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Wikileaks is like Napster. It's a single point that can be taken down. The future of "leaking" or whistleblowing will look much more like the bittorrent sites

Wikileaks is like Napster. It's a single point that can be taken down. The future of "leaking" or whistleblowing will look much more like the bittorrent sites that came after it. The governments don't realize it yet, but having Wikileaks as a focal point was a benefit because it could presumably be negotiated with. Wikileaks has actively attempted to prevent people from being physically hurt or killed by classified leaks by working through journalists and factcheckers at newspapers and magazines to redact some information. However, mere embarrassment isn't a quality standard by which to withhold information from the public. Other groups won't necessarily be so discerning. The governments trying to prevent Wikileaks from operating will ultimately be faced with much more distributed and fragmented leaking sites.

joe_the_user 16y ago
The governments don't realize it yet, but having Wikileaks as a focal point was a benefit because it could presumably be negotiated with. I am not sure that government doesn't realize this. I suspect that government has to talk as if Wikileaks is the devil for it's own credibility regardless of the benefit they might perceive they're deriving from the situation or how much worse the situation might turn out for them later. In fact, having a fixed enemy to freeze and discredit is immensely useful. Makes you wonder why they haven't found Bin Laden yet... ...Perhaps Wikileaks will exist forever with Julian Assange continually shunted from country to country while all manner of intelligence agencies think-up new ways to discredit and/or control him. Or Perhaps he can just join Osama "somewhere in Pakistan"... well, it would make a fine movie...
- notahacker 16y ago
  Whilst talking tough and doing nothing is probably the most sensible position as well as the default, I don't think "the governments" are sufficiently co-ordinated to have a coherent strategy for dealing with centralised whistleblowers. I'm sure there are some agencies motivated to get carefully selected (and quite possibly false) helpful material "leaked" onto Wikileaks whilst other agencies sincerely do what they can to try to get the operation shut down. Net result: a huge amount of attention is drawn to Wikileaks by leaning on their support network despite the relative lack of dynamite and large amount of noise in what is leaked, but some of the most ardent supporters of government policy amongst the general public are too angry with the very existence of the website to consider reading it...
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Caveat: I don't really know the relation between State Department, Defense Department, intelligence agencies, lobbyists and who-the-fuck-knows .. but to follow my earlier random speculation... Sure the various agencies as a whole aren't well coordinated or able to act against the present whistleblowers. But hypothesis would be that the smaller-groups-that-matter are coordinated enough. And they're the ones whose secrets matter too. They're the "historical actors" and big bureaucracies are just guff. Sure, the bureaucracies are following their standard procedures and so-forth. And yes, creating a large mob angry at Wikileaks is useful. I'm sure we can use that for something - we've got some copyright infringement to stop...
kmfrk 16y ago
We are already seeing this with WikiLeaks's mysterious "Insurance" file that is spread through its peers.[1] Regardless of what it is, it's a clever strategy gambit by Assange. [1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/wikileaks_insur.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/wikileaks_insu...

joe_the_user 16y ago

The governments don't realize it yet, but having Wikileaks as a focal point was a benefit because it could presumably be negotiated with. I am not sure that government doesn't realize this. I suspect that government has to talk as if Wikileaks is the devil for it's own credibility regardless of the benefit they might perceive they're deriving from the situation or how much worse the situation might turn out for them later. In fact, having a fixed enemy to freeze and discredit is immensely useful. Makes you wonder why they haven't found Bin Laden yet... ...Perhaps Wikileaks will exist forever with Julian Assange continually shunted from country to country while all manner of intelligence agencies think-up new ways to discredit and/or control him. Or Perhaps he can just join Osama "somewhere in Pakistan"... well, it would make a fine movie...

notahacker 16y ago
Whilst talking tough and doing nothing is probably the most sensible position as well as the default, I don't think "the governments" are sufficiently co-ordinated to have a coherent strategy for dealing with centralised whistleblowers. I'm sure there are some agencies motivated to get carefully selected (and quite possibly false) helpful material "leaked" onto Wikileaks whilst other agencies sincerely do what they can to try to get the operation shut down. Net result: a huge amount of attention is drawn to Wikileaks by leaning on their support network despite the relative lack of dynamite and large amount of noise in what is leaked, but some of the most ardent supporters of government policy amongst the general public are too angry with the very existence of the website to consider reading it...
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Caveat: I don't really know the relation between State Department, Defense Department, intelligence agencies, lobbyists and who-the-fuck-knows .. but to follow my earlier random speculation... Sure the various agencies as a whole aren't well coordinated or able to act against the present whistleblowers. But hypothesis would be that the smaller-groups-that-matter are coordinated enough. And they're the ones whose secrets matter too. They're the "historical actors" and big bureaucracies are just guff. Sure, the bureaucracies are following their standard procedures and so-forth. And yes, creating a large mob angry at Wikileaks is useful. I'm sure we can use that for something - we've got some copyright infringement to stop...

kmfrk 16y ago

We are already seeing this with WikiLeaks's mysterious "Insurance" file that is spread through its peers.[1] Regardless of what it is, it's a clever strategy gambit by Assange. [1]: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/wikileaks_insur.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/08/wikileaks_insu...