Re: <nettime> Questions concerning Wikileaks

[almost@riseup.net]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 11:05 PM, Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> wrote:

> On Friday February 25 2011, Florian Cramer wrote:
>
>> - There is, currently, no Wikileaks Internet service for
>>   leaking documents at all?
>
> Again, everyone who does even the most basic "research". I mean, it's on
> top of the submissions page.
>
> http://wikileaks.ch/Submissions.html

"(currently closed for re-engineering security and useability improvements)"

It's been dead for some time.

>> Why does noone discuss whether it wouldn't be safer for whistleblowers
>> to directly contact a news medium like The Guardian instead of using an
>> intermediary? (Credits to Dmytri again.)
>
> Safer than what? And safer to whom? So far, WikiLeaks has been very
> successful in protecting its sources. The fact that Manning was arrested is
> most definitely not related to any security breach by Wikileaks. Manning
> chatted with Adrian Lamo who called the FBI.

The setup should have been such that nobody, including Lamo, had any
idea who submitted the material.

Certainly the Guardian has a bad record, e.g., Katharine Gun was
quickly discovered.

Other little issue about wikileaks - there's a chance, which many on
the left-liberal side wish to ignore, that Assange is actually guilty
of rape.  People don't seem to want to consider the possibility,
however unlikely, that the accusations are true.  This has no direct
bearing on wikileaks, except that Assange is becoming a guru - in the
worst sense of the word - and it's going to do a lot of damage to
those blindly believing him if/when he falls.  A service like this
should not be so dependent on one person.  If Assange had any control
of his ego, he would have resigned as spokesperson until he cleared
his name.

A


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