

WikiLeaks is Dead. Now What? - Mizza
http://openwatch.net/blog/18

======
ianb
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.

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

------
linuxhansl
"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.

~~~
commandar
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.

~~~
mushishi
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.

~~~
commandar
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.

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

~~~
Mizza
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.

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

~~~
jeltz
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.

~~~
droithomme
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.

~~~
philwelch
_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.

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

~~~
Mizza
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.

~~~
andrewcooke
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.

------
tibbon
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.

~~~
Mizza
ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_Pr esentDay#

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

~~~
Mizza
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.

------
puredemo
UpLeak.com is available. Have at it.

~~~
Fargren
UpLeak.com is down

~~~
puredemo
I mean the domain is available. ;)

------
zyfo
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.

------
diamondhead
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.

~~~
philwelch
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.

------
Helianthus
Apparently it's covered.

[http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/11/anonops-anonymous-
messag...](http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/11/anonops-anonymous-message-
spread-word.html)

