
Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt - ghurlman
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/wikileaks-revolt/
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lhnz
This gossip by the media is a waste of everybody's time. I feel like the
stress and pressure are solely created by them. And in relation to the
article, I side with Assange, who is under a huge amount of stress: external
and internal.

If others want authority or control they _must_ start their own organisation
up. Nothing is stopping them and it would be of great benefit to everybody.
However if they want to work with Assange they know what they're getting into:
they must trust him and they must follow him. It is only fair to do this: if
he started it you cannot expect it to turn into a democracy unless that is how
he wants it. Assange is right to not trust any of these people either: look
what they've done? The "wikileaks" leaks are coming from somewhere aren't
they. Case in point: this one.

 _"I believe that Julian has in fact pushed the capable people away,"
Snorrason said in an interview with Wired.com. "His behavior is not of the
sort that will keep independent-minded people interested."_

The project could be handled by other people if necessary. There is a huge
amount of public support for Wikileaks or similar sites. I think they could
get other capable people to work for them if it was needed.

I must say, I find the need to spend ages double-checking the leaks to be a
little insecure and while I understand that it is to manage their public
image, I think it is wrong that they are expected to do so by anybody. You
already have the morale high-ground when you point out atrocities committed in
a war. Any comparison between deaths that could result from a leak and those
documented in the leak I treat with a lot of suspicion because there have been
no deaths from leaks so far and there have been a huge number of deaths from
the wars. In all honesty, the comparison is unfair and frankly a baseless
smear.

Also, why does everybody act all surprised with Wikileaks not liking their own
information to be leaked? I think this is two-valued logic and we should avoid
seeing everything so black-and-white if we want to have ethics that are
actually applicable to real life.

edit; For the record, I do find some fault with wikileaks. It really
disappoints me that they spend all of their time with the big leaks nowadays
and shirk the smaller national leaks.

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jacquesm
Weirdest thing how Assange gets mad because wikileaks secrets are leaked, that
seems to have a nice symmetry to it.

The last couple of months have seen wikileaks go from solid and with a very
high level of integrity to definitely damaged, it won't last at this rate.

~~~
jobu
It is a perfect irony that the man calling for more openness and transparency
can't handle it when his own private issues are aired publicly.

Some security breaches at wikileaks could lead to informants or
employees/volunteers being harassed or harmed, but this breach could only harm
Assange's public image. He needs to get over himself and blow this off, or
step down if he can't ignore trivial rumors.

~~~
jrockway
Assange's private life is not relevant to the public interest. Videos of our
helicopter pilots killing children are.

~~~
GHFigs
The motives and integrity of those who propagate information are always of
interest to the people receiving that information.

~~~
jrockway
If it's secondary-source, sure. If it's primary-source, then I don't
necessarily agree.

I think everyone's motivations are clear. Money, power, and reproduction.

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tptacek
Sad that this article spends tens of grafs talking about personal drama, and
buries what should be the lede: that a key Wikileaks insider has reason to
believe the Af/Pak dump was _inadequately redacted_ \--- in other words, that
Wikileaks managed to help put people at risk.

But by all means let's pore over their IRC logs and Assange's "and your
children's children's children for two weeks" pronouncements. They're a lot
more fun to read.

~~~
tomjen3
It is not wikileaks job to prevent people from getting harmed, nor is it their
job to help America fight is wars.

The sole, only and absolute job of wikileaks is to leak information, which
they have done very well.

If the US leadership can't fight their wars because of it, that is their
problem, not wikileaks.

~~~
tptacek
This is a tautology. The same logic animates the sentence "It is not the job
of the Kill-bot 3000 to prevent people from getting harmed; it is the job of
the Kill-bot 3000 to kill puppies, a job it has done very well".

Maybe it is right and sensible that Wikileaks provides the information that it
does. But it is clearly not automatically immune from ethical/moral
responsibility for its actions.

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batasrki
I wonder if this is the full transcript. Assange comes off as a real douche
here.

Sure, he's concerned about the leak to Newsweek, but he also completely and
totally disregards questions and comments from the other Domscheit-Berg.

If this is the real transcript, Wikileaks is done for.

~~~
bananaandapple
I bet it's the real transcript.

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edkennedy
I guess the mind control lasers are working. Assange seems to be paranoid and
has a messiah complex. I'm sure he's under an incredible amount of stress.

~~~
kul
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

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aberkowitz
WikiLeaks worked better before Assange became WikiLeaks.

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motters
It all sounds rather silly, like two individuals who have lost sight of their
true mission. If they do possess a large volume of documents about Iraq
comparable to the Afghanistan leak this may turn out to be important
historical information shedding new light on what was a highly controversial
war.

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astine
I wonder if the irony is lost on anyone that it is Assaange here that is
worried about a leak in _his_ organization. Assuming the rumors are true, an
individual who believes that leaks in organizations' security are always fair
game is reacting badly to leak in his own organization's security.

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edkennedy
And yet the wikileaks twitter feed still seems to say everything is A-OK
"Successfully completed our next three films. Thank you team and supporters."
<http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/25591655477>

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DanielBMarkham
Sorry, but wikileaks has stopped being a force for good and instead is a
destructive PR vehicle for Assange.

I fully support the leaking of data -- far too many things are classified --
up and until it reaches the point where the leaks directly get folks killed.
At that point the leakers become criminals and should be prosecuted. It's
especially egregious when they act as if they are saviors of mankind.

From the recent news involving rape and now this, it appears that Assange has
some personal issues he is working through. They need to get rid of him and
put somebody else in charge.

You can lose credibility in two ways: you can publish lies or you can
recklessly publish harmful things. There is a fine line to walk for wikileaks,
and they are straying from the path. I could tolerate the messiah complex if
the editorial quality remained high. But it has not.

~~~
dsplittgerber
See, that's exactly why mud-slinging is so successful. People have no clue if
there was ever an iota of truth in the rape accusations, still Assange's image
is now forever tainted by it. It's 'How to destroy your enemies 101'.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Reminds me of an old political joke, "They framed a guilty man!"

Conspiracies and poor behavior are not mutually exclusive.

I know how much you want to believe, but wanting to believe is not going to
make it so. At the end of the day, Wikileaks has to be about more than
personalities if it is going to succeed, conspiracies or not.

Put differently, you can only frame a person who has made himself the image of
the organization. Wikileaks should have never allowed Assange in this
position.

So fix the error and move on. No harm, no foul. The only damage to Wikileaks
occurs if they sit around and do nothing except for form a circular firing
squad.

~~~
dsplittgerber
In today's media environment you probably need a singular spokesperson as a
front for interviews etc. You won't get the same amount of attention by just
being an anonymous "hivemind".

Also, it's very interesting how the media has turned on wikileaks in the
recent past. It's not about how many Pakistanis or Afghans the CIA drones are
killing per day, it's about whether wikileaks endangers any sources.

