

Why I Felt I Had To Turn My Back On Wikileaks - tptacek
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-leave-wikileaks

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tptacek
_So I decided to grit my teeth and carry on. Dismay mounted, however, with the
arrival of Israel Shamir, a self-styled Russian "peace campaigner" with a long
history of antisemitic writing. Shamir was introduced to the team under the
pseudonym Adam, and it was only several weeks after he had left – with a huge
cache of unredacted cables – that most of us started to find out who he was._

 _Press enquiries started to trickle in. A little research revealed his
unsavoury history, but I was told Julian would be unwilling for WikiLeaks to
publish anything critical of Shamir. Instead, shamefully, we put out a
statement simply distancing WikiLeaks from him._

 _There followed even more damning allegations. Shamir had been seen leaving
the interior ministry of Belarus, an eastern European dictatorship._

 _The next day, the country's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, boasted he would
start a Belarusian WikiLeaks showing the US was funding his political rivals._

 _Scores of arrests of opposition activists followed the country's elections –
but Shamir wrote a piece painting an idyllic picture of free, fair, elections
in a happy country._

 _Human rights groups demanded answers, amid fears that Belarus may have
received material from the cables. No answers were supplied. Julian would not
look into the matter._

~~~
rdl
Transferring the unpublished cables to a (hostile) foreign government makes a
charge of espionage against PFC Manning, Wikileaks (and their staff), etc. a
lot more sustainable than if they were merely publishing the documents.

~~~
tptacek
That's a bit of logic that refutes any negative news that ever breaks about
Wikileaks.

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lotharbot
> _"For an organisation supposedly devoted to human rights, the apparent lack
> of concern when faced with such a grave charge was overwhelming."_

I've had this sense about Wikileaks for quite a while, now. They present
themselves as an intelligence agency for the people, devoted to human rights.
But they don't conduct themselves like an intelligence agency; they're sloppy
and careless, with few safeguards in place. They also don't focus well on
human rights; they drum up more publicity for US diplomatic cables than, for
example, Chinese dissidents. They talk about the importance of openness, going
so far as to expose the names of informants in foreign countries, but try to
keep their own internal information secret.

I love the idea of Wikileaks, but the implementation sucks.

