10 ms·

TPP details definitely need to be in the public, but I'm surprised WikiLeaks is offering a bounty. Have they done this before? Not that I can recall. And I woul

TPP details definitely need to be in the public, but I'm surprised WikiLeaks is offering a bounty. Have they done this before? Not that I can recall. And I would think offering money would change the tone of prosecuting the "whistle-blower". It'd be hard to claim that you are a whistle-blower when you are receiving money- that seems a lot more like standard espionage to me.

scrrr 11y ago
Well I assume the information would be made publicly available to anyone.
- blowski 11y ago
  Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean here. I understood the OP as saying that Edward Snowden (and people like him) justify their actions as being altruistic, for the greater good of society. If you give a financial incentive to someone to be a whistleblower, it no longer looks like altruism.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    There is an ocean of money sloshing around buying Congress and buying provisions in treaties like this. Altruism is for suckers.
    - LunaSea 11y ago
      *Moral suckers
- zeeed 11y ago
  is that a reasonable assumption? This is meant as a serious question. Would the details of the agreement be made public, eventually?
belorn 11y ago
I remember when the music/movie industry argued that it was perfectly legal to pay informers, who then just happen to gain access to private servers owned by release groups. Several complains was sent in to the police and nothing came out of it, so I would assume, being that the law treats everyone equal, that this is equally legal.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  Paying people to divulge information about illegal activities is perfectly legal, yes - leaking classified government information, however, is not. One thing is not like the other. It's not about paying people to share information, it's what kind of information, and which laws protect said information.
  - istvan__ 11y ago
    What is the classified information a crime committed by the government? :)
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Is it strictly legal (visa-vi US constitution) for the US government to operate in secret as they are doing with TPP?
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      Nothing in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 seems to require the discussions take place in public.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Fair enough. I was genuinely curious. I'm jealous of countries with constitutions to protect them from particularly egregious laws. But I guess no constitution is perfect.
  - xorcist 11y ago
    While I appreciate your knowledge of the Swedish juridical system, the point of the infiltration belorn mentions above was that it was in fact the paid infiltrators who had uploaded the illegal content the server owners was busted over. That is something of a moral gray area, if not a legal one.
twoodfin 11y ago
TPP details definitely need to be in the public... Details? Why? Obviously agreements will be public before they become law (nobody disputes this), but why force negotiators making difficult tradeoffs to hash them out in the open?
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > Obviously agreements will be public before they become law (nobody disputes this) Obviously? They've already fast tracked it even before it is available to the public. They've made it available to members of congress without it being available to the public. While on paper they might release it just before it became law, they could easily release it a week before giving nobody time to mount a real challenge. I'd have no issue if I thought it was going to take six months to pass, and members of the public could have a say, but fast tracking makes that highly unlikely.
  - twoodfin 11y ago
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but members of the (U.S.) public had their say when they voted for their President, Senators and Congressfolk. Who, not coincidentally, negotiate all sorts of critically important legislation in private. Besides, the version of TPA under consideration by the House this month requires that any agreement be public for at least 60 days before it can be signed by the President and submitted to Congress for enabling legislation.
    - imron 11y ago
      > but members of the (U.S.) public had their say when they voted for their President, Senators and Congressfolk. That's not how it works. If it was, we'd have SOPA, but we don't. Citizens telling their representatives what they do and don't want is fundamental aspect of a well-functioning democracy.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        Agreed, there are few more harmful concepts to a representative democracy, especially one with as poor of an electoral system as the US, but any representative democracy as well, as the idea that citizen input begins and ends with voting. It's like saying a boss's input on an employee's work is limited to hiring and firing.
eli 11y ago
IANAL but I don't think whistleblower protections would ever apply to leaking a confidential document to wikileaks regardless of whether you're paid or not.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  I highly doubt that whistleblower protections would apply to leaking a draft trade agreement. Typically those protections are intended to provide protection for people who disclose wrongdoing that would otherwise be unknown. But in the eyes of the law, negotiating a trade deal is not wrongdoing. It is one of the enumerated powers of the executive branch.
  - eli 11y ago
    Good point!
draugadrotten 11y ago
Strange move. It also changes WikiLeaks from observer and passive receiver of information to actor, instigator. That can't be good. Will WikiLeaks still pay 100K for the information if it was obtained by killing someone?
- jberryman 11y ago
  > It also changes WikiLeaks from observer and passive receiver of information to actor, instigator. I think WikiLeaks has only ever seemed passive and neutral to people who agree with its agenda
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    > I think WikiLeaks has only ever seemed passive and neutral to people who agree with its agenda No the idea has previously been that any information gets dumped onto wikileaks rather than wikileaks seeking specific pieces of information. This makes them passive. You can dislike the idea of information being dumped and this would make you disagree with its agenda but it does not mean that wikileaks has (previously) been active rather than passive.
    - jberryman 11y ago
      > No the idea has previously been that any information gets dumped onto wikileaks rather than wikileaks seeking specific pieces of information. I'm not sure the distinction between "dumped onto" vs "seeking out" is a real one, but my main objection is that I don't see any evidence that wikileaks has been a passive conduit for leaks that come their way; they do curation of "leaks" that arrive in their inbox, they choose to promote certain leaks in certain ways, etc.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        > I'm not sure the distinction between "dumped onto" vs "seeking out" is a real one It is huge. It is also recognised as such by laws in many countries. E.g. UK libel act 2013 and US DMCA act (safe harbour provisions). In both cases publishers are protected from legal trouble if they act as an intermediary rather than as a publisher. > but my main objection is that I don't see any evidence that wikileaks has been a passive conduit for leaks that come their way; they do curation of "leaks" that arrive in their inbox, they choose to promote certain leaks in certain ways, etc. This is a valid point. But offering money for leaks is a whole different thing.
robotkilla 11y ago
I had the same reaction at first, but are there any laws stating that the details can't be disclosed? Meaning - is this paying someone to breach a contract or something worse?
kauffj 11y ago
An individual holds information that is in the public good to be released. Said individual is threatened with significant harm by states if the information is released. Only those with tremendous conscious, like Snowden or Manning, step up in the face of odds like that. Financial compensation shifts the balance to make dangerous humanitarian disclosures more self-interested. It means that more information that should be public becomes public. What's wrong with that?
- jpwagner 11y ago
  What's wrong with that? In the past, Wikileaks has not been the moral arbiter. If a whistleblower decides that exposing information is in the public interest, that is on them, Wikileaks provides a medium. Here, whether or not information should remain secret, there is an incentive to expose it. Wikileaks has decided what deserves to be public -- it's irrelevant if I, personally, agree with that judgment when I say: this makes me question Wikileaks as a trusted medium.
  - evgen 11y ago
    If this is the first thing that has made you question Wikileaks as a trusted medium then you have not been paying attention.
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      I have not been paying attention, would you care to enlighten me?
      - tedunangst 11y ago
        After months of talking up the BofA files, "oops, they're all gone."
        StavrosK 11y ago
        Oh wow. What do people supposed happened?
amelius 11y ago
I don't know... $100,000 to change your identity, suddenly it sounds like a small fee.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  That depends on whether the whistleblower's identity is published. If Snowden hadn't gone missing, enough people had the same access as he did, and there wasn't a log of who accessed what documents in place (or it was removed), he could've remained anonymous too.
codingdave 11y ago
I'm more concerned about the crowdsourcing of it. How would that work if "they" decide to come after anyone who leaks it. Does putting in a few bucks mean you can be criminally charged if that cash leads to a bounty that leads to a leak? I'm all for government transparency. But this seems like an unwise mechanism to achieve it.
- josu 11y ago
  I guess that's the reason why they are accepting bitcoin.
  - LyndsySimon 11y ago
    If they were also offering Bitcoin to the person who discloses the information, that person could remain anonymous while still benefiting from the bounty. This is an "assassination market", but for information. I'm very intrigued by this concept.
    - ohitsdom 11y ago
      I would guess it would be very difficult for the leaker to remain anonymous to the government. I'm sure they have careful revisioning and at least some compartmentalization, so I think whoever blows the whistle has to do it with the assumption of it becoming public (and it may be in the interest of their safety to follow the Snowden route).
      - josu 11y ago
        I'm not sure, there are too many governments and agencies involved in the negotiations. It could even be a computer engineer that has nothing to do with the negotiations.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  To me "crowdsourcing" it sounds like a convenient way of intelligence-for-hire PLUS the ability for the buyers to remain hidden among the crowd.
mc32 11y ago
Agree with this. Money taints the appearance of neutrality. They are no longer a neutral medium but rather an information marketplace. It's no longer based on moral guidance but monetary and economic guidance.

scrrr 11y ago

Well I assume the information would be made publicly available to anyone.

blowski 11y ago
Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean here. I understood the OP as saying that Edward Snowden (and people like him) justify their actions as being altruistic, for the greater good of society. If you give a financial incentive to someone to be a whistleblower, it no longer looks like altruism.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  There is an ocean of money sloshing around buying Congress and buying provisions in treaties like this. Altruism is for suckers.
  - LunaSea 11y ago
    *Moral suckers
zeeed 11y ago
is that a reasonable assumption? This is meant as a serious question. Would the details of the agreement be made public, eventually?

belorn 11y ago

I remember when the music/movie industry argued that it was perfectly legal to pay informers, who then just happen to gain access to private servers owned by release groups. Several complains was sent in to the police and nothing came out of it, so I would assume, being that the law treats everyone equal, that this is equally legal.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
Paying people to divulge information about illegal activities is perfectly legal, yes - leaking classified government information, however, is not. One thing is not like the other. It's not about paying people to share information, it's what kind of information, and which laws protect said information.
- istvan__ 11y ago
  What is the classified information a crime committed by the government? :)
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Is it strictly legal (visa-vi US constitution) for the US government to operate in secret as they are doing with TPP?
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Nothing in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 seems to require the discussions take place in public.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Fair enough. I was genuinely curious. I'm jealous of countries with constitutions to protect them from particularly egregious laws. But I guess no constitution is perfect.
- xorcist 11y ago
  While I appreciate your knowledge of the Swedish juridical system, the point of the infiltration belorn mentions above was that it was in fact the paid infiltrators who had uploaded the illegal content the server owners was busted over. That is something of a moral gray area, if not a legal one.

twoodfin 11y ago

TPP details definitely need to be in the public... Details? Why? Obviously agreements will be public before they become law (nobody disputes this), but why force negotiators making difficult tradeoffs to hash them out in the open?

Someone1234 11y ago
> Obviously agreements will be public before they become law (nobody disputes this) Obviously? They've already fast tracked it even before it is available to the public. They've made it available to members of congress without it being available to the public. While on paper they might release it just before it became law, they could easily release it a week before giving nobody time to mount a real challenge. I'd have no issue if I thought it was going to take six months to pass, and members of the public could have a say, but fast tracking makes that highly unlikely.
- twoodfin 11y ago
  Not to put too fine a point on it, but members of the (U.S.) public had their say when they voted for their President, Senators and Congressfolk. Who, not coincidentally, negotiate all sorts of critically important legislation in private. Besides, the version of TPA under consideration by the House this month requires that any agreement be public for at least 60 days before it can be signed by the President and submitted to Congress for enabling legislation.
  - imron 11y ago
    > but members of the (U.S.) public had their say when they voted for their President, Senators and Congressfolk. That's not how it works. If it was, we'd have SOPA, but we don't. Citizens telling their representatives what they do and don't want is fundamental aspect of a well-functioning democracy.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Agreed, there are few more harmful concepts to a representative democracy, especially one with as poor of an electoral system as the US, but any representative democracy as well, as the idea that citizen input begins and ends with voting. It's like saying a boss's input on an employee's work is limited to hiring and firing.

eli 11y ago

IANAL but I don't think whistleblower protections would ever apply to leaking a confidential document to wikileaks regardless of whether you're paid or not.

snowwrestler 11y ago
I highly doubt that whistleblower protections would apply to leaking a draft trade agreement. Typically those protections are intended to provide protection for people who disclose wrongdoing that would otherwise be unknown. But in the eyes of the law, negotiating a trade deal is not wrongdoing. It is one of the enumerated powers of the executive branch.
- eli 11y ago
  Good point!

draugadrotten 11y ago

Strange move. It also changes WikiLeaks from observer and passive receiver of information to actor, instigator. That can't be good. Will WikiLeaks still pay 100K for the information if it was obtained by killing someone?

jberryman 11y ago
> It also changes WikiLeaks from observer and passive receiver of information to actor, instigator. I think WikiLeaks has only ever seemed passive and neutral to people who agree with its agenda
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  > I think WikiLeaks has only ever seemed passive and neutral to people who agree with its agenda No the idea has previously been that any information gets dumped onto wikileaks rather than wikileaks seeking specific pieces of information. This makes them passive. You can dislike the idea of information being dumped and this would make you disagree with its agenda but it does not mean that wikileaks has (previously) been active rather than passive.
  - jberryman 11y ago
    > No the idea has previously been that any information gets dumped onto wikileaks rather than wikileaks seeking specific pieces of information. I'm not sure the distinction between "dumped onto" vs "seeking out" is a real one, but my main objection is that I don't see any evidence that wikileaks has been a passive conduit for leaks that come their way; they do curation of "leaks" that arrive in their inbox, they choose to promote certain leaks in certain ways, etc.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      > I'm not sure the distinction between "dumped onto" vs "seeking out" is a real one It is huge. It is also recognised as such by laws in many countries. E.g. UK libel act 2013 and US DMCA act (safe harbour provisions). In both cases publishers are protected from legal trouble if they act as an intermediary rather than as a publisher. > but my main objection is that I don't see any evidence that wikileaks has been a passive conduit for leaks that come their way; they do curation of "leaks" that arrive in their inbox, they choose to promote certain leaks in certain ways, etc. This is a valid point. But offering money for leaks is a whole different thing.

robotkilla 11y ago

I had the same reaction at first, but are there any laws stating that the details can't be disclosed? Meaning - is this paying someone to breach a contract or something worse?

kauffj 11y ago

An individual holds information that is in the public good to be released. Said individual is threatened with significant harm by states if the information is released. Only those with tremendous conscious, like Snowden or Manning, step up in the face of odds like that. Financial compensation shifts the balance to make dangerous humanitarian disclosures more self-interested. It means that more information that should be public becomes public. What's wrong with that?

jpwagner 11y ago
What's wrong with that? In the past, Wikileaks has not been the moral arbiter. If a whistleblower decides that exposing information is in the public interest, that is on them, Wikileaks provides a medium. Here, whether or not information should remain secret, there is an incentive to expose it. Wikileaks has decided what deserves to be public -- it's irrelevant if I, personally, agree with that judgment when I say: this makes me question Wikileaks as a trusted medium.
- evgen 11y ago
  If this is the first thing that has made you question Wikileaks as a trusted medium then you have not been paying attention.
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    I have not been paying attention, would you care to enlighten me?
    - tedunangst 11y ago
      After months of talking up the BofA files, "oops, they're all gone."
      - StavrosK 11y ago
        Oh wow. What do people supposed happened?

amelius 11y ago

I don't know... $100,000 to change your identity, suddenly it sounds like a small fee.

Cthulhu_ 11y ago
That depends on whether the whistleblower's identity is published. If Snowden hadn't gone missing, enough people had the same access as he did, and there wasn't a log of who accessed what documents in place (or it was removed), he could've remained anonymous too.

codingdave 11y ago

I'm more concerned about the crowdsourcing of it. How would that work if "they" decide to come after anyone who leaks it. Does putting in a few bucks mean you can be criminally charged if that cash leads to a bounty that leads to a leak? I'm all for government transparency. But this seems like an unwise mechanism to achieve it.

josu 11y ago
I guess that's the reason why they are accepting bitcoin.
- LyndsySimon 11y ago
  If they were also offering Bitcoin to the person who discloses the information, that person could remain anonymous while still benefiting from the bounty. This is an "assassination market", but for information. I'm very intrigued by this concept.
  - ohitsdom 11y ago
    I would guess it would be very difficult for the leaker to remain anonymous to the government. I'm sure they have careful revisioning and at least some compartmentalization, so I think whoever blows the whistle has to do it with the assumption of it becoming public (and it may be in the interest of their safety to follow the Snowden route).
    - josu 11y ago
      I'm not sure, there are too many governments and agencies involved in the negotiations. It could even be a computer engineer that has nothing to do with the negotiations.
sliverstorm 11y ago
To me "crowdsourcing" it sounds like a convenient way of intelligence-for-hire PLUS the ability for the buyers to remain hidden among the crowd.

mc32 11y ago

Agree with this. Money taints the appearance of neutrality. They are no longer a neutral medium but rather an information marketplace. It's no longer based on moral guidance but monetary and economic guidance.