WikiLeaks is Dead. Now What? | Hacker News Reader

WikiLeaks is Dead. Now What?

openwatch.net

53 pointsMizza37 comments

While Assange has caused problems for WikiLeaks, I think he has accomplished something that is not really talked about in this article, and that is important for any WikiLeaks replacement: he turned those leaks into news. It's all too easy for information to be leaked and no one to care, even if the leaks seem important. Assange helped by being the face of WikiLeaks, and I think he's also done good work working with journalists to get the news out there. Not that journalists and Assange have had a happy relationship, or even a healthy relationship, but he did manage to get real coverage.

I would worry that a committee organization will be too conservative and technocratic. That is not an inevitability, of course; if the committee understands the importance of publicity maybe they can delegate appropriately... but it's not something a group of people can really do well together.

The change in culture and mindset that WikiLeaks helped bring about will outlast the organisation itself.

"the real cause of their death is the loss of their moral credibility because of Julian Assange, his decisions in managing the project and his behavior in his personal life."

Really? Besides allegation I have not seen anything. Looks more like a perfectly oiled (and highly successful) smear campaign against him.

I agree completely with this. The article is a disguised attack piece.

While I understand skepticism about the claims that have lead to his extradition given the timing and nature of them, the reports of internal conflict and staff turnover at wikileaks make it pretty clear that Assange, for lack of a better descriptor, is kind of a dick. Wikileaks is not an organization which I would consider transparently run, and all reports I have seen seem to indicate that dissent was dealt with rather harshly.

Honestly, from what I've seen, Assange's failure as an effective leader has as much to do with the collapse of Wikileaks as anything.

I find it foolish to overlook the fact that the financial engine itself was turned against Wikileaks.

Leaders are hard men. I presume you wouldn't complain about Steve Jobs quashing dissent.

I expect such an organization to be rife with chaos.

>I presume you wouldn't complain about Steve Jobs quashing dissent.

That's a complete strawman.

>I expect such an organization to be rife with chaos.

And I'd suggest that as a result of that chaos, having someone with the sort of egotistical tendencies Assange has demonstrated is a recipe for disaster. The way Wikileaks has collapsed not only from outside pressure, but from within is telling to me.

I agree there isn't proof of the stronger claims about Assange, like the rape allegations, But frankly, what you're talking about, combined with Assange's self-aggrandizement and attention-seeking behavior which made Wikileaks all about Julian Assange and less about the mission points to a potentially malignant narcissism that doomed the project from the get-go.

Just because there was conflict among the Wikipedia staff doesn't prove that Assange was in the wrong. In fact the German Chaos Computer Club has severed ties with Assange's former colleague Domscheidt-Berg and his OpenLeaks project because they didn't like his style. So maybe he isn't a Saint, either.

If it was so that Wikileaks did have positive effect on revealing nasty hidden corruption or abuse with high reliability (whether that is the case I don't know), I would consider him being a dick (your words), or how it is run, to not have much weight.

His leadership style has directly resulted in Wikileaks being ineffective as an organization, however. For example, it's been two years since Assange started publicly claiming he had documents from Bank of America that could probably bring down the bank, yet they remain unreleased to this day, and, at this point, there are indications they've been destroyed entirely.

That's all happened because Wikileaks didn't have its house in order internally, not because of any outside forces.

I apparently missed the bit where Assange misbehaved. What did he do (assuming the Swedish rape allegations are fake)?

The question is not whether or not he did it, it's whether or not having unprotected sex with a sleeping person constitutes sexual assault or not.

Now, I'm sure that the US will attempt to use this as an excuse to extradite him, but that doesn't mean that he didn't do it.

Didn't know the details of the accusations against him. So he admitted to what you describe?

No, and I am not sure even the victims have used that story either. Was some time since I read the various rumors and leaked information but I do not remember anything about anyone being asleep.

That's correct, neither girl has said they were asleep, nor has either one said he raped them. This sort of push story is just propaganda, being placed widely using private intelligence agencies like Palantir who have their corps of posting personas (who are especially active on HN and reddit) working to generate an illusion among the public that there is an understanding he is guilty of rape when he has not even been charged with it. The idea is get him to Sweden, then Sweden releases him to the US for interrogation.

propaganda, being placed widely using private intelligence agencies like Palantir who have their corps of posting personas (who are especially active on HN and reddit) working to generate an illusion among the public

If I wanted to create an illusion among the public, I would use something that most of the public paid attention to, like TV. And indeed, if anything that's what they do: they create the illusion that the overpublicized personal lives of trashy-but-beautiful women are important and deserving of attention.

As far as Reddit and HN go, you're just spouting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. And if you think the NSA or someone is paying me off, I'll give you a look at my bank balance and you can think again.

Is that what his case is about? I didn't know he was admitting to any intercourse at all.

I've heard of a case where even though somebody had received consent to have intercourse during their partner's sleep prior to the partner falling asleep, they were still found guilty after having intercourse with the sleeping partner

Apparently the partner had changed their mind after they woke and retroactively revoked consent.

If he didn't obtain pre-consent it would be pretty bad. If he did obtain pre-consent he could still be in trouble.

cryptome.org has been around for a very long time. It's probably easier to just submit to them.

No doubt Cryptome is great, but they only post information of a very specific theme. It'd be good to have more places to put data - hopefully places without gatekeepers.

what things do you think cryptome refuses to post? i think young would post anything secret. at least as i understand things, that's pretty much the essence of the guy - he doesn't like secrets.

What about torrents? How much more gatekeeper-free does it get?

So since they are dead, why don't they release the key to that 'insurance' file? This is what I want to see. I can't imagine it would cost them a dime to release that key.

ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_Pr esentDay#

I got that last night by attending the Noam Chomsky lecture in Melbourne.

I met Noam Chomsky about two weeks ago for about 30 seconds. I wanted to talk to him about OpenWatch but he just wanted to eat shrimp. Which is totally understandable. This isn't a very good story.

Who knows if the 'insurance' file actually has any content or if it is just /dev/random to try to guarantee that they wouldn't be assassinated.

Because the key was leaked. The info is all out there now.

As I understood, the key was leaked (well, deliberately published in a book) to the full cables file -- insurance was another file. Do you have further information?

Because presumably it contains things that nobody wants released like confidential informants?

UpLeak.com is available. Have at it.

UpLeak.com is down

I mean the domain is available. ;)

Pardon me, but who says Wikileaks are dead? Seems to me OP is the only one who does, and then he makes a big deal out of how Julian Assange behaved "badly". How about making a big deal of the financial blockade instead? If any Wikileaks-copy does good it too will face the same financial blockade, regardless of who their J.A./committee is.

we need something like reverse twitter which is based on information, instead of people and profiles. in other words, something like mixing of wikipedia and twitter. a chaotic platform for information.

The real challenge is to stop people from hooking up a random-bullshit-generator to this system. It's probably hard enough for Wikileaks to filter out all the "leaks" which are actually elaborately falsified works of science fiction about Roswell.

Apparently it's covered.

http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/11/anonops-anonymous-messag...

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