Wikileaks website to be abandoned

http://cryptome.org/0001/wikileaks-dump.htm

by zitterbewegung • 16 years ago

98 58 16 years ago

swombat• 16 years ago

I don't know what exactly is going on there, whether it's a bankruptcy or something else, but whatever it is is not being particularly well handled. Shambles, really.

radu_floricica• 16 years ago

Shambles? At this point the site is up, and it seems like they're working on building a solid base in Iceland, starting with pretty good political and legal support.

All things considered, as long as one year from now they're still in business I'd say it's an impressive achievement.

fleitz3• 16 years ago

With the turf wikileaks is treading on, does some authentication code really confirm that this is not a counter intelligence op?

I'm not saying that any of these things are untrue, it's just that there would be some very valid reasons for wanting to keep the details of the operation opaque. (eg. paying in cash, etc)

When you piss of the US National Security apparatus to that degree there is going to be some blow back. Yes, ideally they'd want to put him behind bars in a supermax, like other political prisoners, but he's fairly high profile and has a large amount of public support. You'd definitely want to kill the crusader for freedom aspect of his media image and promote an in it for himself persona. A hit piece in mainstream media is going to give him a better platform and have absolutely no effect on anyone with a clue. The spooks know this so they aren't going to do something like that.

This is super effective, cryptome is legit as far as hackers and others that would contribute to his cause. This isn't a money issue it's a technical expertise issue. No one is going to join wikileaks for the money. Yes, money will help buy servers, but it's more about the technical expertise required for the people you're pissing off not to be able to build a solid case. Wikileaks itself has nothing to fear from the axis of evil, but a lot to fear from the G8 (except Russia). They will never honour a chinese extradition request because Assange found a video of Chinese soldiers killing civilians. They will however put his ass right next to the shoe bomber for posting vids of army dudes doing what army dudes are trained to do.

Yes, Assange may be running wikileaks to embezzle himself $50 grand a year, OR it could be that he's gone dark and doesn't have time to update the site because he's brushing up on his waterboarding technique with Maher Arar.

sliverstorm2• 16 years ago

> Yes, Assange may be running wikileaks to embezzle himself $50 grand a year, OR it could be that he's gone dark and doesn't have time to update the site because he's brushing up on his waterboarding technique with Maher Arar.

You can't blame people for being suspicious. Humanity has proven time and time again that when there is a reason to suspect somebody absconded with large sums of money, they probably did. I have no opinion on the matter, but what could make a more effective cover story for vanishing than a believable 'Big Brother wanted to find me'?

ultra-nihilist• 16 years ago

You make a good point. Sure Assange is self-aggrandizing. Some may even call him flamboyant, but is that such a bad thing for wikileaks? I recall similar criticism of Jimmy Wales. Wales acts like a rock star and he, like Assange, is a master fundraiser and aficionado of private jets. Despite mass defections of editors, and the enduring pompousness of Mr. Wales, Wikipedia is better than ever. Sometimes a greasy-haired, eccentric diva is the best person to represent your cause.

avar3• 16 years ago

This is getting ridiculous. Why doesn't Wikileaks just host all their content in a Git repository and use GPG to sign their releases?

Then it would be impossible to take down the site, and anyone could easily spin up a mirror.

Instead there's one monolithic distribution site which isn't decoupled from their submission network. The site is frequently down during a fundraiser, and due to how they run it other people can't easily directly contribute resources to run mirrors of the site.

I'm beginning to think that Wikileaks is not as interested in actually getting leaks out as it is furthering Julian Assange's personal indispensability.

adulau• 16 years ago

I really share this feeling especially during the past 7 months while the fund-raising was ongoing.

Now, to be more practical and maybe start an implementation of a distributed Wikileaks. There are two processes : the submission process and the distribution process. I think the distribution process is easy with Git or any distributed VCS. The submission process is more tricky as this is involving a human/social process to merge content into the distribution "branch".

The submission process could be "à la" HN where there is a way to up/down vote a submission. When the submission is reaching a defined level, the submission is released for distribution. In this is case, the submission network is still centralized but the distribution part is really decentralized.

For submission process decentralization, distributed ticketing (e.g. http://ditz.rubyforge.org/ ) could be used to show status of a submission within a same git repository but showing/merging only submission reaching a level in its ticket. Just an idea...

Update : my humble comment is just on some technical aspect. The social/legal/human aspect of Wikileaks is something much more complex...

furyg32• 16 years ago

Submission for leaks (usually) also involves some sort of authentication, however. And that authentication needs to be kept confidential.

The result is that there's no way around a 'trusted' provider who signs releases, and that will inherently be a personality like Assange.

Simply relying on a reddit-style submission method would lead to a worse form of reddit. Currently you can evaluate whether or not you 'trust' content submitted to reddit by looking at the site hosting it (is the content from the NYT or a random blog?). For a wikileaks-reddit, all submissions would have to be anonymous, and you'd have no idea what is a real leak or not.

furyg32• 16 years ago

Indeed. It seems like there are plenty of alternatives to a vulnerable website (such as Freenet).

In that sense Assange role would be reduced to authenticating and releasing, and wouldn't have a lot of control over the publishing side of things. And that's the side which gets the most press coverage and attention (including from powerful governments).

Switching to that type of system would likely reduce his exposure to trouble... but that's probably the opposite of what he'd like.

rabidsnail• 16 years ago

I also have difficulty imagining journalists figuring out how to set up freenet.

fleitz3• 16 years ago

Don't you think subversion (pun intended) would be a more appropriate VCS?

Perhaps they should use the SVN interface to github?

avar3• 16 years ago

No, it's centralized. Making it pretty much useless for this application.

sliverstorm2• 16 years ago

Seriously. Take a page from the various illegal groups out there; use torrents, use filesharing, so on and so forth. Release snapshots of the website, let other people do the hosting and hide the true source.

People have been successfully hiding behind clever distribution techniques for as long as the internet existed. You'd think Wikileaks'd be able to think of something.

Pyrodogg• 16 years ago

If they really wanted to be an eternal pain in the ass they'd have taken a page from that Anonymous group.

alnayyir• 16 years ago

>not as interested in actually getting leaks out as it is furthering Julian Assange's personal indispensability.

I agree, which is why it's hard for me to care if his adversaries squish him like a bug. Not a good way to get funding.

dschobel• 16 years ago

Emphatically agreed. Wikileaks lost my interest after their "Collateral Murder" campaign and then later threatening to take their ball (data) and go home if they didn't meet fundraising targets.

Compare that to how Wikipedia runs their affairs-- between the open and transparent editorial process and making their entire data corpus available from the get-go.

stefanp• 16 years ago

Guys, wikileaks is basically fighting for survival against the US government, among others. Can we really suggest they "just" use this or that, or complain that they're not handling thing so well ? They are basically trying to exist in a space that's almost impossible for most countries to exist in.

We're not talking about your average (or even uniquely scalable) startup here.

Seriously, do you have any doubt that anyone involved in this could end up secretly detained for years ? Assange is taking huge personal risks here, so yeah, it is about him, to a very large extent.

Ardit202• 16 years ago

I upvoted you, but shouldn't this be a reply comment rather than a comment on its own.

Ardit202• 16 years ago

I meant a reply to one of the comments above. It felt so when I read it much earlier, but never mind.

Kadin2• 16 years ago

That may be true, but it's not as though Wikileaks has been particularly well-managed, or done much to decrease their (by which I mean 'his') exposure. There has been a lot of what appears to be, to put it bluntly, showboating, intentional or otherwise.

I can't say whether it stems from a desire for celebrity on Assange's part, which would be totally incompatible with the mission of a site like WL, or if it's unintentional and simply the result of accidental mismanagement. But either way I don't think it bodes well for the future of the site.

That said, I don't think that Assange or Wikileaks in general are critical. If nothing else, he proved that there is material out there waiting to be released. The concept, at least in broad strokes, is still sound; it was the execution that was flawed.

I think there is an open opportunity right now for someone to step in and do right -- less politically, less bombastically, more securely and more decentralized -- what WL aimed to do.

Volscio• 16 years ago

Just as a counter-point, the posts to Cryptome from Wikileaks "insiders" all are negative towards Assange. It sounds, if those posts are true, that not even the Wikileaks folks approve of him.

cjoh• 16 years ago

What evidence is there that this statement is actually true besides second hand evidence and assange's own statements? If there was documented evidence that the pentagon is after assange, wouldn't it be responsible for assange to "leak" that information?

I think we're getting scooped up in the story of a narcissist. A reliable source of information and a drama do not mix.

ErrantX8• 16 years ago

Guys, wikileaks is basically fighting for survival against the US government,

Seems unlikely; they could well be exploring legal and technical options - but due to where Wikileaks operates from the US government will have a hard time taking it apart. There could be a black bag operation in effect; but I have a feeling if that were the case we would soon be hearing about it from Assange.

Seriously, do you have any doubt that anyone involved in this could end up secretly detained for years ?

Yes, someone in Government would have to be insane to risk that. OR Wikileaks would have to release something extremely critical/damaging. Assange is pretty high profile and his disappearance wouldn't go unnoticed.

We're not talking about your average (or even uniquely scalable) startup here.

No, but as pointed out elsewhere there are a lot of highly evolved models for distributions already in use by illegal enterprises. These are efficient, relatively cheap and difficult to track. The problem is that Wikileaks would lose a lot of editorial control; which, I guess, they don't want.

I have a number of ideas that I suggested to them (when they asked for help) to improve their infrastructure but never heard back...

Assange is taking huge personal risks here, so yeah, it is about him, to a very large extent.

I don't buy that - I think mostly he is a bit of an attention seeker and cries wolf at the slightest hint of a conspiracy :) There's not a lot wrong with that but you must bear it in mind when dealing with Wikileaks. I don't think Assange is taking a huge personal risk in terms of western governments. If they can nail him for something legally I am sure they will jump at it - but the political fall out from taking down a whistleblower is huge.

Besides; Wikileaks doesn't actually leak all that much (well, any more).....

msy• 16 years ago

And this comes about 2 months after it's declared a national security threat by the Pentagon.

How strange.

jasonkester3• 16 years ago

Anybody care to share some context for this article? It doesn't give any background into what wikileaks is and why it is being abandoned. It reads like somebody's personal email.

I'm sure there's an interesting story behind this, but the article doesn't attempt to provide it.

michael_dorfman2• 16 years ago

What Wikileaks is? How have you managed to avoid hearing about it, and its struggles so long?

Here's a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks

jasonkester3• 16 years ago

Funny, I'm actually amazed that so many people keep up on this sort of thing. I wouldn't know where to begin.

I've been on the road the last several years, so unless it concerns rock climbing or surfing, or is something that you'd talk about with fellow travelers, it usually doesn't make it onto my radar.

Evidently there was some sort of economic downturn recently. Missed that too :).

HN is the only exception, since it keeps me up on the tech side of things.

Kadin2• 16 years ago

Also, Cryptome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptome

They've been doing a very Wikileaks-ish thing since 1996, operating (sometimes just) inside the limit of U.S. law and First Amendment protection.

The "PGPBoard" referred to is actually a Yahoo Group (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pgpboard/), which seems stupid but is probably more resistant to international censorship than alt.anonymous.messages on Usenet. (Although if it were my butt on the line and I had a choice, I still think that Mixmaster+Usenet would be the better choice.)

oscilloscope• 16 years ago

This article's been discredited by Wikileaks on twitter:

http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/17646287388

Found on reddit by the way =P

igravious• 16 years ago

Hard to know who or what to believe. I thought that crytome was was reliable. Certainly the some security state apparatus is turning the screw. It'd be nice to know the whole story.

rsingel• 16 years ago

Actually, check the time stamps. Wikileaks disputed the first 8, but not this one. No word from Wikileaks on this so far.

mischa_u• 16 years ago

There it is: "WikiLeaks will NOT be abandoned. Don't listen to disinfo being spread! We'll issue clarifications soon. Should've done earlier." http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/18289990888

blots• 16 years ago

Cryptome seems to dislike Wikileaks for some reason, at least that's the impression I got. Never tried to dig into it though.

philwelch• 16 years ago

I think the word is "rivalry".

rdl• 16 years ago

I would love to participate in an open, transparent, and fair equivalent to wikileaks. Currently, cryptome actually does a 99% job of this.

Tools, vs. Services, and definitely in preference to individual personalities as gatekeepers!

ErrantX8• 16 years ago

IIRC Cryptome has "history" with Wikileaks (I believe they were pretty fed up of WL's profile of The Whistleblower site despite being the new kid on the block compared to Cryptome).

Bear this in mind when reading.

With that said; I much prefer Cryptome to WL - they do consistently publish stuff! Usually without to much editorializing.

And even if this is all just made up (a possibility) it does highlight some of the concerns over WL. Assange is becoming a concerning character, where is the money going, the website does seem to be stagnating etc.

wyclif• 16 years ago

WikiLeaks will not be abandoned: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/18289990888

dmn001• 16 years ago

Wow, crazy stuff. I hope there will be a new, and possibly better website to replace it.

Wikileaks website to be abandoned

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