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I really share this feeling especially during the past 7 months while the fund-raising was ongoing. Now, to be more practical and maybe start an implementation

by adulau 16y ago

I really share this feeling especially during the past 7 months while the fund-raising was ongoing. Now, to be more practical and maybe start an implementation of a distributed Wikileaks. There are two processes : the submission process and the distribution process. I think the distribution process is easy with Git or any distributed VCS. The submission process is more tricky as this is involving a human/social process to merge content into the distribution "branch". The submission process could be "à la" HN where there is a way to up/down vote a submission. When the submission is reaching a defined level, the submission is released for distribution. In this is case, the submission network is still centralized but the distribution part is really decentralized. For submission process decentralization, distributed ticketing (e.g. http://ditz.rubyforge.org/ http://ditz.rubyforge.org/ ) could be used to show status of a submission within a same git repository but showing/merging only submission reaching a level in its ticket. Just an idea... Update : my humble comment is just on some technical aspect. The social/legal/human aspect of Wikileaks is something much more complex...

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
furyg3 16y ago
Submission for leaks (usually) also involves some sort of authentication, however. And that authentication needs to be kept confidential. The result is that there's no way around a 'trusted' provider who signs releases, and that will inherently be a personality like Assange. Simply relying on a reddit-style submission method would lead to a worse form of reddit. Currently you can evaluate whether or not you 'trust' content submitted to reddit by looking at the site hosting it (is the content from the NYT or a random blog?). For a wikileaks-reddit, all submissions would have to be anonymous, and you'd have no idea what is a real leak or not.
- avar 16y ago
  There's no need for a trusted singular provider. You can just implement this sort of thing as a circle of trust. A leak could be made by anyone. But content would only be published on somerandomsite.com if it has been digitally signed by someone. Who that someone is could be configurable. wikileaks.com would be things that are only signed by Assange, but you could spin up your own site with your own signing policies.

by adulau 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

furyg3 16y ago

Submission for leaks (usually) also involves some sort of authentication, however. And that authentication needs to be kept confidential. The result is that there's no way around a 'trusted' provider who signs releases, and that will inherently be a personality like Assange. Simply relying on a reddit-style submission method would lead to a worse form of reddit. Currently you can evaluate whether or not you 'trust' content submitted to reddit by looking at the site hosting it (is the content from the NYT or a random blog?). For a wikileaks-reddit, all submissions would have to be anonymous, and you'd have no idea what is a real leak or not.

avar 16y ago
There's no need for a trusted singular provider. You can just implement this sort of thing as a circle of trust. A leak could be made by anyone. But content would only be published on somerandomsite.com if it has been digitally signed by someone. Who that someone is could be configurable. wikileaks.com would be things that are only signed by Assange, but you could spin up your own site with your own signing policies.