WikiLeaks: Out of time and money | Hacker News Reader

WikiLeaks: Out of time and money

economist.com

137 pointscawel76 comments

Between the donation lock-out from every major bank, the heavily biased media coverage, and the clearly false charges against Assange, this has become too painful to watch.

All of this for a guy trying to create a press outlet that tells the real truth, using anonymous and protected (but verified) sources, for free, to the whole world.

I'm curious how you were able to come to the conclusion that the charges are "clearly false." The charges sound serious to me, and while I have not concluded on their truth, I cannot dismiss them. They sound like they have enough merit for a trial. For example, "Given that one of the women said she awoke to find Mr. Assange having unprotected sex with her, she could not possibly have given her consent, Ms. Montgomery argued." (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/europe/12assange.htm...)

Since when has the burden of proof been with the accused? Do either of these women have evidence other than their own testimony?

The burden of proof is on the accusers, but "not proven" is a long way off from "clearly false".

Men accused of sexual offences have been presumed guilty until proven innocent for the past two decades. Didn't you get the memo?

And that's why so many of them have gone to jail recently...oh wait.

Not sure what you're trying to say there. Men go to jail on all the time purely on the strength of the victim's testimony. Seems like every week I'm reading a story in the newspaper about a guy who got released from jail after being cleared by a DNA test.

I agree that the accusations aren't clearly false, but note that he hasn't been formally charged with a crime. He will be extradited to Sweden to be questioned (!). AFAIK nobody said he's not going to court yet.

That's another scandal. Swedish prosecutors never issue international arrest warrants to question random Joe Sixpacks, certainly not for very dubious accusations like these. It's a shame that such a civilized country is being dragged through the mud by politically-motivated scumbags.

And the same British government refused to extradite General Pinochet to Spain for war crimes because there wasn't enough evidence!

The courts are going to be very busy if months after every club 18-30 holiday you can regret a drunken 'romance' and have the other party extradited.

Uh, no, that's not why he was released.

Agreed, I do not believe the rape accusations were politically motivated but the international warrant obviously was. It is probably the first time ever sexual misconduct with weak evidence has resulted in an international arrest warrant.

s/he's not going/he's going/

The evidence suggests it is highly unlikely they are true.

Most rape victims don't tweet about how it's "amazing" to hang out with "cool" and "smart" people after being raped, or throw a party for their rapist.

http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml

Nor do they usually invite their rapist to stay at their house 4 days after the rape.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/12/crayfish_parties_and_br...

It's also a rather implausible coincidence that after these events, the rape charge only surfaced after a) Assange failed to call either Anna Ardin or Miss W. back and b) Ardin and W each discovered he was sleeping with the other one.

I think the story itself justifies a very low probability of being true - in my estimation, probably considerably less than 1%.

Most rape victims don't tweet about how it's "amazing" to hang out with "cool" and "smart" people after being raped, or throw a party for their rapist.

Nor do they usually invite their rapist to stay at their house 4 days after the rape.

Stockholm syndrome?

i can't figure out if that's sarcasm or a dumb sheeped down comment :p

Why?

I too think the charges are trumped up, but Stockholm is a possibility until one or both of these women come out with the truth of what actually happened.

It's not a possibility, because he did not hold them captive. Stockholm Syndrome only refers to situations where people who are held against their will have positive feelings towards their captors.

I'm pretty sure rape constitutes being held against one's will.

I'm pretty sure HN is the only place where a bad pun can spawn pages of earnest analysis and semantic argument.

Sure it's a possibility, but the burden of proof would be on you to demonstrate that it was Stockholm syndrome. You can't get by just claiming possible scenarios that explain something. You have to actually provide evidence that your claim is true (unless you're defending creationism)

That also applies to the proposed conspiracy theory between the two women.

apply Occam's razor

It's also possible Anna Ardin is suffering from multiple personality disorder and one of her alternate personalities threw the party for Assange, tweeted about how cool he is, and invited him to stay with her 4 days after the rape.

We could make up all sorts of implausible, but theoretically possible scenarios.

But at this point, the most likely possibility seems to be that Ardin and W are jilted lovers who want revenge against Assange.

>We could make up all sorts of implausible, but theoretically possible scenarios.

That is the entire point, none of us know with any degree of certainty what has happened, the evidence does not suggest anything concrete for or against the validity of the charges, so to immediately dismiss one way or dismiss the other way is flawed.

.. or that as his lover, she was convinced to give testimony that lets authorities go after him while simultaneously hurting his reputation. Something very useful if you don't want to prevent further leaks.

Since I've been downmodded about 100 times for this comment, I thought I'd point out that it's Stockholm that's trying to get him extradited.

It was a play on words, guys.

Even as a pun it is the kind of comment that belongs on reddit instead of HN.

How can I even downvote? I only see upvote arrow.

And how did your playfulness bring any relevant information to the discussion? There's nothing wrong with being funny but it should go alongside with usefulness; otherwise you end up with pun-festing.

You don't have enough karma to downvote. At one time, the threshold was 200 points. I'm not sure if it is still the same.

It's more than 400 now and has been for some time.

Very well put!

Isn't it the case when you sympathise with someone one gives them the benefit of doubt --but when one dislikes someone one envisions the worst?

1. Imagine a good friend accused of something (ex. aggr. assault). 2. Imagine a good friend accuses someone of the same thing.

If instead of Assange, the accused were a live Qaddafi, or, say the Dalai Lama, would we not see things a bit differently, in each case, due to bias?

We just don't know. It's all conjecture at this point with he said, she said.

clearly false charges

I was not there to witness what did or did not happen with Assange and the girls in question. As a result I cannot comment on his guilt or innocence. Through what evidence have you concluded that they are clearly false charges?

They're not "girls", they're women, as both females are well past their teenage years.

I'm surprised you see the issue in such black and white terms. Certainly some of Mr Assange's comments might lead some to suspect he sees conspiracy where there is none [1] and that his judgement is not impeccable. Wikileaks and Assange have also turned on their partners, notably the Guardian, when circumstances have suited them [2] and their concerns for the safety of those mentioned in their releases have not always appeared sincere [3].

I'm not saying that these pieces of evidence point towards Mr Assange being guilty, evil or anything else, but they do suggest he's human and fallible, and perhaps not 100% pure in his intentions. I don't mean this as a criticism of him, but it does make me question any entirely polarised assertion about the man.

I've not been able to spot anything untoward in the way the UK courts have treated Assange, and I can't help but feel that if the charges are 'clearly false' they can be demonstrated as such in Sweden - a country that Mr Assange himself has in the past admired [4], but now seeks to label as the 'Saudi Arabia of feminism' [5]. Clearly going through such a procedure must be harrowing for all involved, and I'm not dismissing the stress lightly, but accusations of criminality being investigated is a key principle of society and in the Swedish legal system formal charges occur after extradition and questioning. This seems reasonable.

If Wikileaks' cause was noble it does not mean that Assange is automatically innocent, or that any investigation of him is a conspiracy.

[1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/01/julian-assange-j... [2]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/09/wikileaks-un... [3]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14765837 [4]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/02/assange-... [5]: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/02/why-is-julia...

If Wikileaks' cause was noble it does not mean that Assange is automatically innocent, or that any investigation of him is a conspiracy.

True... but can you really doubt that US officials (and maybe others) are quietly twisting Sweden's arm to make as much of the investigation as they can? It would be very much out of character for them to pass up the opportunity.

The point which I believe is an attack on Assange is the international arrest warrant. I do not think that if it had been someone else a warrant would have been issued. It seems quite obvious to me that strings were pulled to use the rape allegations as much as possible.

Wikileaks sadly lost a lot of respect from me and many people I know when some of their comments and many of their followers weren't about Assange's innocence, but instead in defense of rape, both directly and through criticism of conditional consent.
Even if only some zealous defenders had done so rather than wikileaks (most likely) accidentally doing so, it would still taste quite bitter.

While I wholeheartedly agree it's not been handled well at all by the Swedish prosecutors and government, and that there are irregularities and that Wikileaks and Assange should* criticize and question this, seeing people defend rape to defend them is bizarre. Although I am well aware this happens whenever rape is discussed.

Conditional consent IS a legal concept in Sweden, and one I personally agree with.

This saddens me, as I'm a rather big fan of Wikileaks and since I am also a fan of Assange I hope he's innocent.

*Conditional Consent:

While you might argue that there may be a need for different words for varying degrees and types of sexual crimes. Rape, at least for now, is defined solely by the presence of consent, as far as I understand.

If my consent hinges on a condition, and this was explained, my consent is nullified if the person willfully lies about this condition to be able to have sexual contact with me.

Ex: A woman lies about being on birth-control or a man lies about condom or being sterile.

Possibly unpopular question: why is WikiLeaks so expensive?

I'm well aware that hosting costs money -- especially if you're trying to find a service that is resistant to pressure from companies and governments around the world -- but WL seems to have run out of funds every time I try to access the site.

I mean, if the goal is to freely distribute information, distributing leaks by torrent only would be a simple, insanely cheap option that would save WL money.

But as far as I can tell, WikiLeaks hasn't exactly been forthcoming with details of where their money goes. I could be wrong, but I think every query Cryptome made to Wau Holland has been ignored, and some promised funds from WL to Bradley Manning have come up consistently short...

It's quite clear that WikiLeaks doesn't want to distribute via BitTorrent because they want control. Just look at how they handled the cables: they worked with media partners to analyze and release some of them. Later they totally screwed up and released everything unfiltered.

Since they want to maintain control they need people and bandwidth/hosting. Even if the the latter were free, people tend to cost money.

You can distribute encrypted files via torrents to solve both control and bandwidth (you just divulge the password at a future point in time).

That doesn't solve control on its own... you still need (smart, trustworthy, courageous) people to go through documents, verify credibility, determine and redact dangerous info, deal with media/pr, not to mention legal issues. Tech people seem to consistently underestimate the non-tech needs even of organizations that are primarily software driven. I'd venture to guess that despite technology clearly being a core component of what WL does, it represents a relatively small percentage of their expenses.

You can distribute the encrypted version via BT and give the decryption key to the selected few to verify. This is no different from giving the unencrypted version to the selected few to verify.

That still only takes care of the cost of hosting. It does not deal with the labor cost for reviewing the documents.

Wikileaks archives are distributed via BitTorrent. Do you mean that they don’t exclusively use BitTorrent?

Salaries/Staff Expenses: $500,000

Productions: $400,000

Campaigns: $300,000

Publications Research: $500,000

Technical Information: $500,000

Security: $300,000

Legal Costs: $1,200,000

From their main page: http://wikileaks.org/wlnet.html

Not sure how truthful the numbers are, but it's what they're advertising.

How many paid staffers does Wikileaks have?

How much of the budgets for "Productions" and "Research" and whatnot are paid on a project basis to people affiliated with Wikileaks?

How much of that legal budget goes directly to defend Julian Assange? I know they've broken out Assange's Stockholm legal defense from the rest of WL for donations. Does this number also break that out?

Are you insinuating these numbers are implausible? (Honest question, I can't quite tell whether you're questioning the validity of the numbers or whether you are trying to demonstrate their plausibility.)

I have no idea how accurate/truthful these numbers are but any small company with a dozen or so employees can easily run up $500k in annual salaries, and this is an organization that has been all over the news for months on end--surely that sort of publicity requires the help of at least a handful of qualified people.

Regarding productions, the cost for a single, five-minute music video can easily run into the millions [1]. And how does it matter whether or not the people involved with the production are "involved" with Wikileaks?

As for the legal budget, we all know what kind of money lawyers charge.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_music_vi...

I didn't insinuate anything. I asked specific questions.

Is Wikileaks "a small company with a dozen or so employees"? Or is it for the most part one person? (That's a new question).

The "affiliation" questions matters because if people who draw a salary from Wikileaks are also getting paid piecework rates for production &c, they're subtly getting paid more than those numbers indicate.

Lawyers are expensive. Are they charging Wikileaks for Assange's personal sexual assault and concomitant extradition fight? Or is that not part of that number? (That's a repeated question).

These aren't questions that are any tougher than the ones Diaspora faced. They're not political. Someone said Wikileaks seemed expensive for what they do. Well, are they?

I find it hard not to get the impression that with this post you're subtly insinuating Wikileaks is a highly paid one-man show, that there's cronyism on some level and that Assange's personal legal fees are being paid out of Wikileaks' funds.

Some or all of these allegations might be true, but let's not pretend you're just "asking specific questions". With all respect, I would expect you, as a valued member of this community, to be more straightforward than that.

Regardless of his intentions, now that the questions have been asked, are there any answers to them?

Let's momentarily put aside the question of Asange's legal troubles, and concentrate only on WikiLeaks.

It is greatly disturbing that an informal impromptu collusion of financial companies and governments is successfully shutting down a while blower outlet.

Like seriously f-ing disturbing!

What bothers me more is that people have been powerless in helping Wikileaks with their struggle. There are people who want to donate to Wikileaks but are unable to do so in an easy manner because of the blockade. It's a really good demonstration of where power lies.

You can mail a check. Very old-school, but it works. Banks like ING can mail the physical check for you, making the process as easy as using paypal.

They also accept bitcoins, which you know nowadays are cheap :P

I am sure they had quite a few, and their recent crash in value probably did not help much.

So can we all start singing the praises of http://cryptome.org/ so that future whistle blowers know where to go?

Oh, and someone make them an attractive homepage please!

I think Assange took to much of a central role, creating a huge weakness that is being successfully exploited. I personally want to support wikileaks, but I have mixed feelings about Assange.

If they stop, does this mean they are going to release the password on that "insurance" file they distributed a while ago?

IIRC that got blown by one of the journalists they had been working with.

So the passwords out?

No, as far as I understand the situation, the password that got leaked was for the whole cables archive and not for the insurance file.

The insurance file was not released because Wikileaks is saying they are being blackmailed by a big bank (don't remember which one, BoA?).

Edit: I think I confused this stuff. It's not about releasing the insurance file, it's about releasing information on the banks that they can't do because of the claimed blackmailing. The insurance file will only be released as a last resort.

What in the world could BofA do?

Aside from what they've done in getting every payment processor to blacklist them?

I think the question is: what more could BoFA do?

One possibility, is getting all the individuals associated with Wikileaks --possibly including family members and friends-- added to the blacklist.

That said, if I were Wikileaks, this would be the point I release my Insurance File. Along with whatever communications they've had from BofA, which doubtlessly outline what they want and what they'll do if they don't get it. (You can't be blackmailed without accusations and threats)

I kind of feel like they should have released the insurance file long ago. In fact, it never should have been an insurance file in the first place. Keeping dirty secrets under wraps for the sake of waging power struggles doesn't exactly strike me as the kind of thing that WikiLeaks is supposed to be about.

This may be a really, really dumb question... I don't know the laws possibly preventing this and how shady it could actually be, but is there a possible way to set up an intermediary payment system? Whereas one could accept easy payments and then do the work of transforming those into checks or whatnot and sending them to Wikileaks?

you need a bank to store the money, if its not physical money no bank wants of wikileaks or to handle their transactions

and yes, banks control the world, they don't like something, they kill it. simple and easy apparently.

Definitely... but I'm wondering about doing it anonymously. So basically find some way that people could donate to a specific person or business, then have that entity make money orders and send them off directly to wikileaks?

I'm guessing there are laws in place to prevent such a thing... It seems too much like money laundering. :)

FYI, they accept Bitcoin donations (which are fairly anonymous) at this address: 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v

You can learn more here: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

Most banks and financial systems around the world are so closely integrated with governments that they might as well be pseudo-governmental institutions.

A sneering, cynical summary, typical of a press which attacks alternative sources for purely selfish reasons. You'd have thought that "the press" would stick together to protect press freedom, freedom of speech and whistle-blowing, but no - they seem more interested in sniping at Wikileaks. Even the U.K. Guardian has joined in, I only hope these institutions aren't one day hoisted on their own petard.

WikiLeaks has been dead for a long time. Ever since the release involving the video of helicopter firing on the people below, someone out there got serious and decided to take Assange down by discrediting him and by diverting the focus away from information and toward the rape charges. Assange was probably given some "offer" he could not refuse and the rest is all for show.

I'll agree that WikiLeaks died (for me) when they released the helicopter video, but not because of some sort of grand conspiracy. It was because they editorialized the story into the ground. They weren't releasing unadulterated pure data and allowing people to analyze the data; they were attempting to force people into a certain manner of thinking.

That's when I realized WikiLeaks was just the same as any major media outlet.

I am pretty sure they did release the entire video too. And personally I would say the editorialization was mostly harmful to their cause in my case since the real video gave an even stronger picture. Without the cutting it felt much more real and horrible.

Assange advocates something he calls "scientific journalism" whereby journalists publish the raw data and source material along with every story. So they differ from major media outlets in that Wikileaks releases both the editorialized "story" and the unedited source footage and documents.

Now, I'm still not sure how I feel about the "Collateral Murder" video but Assange claims that the original modus operandi of Wikileaks was to simply supply partner news organizations with the raw (possibly redacted) source material and let them publish it. He further claims that the major news organizations were not interested in doing anything with the information until Wikileaks forced them to by creating a story with legs.

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