Can someone explain why diplomatic cables should be free and open?
Sunshine disinfects.
Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
81–90 of 132 posts
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#82Can Wikileaks simply release the leaks via BitTorrent? Sign the distribution with a crypto certificate and let BT take care of the distribution.
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#83I'm impressed by the amount of comments here that point out some (perceived) hypocrisy in the actions of Wikileaks or Assange. This isn't the point. I myself don't really know what to think of Wikileaks. I, however, do know that major banks and financial institutions find it perfectly okay for you to send money to all kinds of horrible organisations (say, the Ku Klux Klan, clubs that campaign for underage sex, Westbo…
I am just explaining the reasoning. Don't hate/downvote me for saying it ... Silencing people's political opinions (even horrible evil people) is considered bad. This is why donations to these evil organizations is tolerated. Wikileaks is being blacklisted not because of their political opinions, but because these organizations, rightly or wrongly, believe Wikileaks is threatening security of the nation, causing deat…
Which bank representative told you that this was the reasoning? Or are you just making things up?
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#84Can Wikileaks simply release the leaks via BitTorrent? Sign the distribution with a crypto certificate and let BT take care of the distribution.
[deleted]
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aha.. but does Wikileaks affect your life if they hide that information from the you? Indeed, this is a strawman argument. Governments shouldn't hide information from people. That's the point.
Yes, yes it does. What if Wikileaks is taking especially large donations from powerful interests and chooses to censor its output as a result? To say that transparency only applies to governments is to miss the whole point of transparency. If that is indeed Wikileaks' position as you say, then they've missed the point from the get-go.
No, it doesn't. If you don't support Wikileaks you can choose not to donate money.
You can't choose not to pay your taxes (at least without breaking the law). You can choose the kind of politicians you vote, but again, those politicians may choose to do something else with your money when they have the power.
If you do support WL, and believe in what they have achieved so far, I think that it's wise to trust them, given the amount of criticism they face from almost every government in the world. I haven't read about any government denying anything that was published, but I've read a lot about those governments trying to censor what is published. So, who's the censor here?
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am just explaining the reasoning. Don't hate/downvote me for saying it ... Silencing people's political opinions (even horrible evil people) is considered bad. This is why donations to these evil organizations is tolerated. Wikileaks is being blacklisted not because of their political opinions, but because these organizations, rightly or wrongly, believe Wikileaks is threatening security of the nation, causing deat…
I thought banks are only concerned with profit. Since when did they start defending the nation?
You can't very well make a healthy profit if the nation in question is burning down around your ears, now can you?
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am not going to donate to Julian Assange's defense, as i think he's destroyed Wikileaks' credibility and capability to continue operating. I completely missed any recent news regarding Assange... do you mind expanding on your reasons? I'm really interested.
Yes, consider this an IOU. I have to run and give a brown bag, and I will enumerate my reasons when i get back.
I didn't appreciate that the edit link expires.
So the problem I have with Assange is, ultimately, that he's a terrible journalist. He's not even a good gonzo journalist.
He made the epic mistake of letting the story become about him, and worse yet, making sure that Wikileaks's fortunes (both literally and figuratively) were directly tied to his. He did that in that Wikileaks is paying directly for his legal defenses, and also in that he quite literally ransomed the wikileaks diplomatic data dump, and said, more or less, if anything happens to me, all of this data will be released publicly.
Worse yet, they've been so lax and incompetent with their data security policies that they let the password for the data dump leak out!
So, not only is he so difficult to work with that he has been abandoned even by people who have defended him previously, and agree with the major thrust of his work, but he's proven himself unable to even credibly maintain a threat as supposed leverage. He's still in legal trouble, and the worst case data release scenario has come to pass.
The problem we find ourselves in now, is that wikileaks is now proven to be incompetent, unable to manage their data, entirely occupied with Assange's legal defense, and clearly developed into a cult of martyred celebrity.
What wikileaks is clearly not, is a clearing house for future whistleblower data. Wikileaks had a chance to act as a trusted broker and exist as a non-state actor. But the key component to that was putting trust ahead of personal gain, recognition or vendetta. Instead now we're going to see a host of successors to wikileaks which will all have questionable pedigrees and histories of trustworthiness, and leakers are going to have to navigate those tenuous waters alone, as they've always done.
In short, Assange blew it. Sad times.
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#88I'm impressed by the amount of comments here that point out some (perceived) hypocrisy in the actions of Wikileaks or Assange. This isn't the point. I myself don't really know what to think of Wikileaks. I, however, do know that major banks and financial institutions find it perfectly okay for you to send money to all kinds of horrible organisations (say, the Ku Klux Klan, clubs that campaign for underage sex, Westbo…
>I can't imagine how Wikileaks can be considered a so much more evil organisation than Stormfront
I can, in spirit, though I wouldn't necessarily use the term "evil" as the comparator. Stormfront generates bigotry and hate speech. Distasteful and contempible. But Wikileaks spreads as widely as possible information which can pose real security risks to people (such as US soldiers). As a Jew, I'd rather see people support offensive but peaceful organizations like Stormfront (I'm assuming they're all talk) than organizations which may actually contribute to getting people killed.
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#89I'm impressed by the amount of comments here that point out some (perceived) hypocrisy in the actions of Wikileaks or Assange. This isn't the point. I myself don't really know what to think of Wikileaks. I, however, do know that major banks and financial institutions find it perfectly okay for you to send money to all kinds of horrible organisations (say, the Ku Klux Klan, clubs that campaign for underage sex, Westbo…
I am just explaining the reasoning. Don't hate/downvote me for saying it ... Silencing people's political opinions (even horrible evil people) is considered bad. This is why donations to these evil organizations is tolerated. Wikileaks is being blacklisted not because of their political opinions, but because these organizations, rightly or wrongly, believe Wikileaks is threatening security of the nation, causing deat…
> And last but not least, Wikileaks seems to be actively perusing leaks in banks and financial organizations. If you bite the hand that feeds you ...
The banks are not "feeding" Wikileaks. The people are.
Re: Wikileaks Is Running Out Of Cash
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real question is how many documents they've taken in. The impression i was left with over the split between Wikileaks and OpenLeaks (and incidentally here's link to open leaks: http://openleaks.org/ ) was that WikiLeaks was left w/o any infrastructure to accept new documents, making it, effectively, useless. I am not going to donate to Julian Assange's defense, as i think he's destroyed Wikileaks' credibility and…
In what way did one guy leaving WL to setup his own leaking system remove their ability to accept new leaks?
Ah, well that's the devil in the details. It wasn't merely one guy, there was a core of wikileaks developers who departed the organization all at once.
Second, they have made assurances that the wikileaks platform is in fact inoperable, given the state that the platform was in when they departed. By their account, wikileaks was not trustworthy enough to operate the platform, so they felt no inclination to fix it.
I am not going to claim first hand knowledge of any of these facts, and I don't know how the actual departure of Daniel Domscheit-Berg and co. actually went down. Assange has made statements contrary to Domscheit-Berg, and again, having no 1st hand knowledge, i can't claim to know one way or the other.
Assange has not, in any of the statements i've seen, addressed the current state of the platform, or how documents can be uploaded. On the other hand I haven't seen any prominent publication of how leakers can get documents to Wikileaks either. (happy to stand corrected if someone could point me to links!)