4 ms·

WikiLeaks Threatens Its Own Leakers With $20 Million Penalty

42 points by ssclafani 15y ago

hugh3 15y ago
The old joke about the definition of chutzpah involves a guy who kills both his parents and then tries to get the sympathy of the court because he's an orphan. But this may soon be superseded by the spectacle of watching Julian Assange suing someone for $20 million for leaking "his" information.
cube13 15y ago
For a group that supposedly promotes openness, Wikileaks sure wants to keep their organization a secret. Who watches the watchmen, indeed.
- corin_ 15y ago
  To be fair, at least based on what this article says, it's not so much about leaking information on Wikileaks as it is about leaking information Wikileaks is going to release but hasn't yet. Maybe it covers the former as well but it just wasn't mentioned?
  - hugh3 15y ago
    In my mind, that's even worse. Wikileaks' own secrets are at least (in some sense) the property of Wikileaks, whereas I really can't see any way in which "information which Wikileaks was planning to release sometime later" counts as Wikileaks' property. Does anyone remember when Wikileaks was actually a wiki?
  - wmf 15y ago
    "all newsworthy information relating to the workings of WikiLeaks.”
hamner 15y ago
Where is the evidence that this document is valid? It may be, but it could just as easily be forged.
- chadboyda 15y ago
  Exactly. It's probably just more FUD to discredit WikiLeaks.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    I'd love to know how you progressed from "possibly" to "probably" there.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      Presumably in his opinion it is likely, hence the "probably". Mystery solved.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      And once again (I'm going to start keeping track!), we don't want to believe something is true, so we invent a controversy to avoid grappling with its implications. Go us!
- k_harrigton 15y ago
  I personally wouldn't take at face value anything written by Kevin Poulsen regarding Wikileaks: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/27/wired http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/27...
- uriel 15y ago
  Given Assange's track record of reactions to leaks within WikiLeaks, it would not be surprising at all if this is authentic: http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/wikileaks http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/wikileaks
canadaduane 15y ago
To be fair, the US gov't (or any gov't for that matter) steals its information and tries to assert full control over it as well. Any comments regarding hypocrisy directed toward Assange ought to apply equally to all governments. The notable thing here is that, in line with the historically great 4th estate, we once again have a news outlet that can act as a peer, rather than a subordinate, of governments.
blhack 15y ago
Oh come on, this isn't that bad. This is to protect people that have entrusted wikileaks with their information. Essentially what it's doing is preventing people within wikileaks from disrupting the release cycle.
- VladRussian 15y ago
  chance of being sued for $20M ? Compare that with being locked for months in solitary confinement without trial in sight
- eli 15y ago
  Sure, OK, I get it. But at the very least it's hilariously hypocritical. Does Wikileaks believe all organizations have the right to aggressively pursue leakers in court?
  - baddox 15y ago
    > Does Wikileaks believe all organizations have the right to aggressively pursue leakers in court? Probably so. I don't see how this is hypocritical. Wikileaks never says that governments or corporations should enjoy their information being leaked. Wikileaks is just a publisher.
alecco 15y ago
Wired/Poulsen/Lamo attack piece. Flagged. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo#Greenwald.2C_Lamo.2C_Wired_Magazine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo#Greenwald.2C_Lamo.2...
- eli 15y ago
  Flagging is for spam or offtopic posts, not authors you don't like.
  - alecco 15y ago
    You're right. And I commented about it, too. My bad.
lwat 15y ago
Typical Wired sensationalist bullshit.
Pahalial 15y ago
Several people have already pointed out the tenuous situation between Kevin Poulsen and Wikileaks, so I won't retread old ground; that said, Poulsen is really just summarizing a piece from someone else in the new statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/05/wikileaks-information-legal http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/05/... I for one have never heard of The New Statesman before, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. Of particular interest to me was this (linkless) passing jibe: "but on the other hand they make routine legal threats, especially against the Guardian" - the only results I could find about this were also from the New Statesman, and actually seemed rather to pertain to a claimed case of libel about Assange. Not any actual legal action, mind, just a twitter update from @wikileaks. And no indication of a routine about it, just the one hit - very clearly not what was being implied by the paragraph in the original article. So I for one will be taking this "The New Statesman" with as much of a grain of salt as I was ready to do to the Kevin Poulsen piece. Edit for links: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/02/wikileaks-legal-guardian http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/02/... http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/32867678527950848 http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/32867678527950848
- eli 15y ago
  Are you trying to wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggest that this document has been fabricated and the story is false? Otherwise I'm really not sure what Kevin Polsen's backstory has to do with anything. Here's the citation for Assange threatening to sue The Guardian last year for basically trying to releasing Iraq war documents earlier than he had wanted: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102?currentPage=all http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guar... I'm not sure why you had trouble finding it; lots of hits on google for "wikileaks threatened guardian." He has indeed made threats to sue the paper on several occasions. And the New Statesman is a left-leaning "real magazine" in the UK that been around for decades, for whatever that's worth.
  - Pahalial 15y ago
    I was not at all suggesting the story was false; rather that Poulsen was further "interpreting" the story based on a prior "interpretation" by the New Statesman. [honest edit: I suppose this is a weak sentence. I really did not mean to imply any actual falsehood, rather two levels of the kind of linkbaity shift one finds all too often in online news.] That said, it seems my Google-fu is weak; I did not turn up that link nor any kind of repeat-threatening of the Guardian. Thank you for the link. Frankly, I think that both the Wired article and the New Statesman piece could have benefited tremendously (newcomer credibility-wise) from including it. Having now read the Vanity Fair piece, I'll retract my prior criticism of the New Statesman article. If anything, given that I've given Wikileaks a lot of my attention over the last several months, I'm not sure how this escaped my attention, but it puts a lot of things in a different light. I for one certainly thought the relationship between WL and its chosen newspapers was a lot more rosy.

42 points by ssclafani 15y ago

hugh3 15y ago

The old joke about the definition of chutzpah involves a guy who kills both his parents and then tries to get the sympathy of the court because he's an orphan. But this may soon be superseded by the spectacle of watching Julian Assange suing someone for $20 million for leaking "his" information.

cube13 15y ago

For a group that supposedly promotes openness, Wikileaks sure wants to keep their organization a secret. Who watches the watchmen, indeed.

corin_ 15y ago
To be fair, at least based on what this article says, it's not so much about leaking information on Wikileaks as it is about leaking information Wikileaks is going to release but hasn't yet. Maybe it covers the former as well but it just wasn't mentioned?
- hugh3 15y ago
  In my mind, that's even worse. Wikileaks' own secrets are at least (in some sense) the property of Wikileaks, whereas I really can't see any way in which "information which Wikileaks was planning to release sometime later" counts as Wikileaks' property. Does anyone remember when Wikileaks was actually a wiki?
- wmf 15y ago
  "all newsworthy information relating to the workings of WikiLeaks.”

hamner 15y ago

Where is the evidence that this document is valid? It may be, but it could just as easily be forged.

chadboyda 15y ago
Exactly. It's probably just more FUD to discredit WikiLeaks.
- hugh3 15y ago
  I'd love to know how you progressed from "possibly" to "probably" there.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Presumably in his opinion it is likely, hence the "probably". Mystery solved.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    And once again (I'm going to start keeping track!), we don't want to believe something is true, so we invent a controversy to avoid grappling with its implications. Go us!
k_harrigton 15y ago
I personally wouldn't take at face value anything written by Kevin Poulsen regarding Wikileaks: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/27/wired http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/27...
uriel 15y ago
Given Assange's track record of reactions to leaks within WikiLeaks, it would not be surprising at all if this is authentic: http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/wikileaks http://harmful.cat-v.org/journalism/wikileaks

canadaduane 15y ago

To be fair, the US gov't (or any gov't for that matter) steals its information and tries to assert full control over it as well. Any comments regarding hypocrisy directed toward Assange ought to apply equally to all governments. The notable thing here is that, in line with the historically great 4th estate, we once again have a news outlet that can act as a peer, rather than a subordinate, of governments.

blhack 15y ago

Oh come on, this isn't that bad. This is to protect people that have entrusted wikileaks with their information. Essentially what it's doing is preventing people within wikileaks from disrupting the release cycle.

VladRussian 15y ago
chance of being sued for $20M ? Compare that with being locked for months in solitary confinement without trial in sight
eli 15y ago
Sure, OK, I get it. But at the very least it's hilariously hypocritical. Does Wikileaks believe all organizations have the right to aggressively pursue leakers in court?
- baddox 15y ago
  > Does Wikileaks believe all organizations have the right to aggressively pursue leakers in court? Probably so. I don't see how this is hypocritical. Wikileaks never says that governments or corporations should enjoy their information being leaked. Wikileaks is just a publisher.

alecco 15y ago

Wired/Poulsen/Lamo attack piece. Flagged. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo#Greenwald.2C_Lamo.2C_Wired_Magazine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Lamo#Greenwald.2C_Lamo.2...

eli 15y ago
Flagging is for spam or offtopic posts, not authors you don't like.
- alecco 15y ago
  You're right. And I commented about it, too. My bad.

lwat 15y ago

Typical Wired sensationalist bullshit.

Pahalial 15y ago

Several people have already pointed out the tenuous situation between Kevin Poulsen and Wikileaks, so I won't retread old ground; that said, Poulsen is really just summarizing a piece from someone else in the new statesman: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/05/wikileaks-information-legal http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/05/... I for one have never heard of The New Statesman before, but that doesn't necessarily mean much. Of particular interest to me was this (linkless) passing jibe: "but on the other hand they make routine legal threats, especially against the Guardian" - the only results I could find about this were also from the New Statesman, and actually seemed rather to pertain to a claimed case of libel about Assange. Not any actual legal action, mind, just a twitter update from @wikileaks. And no indication of a routine about it, just the one hit - very clearly not what was being implied by the paragraph in the original article. So I for one will be taking this "The New Statesman" with as much of a grain of salt as I was ready to do to the Kevin Poulsen piece. Edit for links: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/02/wikileaks-legal-guardian http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/02/... http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/32867678527950848 http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/statuses/32867678527950848

eli 15y ago
Are you trying to wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggest that this document has been fabricated and the story is false? Otherwise I'm really not sure what Kevin Polsen's backstory has to do with anything. Here's the citation for Assange threatening to sue The Guardian last year for basically trying to releasing Iraq war documents earlier than he had wanted: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guardian-201102?currentPage=all http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/02/the-guar... I'm not sure why you had trouble finding it; lots of hits on google for "wikileaks threatened guardian." He has indeed made threats to sue the paper on several occasions. And the New Statesman is a left-leaning "real magazine" in the UK that been around for decades, for whatever that's worth.
- Pahalial 15y ago
  I was not at all suggesting the story was false; rather that Poulsen was further "interpreting" the story based on a prior "interpretation" by the New Statesman. [honest edit: I suppose this is a weak sentence. I really did not mean to imply any actual falsehood, rather two levels of the kind of linkbaity shift one finds all too often in online news.] That said, it seems my Google-fu is weak; I did not turn up that link nor any kind of repeat-threatening of the Guardian. Thank you for the link. Frankly, I think that both the Wired article and the New Statesman piece could have benefited tremendously (newcomer credibility-wise) from including it. Having now read the Vanity Fair piece, I'll retract my prior criticism of the New Statesman article. If anything, given that I've given Wikileaks a lot of my attention over the last several months, I'm not sure how this escaped my attention, but it puts a lot of things in a different light. I for one certainly thought the relationship between WL and its chosen newspapers was a lot more rosy.