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WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal in Early 2011
- _delirium 16y agoThe full-article version of this is currently on the front page: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1952037 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1952037
- FirstHopSystems 16y agoLeaking US Government data could seen as a threat to US interests. Now leaking business information could be seen a threat to many interests. Now It's easy to play the shift blame game if anything happened to the people behind Wikileaks. In the beginning it would have been easy to assume it was the US government taking convert action. Now who knows how many ways this could be twisted to hide the actions of any acting party. Governments love secrets. Corporations love money. If your going to play information warfare you might want to do a little bit of risk assessment.
- robryan 16y agoI would assume those behind Wikileaks have a system in place such that information they already have will be released one way or another even if something happened to them.
- xxpor 16y agoWikileaks has had an encrypted file on their server titled 'insurance' for a while now. See: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks-insurance-file/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks-insurance...
- FirstHopSystems 16y agoif that server has collected information on it. It can be considered leaked. It's out of their control. I would think any interesting information could be considered all ready in the queue. If I wanted to do damage control the best option is to stop any addition of information to that server. It was mentioned that Wikileaks redacts information.I'm sure it only a matter of time before that information "Leaks" as well.
- Xurinos 16y agoSeems to me they could use a service similar to http://deadmansswitch.org/ http://deadmansswitch.org/ for extra insurance. Diversify your insurance.
- steveklabnik 16y agoI'm sure something like that is in control of the password.
- jdminhbg 16y agoWorld Events To Unveil Major Bank Scandal in Late 2008
- borism 16y agowhich one?
- brown9-2 16y agoAre there good reasons to wait to release the documents other than to maximize publicity and fund-raising abilities?
- steveklabnik 16y agoThey've been redacting information in every leak so far. I'm not sure who could get killed if some bank information is public, but if they have a lot of documents, this could take some time.
- FirstHopSystems 16y agoKilling would be a bit extreme, Discrediting would be another option. Leaking a bunch of fabricated information could harm Wikileaks. Much of the information can't be verified.It's up to a single source(Wikileaks) to vouch for a proper source. I'm sure somewhere Elvis is still alive in one of those documents. He's being kept in safe place guarded by Bigfoot.
- eftpotrm 16y agoGet it wrong and they could quite easily cause a run and bring down a bank. That'd be unlikely to cause deaths but could very easily cause personal and corporate bankruptcies.
- robryan 16y agoMaximizing publicity is important, if you actually want to enact positive change as a result of what is being revealed. If everything was released at once there wouldn't be any focused attention and easier for those effected to try and deflect attention. It's also an interesting way to put all banks on notice for their behaviors, as unless they know more than us they would all consider it's possible that their documents have been leaked.
- joe_the_user 16y agoI'm sad they didn't release this first. Despite all the shouting, I haven't hear of anything terribly scandalous in the diplomatic cables. I strongly suspect that despite the revelations of 2008, the banking system would yield some notably juicy tidbits.
- abi 16y agoNot all of the quarter million cables have been leaked, if I recall correctly.
- jonknee 16y agoThat's a large understatement, only a few hundred have been leaked. Update: "Currently released so far... 278 / 251,287" http://cablegate.wikileaks.org http://cablegate.wikileaks.org
- abi 16y agoPretty sure (but can't find source at the moment) that that number only reflects the cables on the wikileaks website itself. The number of cables released to newspapers is significantly higher but not a quarter million.
- mryan 16y agoAccording to a Guardian video I watched yesterday, all of their (the Guardian's) stories so far have been based on "a couple of hundred" cables, which seems to suggest the media does not have to full set yet either.
- ugh 16y agoBut dozens of journalists have gone through them and found nothing more interesting than what amounts to politics gossip. How can you believe that journalists would only publish the boring stuff after having access to everything?
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- hugh3 16y agoOkay, I'm bored with the wikileaks hype machine now. If you're gonna leak something go ahead and leak it, don't build it up for months on end and then reveal something disappointingly prosaic, like you have the last few times.
- abi 16y agoWhile I agree with you that the content of the last few releases have been fascinating but mostly inconsequential. The reason given for staggering the releases is a good one: if you released it all at the same time, each individual issue would not get as much attention. Assange also states that Wikileaks makes a promise (among other promises such as to protect their identity) to its informants to try to achieve the maximum possible impact on the world due to their leak.
- FirstHopSystems 16y agoIt could also be a way to spread the ideology of leaking information. I'm sure there is more than just a strategy to leak the information they have, but to add momentum to the whole idea. Undertaking such a controversial objective could be backed up by a belief. It seems giving the sensitive nature one would assume there are larger objectives involved than the attention created, or it could be as simple as that. You can stop an organization, but an idea........
- MrFlibble 16y agoI also see it as following the motion picture marketing model. Build interest months before the release, develop buzz, and then increase that to a countdown ramp-up. Seems to work quite well, and indeed you are correct it does keep individual issues from getting lost in the release process quite well.
- ntoshev 16y agoBuilding hype and waiting and releasing information in parts also dilutes the Wikileaks brand as a publisher of important information, so there is a trade-off involved.
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- aguynamedben 16y agoHaha, Error establishing a database connection. http://img.skitch.com/20101130-brk11r16h3cy86ryxd9sbitr7e.jpg http://img.skitch.com/20101130-brk11r16h3cy86ryxd9sbitr7e.jp...
- samt 16y agoI'm having a hard time imagining what could be more scandalous than enriching the super-rich, looting the middle class and leaving the US economy in the shitter for years to come. That's old news.
- awakeasleep 16y agoAnything less vague.
- ugh 16y agoActual black-on-white proof that they are aware of doing just that and want to do just that? This is your little editorialization, some people agree, some don’t.
- btmorex 16y agoIf this doesn't literally bring down a major bank, it's already been overhyped (and it was just announced).
- MrFlibble 16y agoWhat worries me is that while the government may inefficiently try to haul Assange into court and call him a terrorist, the banking & finance elite may just decide he should have an "accident." I wouldn't put it past them.
- mkramlich 16y ago> He confirmed that WikiLeaks has damaging, unpublished material from pharmaceutical companies, finance firms (aside from the upcoming bank release), and energy companies, just to name a few industries. It's almost as if Forbes is sending out a big heads up to various Republican power interests to say, "Ok, he's coming after you guys next." Could serve as a call to action for some.
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago> He confirmed that WikiLeaks has damaging, unpublished material from pharmaceutical companies, finance firms (aside from the upcoming bank release), and energy companies, just to name a few industries. The thing that I dislike most about this is Wikileaks alone gets to choose the conversations we have based solely on what they decide to publish. While it was understandable for anything that might actually be life threatening, it doesn't feel right for other types of information. I don't believe Wikileaks is an objective enough steward to get to decide all of the conversations we are going to have about information that was leaked to them. If you want me to believe you are impartial, dump it all; otherwise, you are trying to manipulate me just like Fox News does.
- l0nwlf 16y agoAnd how many of them will read the dump ? Will it create the impact as it is doing now ? Doesn't this fails the purpose of existance of wikileaks or say any whistleblower site.
- psn 16y agoOK, you're running a small non-profit organisation. You get a subset of the records of anglo irish bank, say a truck load's worth. (this is a example, not the current thing they are generating spin about). While most of these documents are in the public interest in Ireland and Europe (Anglo Irish bank have been on life support in Ireland for 2 years now, the money needed to keep it afloat has forced the IMF to bail out the Irish government) some aren't, for example records for customers. At this point, you need to get someone to read though millions of words and decide what to release. If you have money, you ring up the local temp agency and get a load of people to do it for you for minimum wage. However, wikileaks doesn't have money. They have to pick what piles of documents are worth reading though. I agree that its sucky, and would much prefer a system in which wikileaks had the resources to leak more stuff and were not picking and choosing what to release. However, I understand why wikileaks does what it does.
- wnoise 16y ago> Wikileaks alone gets to choose the conversations we have based solely on what they decide to publish. There's an entire ecosystem of media (ranging from MSM to bloggers) that sets the conversations. Picking out one small element and giving it this massive importance really isn't accurate. It's true that they editorialize by choosing what to cover and what not to. So do all news media. Don't you remember the NY times sitting on the warrantless wiretapping story for over a year? If you don't like the messages being pushed you have one option -- start using your own printing press. Create another site dedicated to publishing leaks,with your own editorial policy, such as "publish everything as soon as you get it".
- poet 16y agoHilarious to see the questions about Mudge in there. The interviewer is a sharp guy.
- wslh 16y agoWaiting for WikiLeaks clones all around the world!
- willhf 16y agoThe solution to the wikileaks hype parade: Someone needs to start leaking stuff from wikileaks.
- nikcub 16y agoOh Wikileaks, first we learn that the USA thinks poorly of Iran, and now we learn that the banks are corrupt. Shock. Horror.