

WikiLeaks: Out of time and money - cawel
http://www.economist.com/node/21536578

======
maqr
Between the donation lock-out from every major bank, the heavily biased media
coverage, and the clearly false charges against Assange, this has become too
painful to watch.

All of this for a guy trying to create a press outlet that tells the real
truth, using anonymous and protected (but verified) sources, for free, to the
whole world.

~~~
scott_s
I'm curious how you were able to come to the conclusion that the charges are
"clearly false." The charges sound serious to me, and while I have not
concluded on their truth, I cannot dismiss them. They sound like they have
enough merit for a trial. For example, "Given that one of the women said she
awoke to find Mr. Assange having unprotected sex with her, she could not
possibly have given her consent, Ms. Montgomery argued."
([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/europe/12assange.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/world/europe/12assange.html))

~~~
yummyfajitas
The evidence suggests it is highly unlikely they are true.

Most rape victims don't tweet about how it's "amazing" to hang out with "cool"
and "smart" people after being raped, or throw a party for their rapist.

<http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml>

Nor do they usually invite their rapist to stay at their house 4 days after
the rape.

[http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/12/crayfish_parties_and_br...](http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/12/crayfish_parties_and_broken_co.html)

It's also a rather implausible coincidence that after these events, the rape
charge only surfaced after a) Assange failed to call either Anna Ardin or Miss
W. back and b) Ardin and W each discovered he was sleeping with the other one.

I think the story itself justifies a very low probability of being true - in
my estimation, probably considerably less than 1%.

~~~
jrockway
_Most rape victims don't tweet about how it's "amazing" to hang out with
"cool" and "smart" people after being raped, or throw a party for their
rapist.

Nor do they usually invite their rapist to stay at their house 4 days after
the rape._

Stockholm syndrome?

~~~
jrockway
Since I've been downmodded about 100 times for this comment, I thought I'd
point out that it's Stockholm that's trying to get him extradited.

It was a play on words, guys.

~~~
mushishi
How can I even downvote? I only see upvote arrow.

And how did your playfulness bring any relevant information to the discussion?
There's nothing wrong with being funny but it should go alongside with
usefulness; otherwise you end up with pun-festing.

~~~
Mz
You don't have enough karma to downvote. At one time, the threshold was 200
points. I'm not sure if it is still the same.

~~~
sdp
It's more than 400 now and has been for some time.

------
owenmarshall
Possibly unpopular question: why is WikiLeaks so expensive?

I'm well aware that hosting costs money -- especially if you're trying to find
a service that is resistant to pressure from companies and governments around
the world -- but WL seems to have run out of funds every time I try to access
the site.

I mean, if the goal is to freely distribute information, distributing leaks by
torrent only would be a simple, insanely cheap option that would save WL
money.

But as far as I can tell, WikiLeaks hasn't exactly been forthcoming with
details of where their money goes. I could be wrong, but I think every query
Cryptome made to Wau Holland has been ignored, and some promised funds from WL
to Bradley Manning have come up consistently short...

~~~
jgrahamc
It's quite clear that WikiLeaks doesn't want to distribute via BitTorrent
because they want control. Just look at how they handled the cables: they
worked with media partners to analyze and release some of them. Later they
totally screwed up and released everything unfiltered.

Since they want to maintain control they need people and bandwidth/hosting.
Even if the the latter were free, people tend to cost money.

~~~
vladd
You can distribute encrypted files via torrents to solve both control and
bandwidth (you just divulge the password at a future point in time).

~~~
danenania
That doesn't solve control on its own... you still need (smart, trustworthy,
courageous) people to go through documents, verify credibility, determine and
redact dangerous info, deal with media/pr, not to mention legal issues. Tech
people seem to consistently underestimate the non-tech needs even of
organizations that are primarily software driven. I'd venture to guess that
despite technology clearly being a core component of what WL does, it
represents a relatively small percentage of their expenses.

~~~
ww520
You can distribute the encrypted version via BT and give the decryption key to
the selected few to verify. This is no different from giving the unencrypted
version to the selected few to verify.

~~~
kd0amg
That still only takes care of the cost of hosting. It does not deal with the
labor cost for reviewing the documents.

------
bh42222
Let's momentarily put aside the question of Asange's legal troubles, and
concentrate only on WikiLeaks.

It is greatly disturbing that an informal impromptu collusion of financial
companies and governments is successfully shutting down a while blower outlet.

Like seriously f-ing disturbing!

~~~
mvanga
What bothers me more is that people have been powerless in helping Wikileaks
with their struggle. There are people who want to donate to Wikileaks but are
unable to do so in an easy manner because of the blockade. It's a really good
demonstration of where power lies.

~~~
xtracto
They also accept bitcoins, which you know nowadays are cheap :P

~~~
fragsworth
I am sure they had quite a few, and their recent crash in value probably did
not help much.

------
willvarfar
So can we all start singing the praises of <http://cryptome.org/> so that
future whistle blowers know where to go?

Oh, and someone make them an attractive homepage please!

------
antoinehersen
I think Assange took to much of a central role, creating a huge weakness that
is being successfully exploited. I personally want to support wikileaks, but I
have mixed feelings about Assange.

------
tibbon
If they stop, does this mean they are going to release the password on that
"insurance" file they distributed a while ago?

~~~
khafra
IIRC that got blown by one of the journalists they had been working with.

~~~
brador
So the passwords out?

~~~
eis
No, as far as I understand the situation, the password that got leaked was for
the whole cables archive and not for the insurance file.

The insurance file was not released because Wikileaks is saying they are being
blackmailed by a big bank (don't remember which one, BoA?).

Edit: I think I confused this stuff. It's not about releasing the insurance
file, it's about releasing information on the banks that they can't do because
of the claimed blackmailing. The insurance file will only be released as a
last resort.

~~~
tibbon
What in the world could BofA do?

~~~
roc
Aside from what they've done in getting every payment processor to blacklist
them?

I think the question is: what _more_ could BoFA do?

One possibility, is getting all the _individuals_ associated with Wikileaks
--possibly including family members and friends-- added to the blacklist.

That said, if I were Wikileaks, this would be the point I release my Insurance
File. Along with whatever communications they've had from BofA, which
doubtlessly outline what they want and what they'll do if they don't get it.
(You can't be blackmailed without accusations and threats)

~~~
bunderbunder
I kind of feel like they should have released the insurance file long ago. In
fact, it never should have been an insurance file in the first place. Keeping
dirty secrets under wraps for the sake of waging power struggles doesn't
exactly strike me as the kind of thing that WikiLeaks is supposed to be about.

------
deanproxy
This may be a really, really dumb question... I don't know the laws possibly
preventing this and how shady it could actually be, but is there a possible
way to set up an intermediary payment system? Whereas one could accept easy
payments and then do the work of transforming those into checks or whatnot and
sending them to Wikileaks?

~~~
zobzu
you need a bank to store the money, if its not physical money no bank wants of
wikileaks or to handle their transactions

and yes, banks control the world, they don't like something, they kill it.
simple and easy apparently.

~~~
deanproxy
Definitely... but I'm wondering about doing it anonymously. So basically find
some way that people could donate to a specific person or business, then have
that entity make money orders and send them off directly to wikileaks?

I'm guessing there are laws in place to prevent such a thing... It seems too
much like money laundering. :)

~~~
hohead
FYI, they accept Bitcoin donations (which are fairly anonymous) at this
address: 1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v

You can learn more here: <https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate>

------
Bungholio
A sneering, cynical summary, typical of a press which attacks alternative
sources for purely selfish reasons. You'd have thought that "the press" would
stick together to protect press freedom, freedom of speech and whistle-
blowing, but no - they seem more interested in sniping at Wikileaks. Even the
U.K. Guardian has joined in, I only hope these institutions aren't one day
hoisted on their own petard.

------
nomdeplume
WikiLeaks has been dead for a long time. Ever since the release involving the
video of helicopter firing on the people below, someone out there got serious
and decided to take Assange down by discrediting him and by diverting the
focus away from information and toward the rape charges. Assange was probably
given some "offer" he could not refuse and the rest is all for show.

~~~
kevinh
I'll agree that WikiLeaks died (for me) when they released the helicopter
video, but not because of some sort of grand conspiracy. It was because they
editorialized the story into the ground. They weren't releasing unadulterated
pure data and allowing people to analyze the data; they were attempting to
force people into a certain manner of thinking.

That's when I realized WikiLeaks was just the same as any major media outlet.

~~~
noblethrasher
Assange advocates something he calls "scientific journalism" whereby
journalists publish the raw data and source material along with every story.
So they differ from major media outlets in that Wikileaks releases both the
editorialized "story" and the unedited source footage and documents.

Now, I'm still not sure how I feel about the "Collateral Murder" video but
Assange claims that the original modus operandi of Wikileaks was to simply
supply partner news organizations with the raw (possibly redacted) source
material and let them publish it. He further claims that the major news
organizations were not interested in doing anything with the information until
Wikileaks forced them to by creating a story with legs.

