include a special string in the file), and for stuff google won't touch, there are plenty of people who would pass it around informally.
- grandalf 17y agoFortunately Google is going to help out by hosting a wikileaks server, as part of its goal of ending government censorship.
- itistoday 17y agoWhere did you hear that from? Or are you being facetious?
- grandalf 17y agofacetious. Google should actually take a real stand against censorship.
- stuntmouse 17y agoYou're a one man spam army on this idea of Google hosting a WikiLeaks mirror... Not to say it's not a good idea, but I don't think this is the place for such pestering.
- grandalf 17y agohaha... Well I feel sort of bad doing it b/c I love google... I just think it needs to be pointed out. It might help people realize a) the silliness of Google pretending to be fighting censorship and b) that they should donate to wikileaks.
- sgift 17y ago"Nor can we accept government or corporate funding and maintain our absolute integrity." from their fundrising drive section. The last time I've looked Google was a company.
- grandalf 17y agoI think Google would have far more impact upon wikileaks via pagerank tweaks than via funding (if it wanted to). But in any case if Sergey had any balls he'd make a public statement praising wikileaks. It doesn't take balls to criticize the Chinese government.
- karzeem 17y agoThis whole saga is probably the best thing that could happen to WikiLeaks. Huge increase for their visibility, which in turn increases the value of the role they play.
- lotharbot 17y agoProvided that they're not currently being played by some intelligence org that fed them bogus data. A huge increase in visibility leading up to a huge flameout could set them back years. ----- This whole saga seems to me like WikiLeaks is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they style themselves as the intelligence organization of the people, doing serious and valuable work releasing information in the people's interests. On the other hand, they get upset when other intelligence organizations try to bully them, and they play the "mean CIA detained a 17 year old kid" card. Wikileaks provides a valuable service, but they need to tread carefully. Releasing the wrong information could get some of our spies killed. If that happens, I suspect the CIA "bullying" will get much more severe.
- _delirium 17y agoSome parts of the leaked anti-Wikileaks document don't seem too objectionable. For example, one of the main recommendations that Salon highlights, and appears shocked by, is that the government should deter leaks by identifying and firing the individuals responsible. Isn't that totally normal and expected policy, though? If some CIA or Pentagon documents get leaked, the obvious response is going to be them trying to figure out who leaked them.
- grandalf 17y agoWhen a government employee leaks a document, a crime has been committed. The government's job in this case is to prevent its employees from committing crimes. If instead it takes on its own propaganda effort do discredit a private nonprofit, something stinks. The CIA is largely a propaganda organization, by the way. One wonders how many Iranian tweets are being funded by US tax dollars and CIA operations. In my opinion it's completely scary to think that there might be a campaign to discredit wikileaks, but it's a huge relief to see that that document was itself leaked, suggesting that at least some government employees are aware of possible excesses committed by their departments. If a government agency wanted to discredit wikileaks and didn't feel empowered to simply assassinate the people running it, it could use all sorts of time tested approaches to discredit/discourage it.
- mhansen 17y agoThe CIA is largely a propaganda organization [citation needed]
- barrkel 17y agoI don't think this is seriously in question, is it? For an historical example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird .
- mhansen 17y agoThanks for the example. Yes, it was a serious question - I thought the CIA was largely an intelligence gathering agency. I hadn't heard of this before.
- ErrantX 17y agoOf course, there's a personal psychology to it, that I enjoy crushing bastards, I like a good challenge, so do a lot of the other people involved in WikiLeaks. We like the challenge. It's comments like this that regularly put me off Wikileaks. If you do the job they do then I believe very strongly you should be driven by a desire for truth (not a desire to crush anyone) and also be objective. I don't always 100% see that in their actions.
- brandnewlow 17y agoNo one crazy enough to work on wikileaks would be in it for something as intangible as "the truth." At least these guys are willing to admit they're after the adrenaline rush one gets from destroying people you disagree with.
- ErrantX 17y agodestroying people you disagree with. Isn't there a slight irony there... (in the use of the word destroy). If that is their aim I don't think Wikileaks can really take the moral high ground over the recently released intelligence document concerning them ;) something as intangible as "the truth." Possibly truth was an unfortunate choice of word. "Objective" was the key part i meant to get across.
- borism 17y agoagain, i'm tired of repeating this, but wikileaks, at least to my mind, is not a news organization, it's a medium for whistleblowers to release information. can't be objective! it's a job for news organizations and journalists (some of whom might be supporters or volunteers of wikileaks) to analyze and present this released information objectively.
- ErrantX 17y ago> can't be objective! I disagree in the strongest way; they can and should, in my view, be entirely neutral/objective in how they release information. Im interested in how it is arguable they should be allowed to put their opinion or spin onto a release and it be considered ok?
- modeless 17y agoYet another link that's broken on the iPhone due to a botched mobile site implementation. When will they learn?
- eelco 17y agoClick on 'full site', go back to HN and try again.
- Hopka 17y agoI'm getting a 404 on that link. Here's Google's Cache: http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache:U4sLRJe_pBUJ:www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks+site:http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=safari http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache:U4sLRJe_pBUJ:www.salon....
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoI support the idea of open government enormously. We make too many things secret, and a government with so much secrecy is not responsive to its citizens. Having said that, I also support the idea that some things -- some very few things -- should be kept secret. Wikileaks does not seem to discriminate between these things. Therefore I cannot in good conscience support Wikileaks with their mission to make everything they find public. If, as the article indicates, they're in it for personal kicks then that makes it all the worse. It's 2010. You'd think the average person/whistleblower would have enough ability to self-publish for the entire world to see, right? If Wikileaks isn't providing some kind of independent, third-party vetting or creating some standards for what can be published or not, what value do they bring to the table?
- rbanffy 17y ago> Wikileaks does not seem to discriminate between these things. And how can someone without a clear view of the whole picture distinguish between both? And who do you want to arbitrate what should and what should not be secret?
- dkimball 17y agoI think the test should be whether the document has moral or just tactical significance. To give examples from the article: Guantanamo Bay interrogation manual? Moral significance; leak. Possible US use of chemical weapons? Moral significance; leak. US order of battle for 2009? No moral significance; don't leak. And in the interest of fairness: Al-Qaida interrogation manual? Leak. We need a picture of both/all sides' dirty laundry, and Wikileaks doesn't really give that.
- rbanffy 17y ago> We need a picture of both/all sides' dirty laundry, and Wikileaks doesn't really give that. Just don't expect Wikileaks to be a one-stop-shop for leaked documents. And, BTW, I doubt Al Qaeda has such a document. That's not their style to document everything. One may interpret that as one of their major tactical strengths.
- dailo10 17y agoKey quotes from the article: "At exactly the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and exposure have failed. The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial constraints... The need for independent leaks and whistle-blowing exposures is particularly acute now because, at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated. This is exemplified by the type of public opinion management campaign detailed by the above-referenced CIA Report, the Pentagon's TV propaganda program exposed in 2008, and the ways in which private interests covertly pay and control supposedly "independent political commentators" to participate in our public debates and shape public opinion."