How WikiLeaks Gags Its Own Staff 236
robbyyy writes "The New Statesman has just revealed the extent of the legal eccentricity and paranoia that exists at the WikiLeaks organization. The magazine published a leaked copy of the draconian and extraordinary legal gag which WikiLeaks imposes on its own staff. Clause 5 of the Confidentiality Agreement (PDF) imposes a penalty of £12,000,000 (approximately $20,000,000) on anyone who breaches this legal gag. Sounds like they don't trust their own staff."
I like it! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Presumably, there are people out there who want to leak documents, but want to be sure that wikileaks will properly redact it so as to protect members of the armed services, etc. This policy is probably in place for their peace of mind. If leakers just wanted to dump stuff onto the internet, anyone could do that. This policy is to make sure that the leak is done right.
Psychological Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Discredit WikiLeaks, Shoot the Messenger, Covert Operation Game Plan - as we were warned.
Re:Psychological Warfare (Score:4, Insightful)
For what it's worth, I don't have a fundamental problem with the confidentiality agreement: There is no real conflict with Wikileak's mission here, despite what many other people might claim in a kneejerk reaction. Wikileaks doesn't advocate the indiscriminate release of all information, and with any organisation dedicated to releasing confidential resources while protecting whistleblowers, secrecy is obviously a central fact of live. More so with an organisation that must be under tremendous, even violent, pressure from the US. And while I found the commercial aspects of the agreement a bit odious -- they talk about the financial damages caused by breaking the agreement -- it makes sense since, even though Wikileaks is not for profit, their media partners (e.g. the NYT, the Guardian, der Spiegel) are.
All that said, Wikileaks is more secretive of their own organisation than is good for them, and it would not have hurt to simply be open about this confidentiality agreement: they could have posted it on their websites for potential volunteers to see, for instance. Of coure, if they had done that, everybody would have started shouting about the supposed paradoxical situation of a whistleblowing organisation having secrets themselves (hurr durr) -- ie. what's happening now.
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12000 pound is a bit out of reach for your average basement-dwelling hacktivist.
it smacks of L Ron Hubbard's billion year sea org contracts... a really large number just to guarantee people don't defy you.
Assange really does need to get his paranoia and narcissism sorted out though - they are the two biggest forces working against Wikileaks right now.
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(oops, missed 3 zeroes)
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12000 pound is a bit out of reach for your average basement-dwelling hacktivist.
Hence the point of it. Don't break confidentiality agreement.
Think of it like a doctor breaking patient confidentiality. Only in wikileaks case, fallout for "patient" is far more dramatic.
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Think of it like a doctor breaking patient confidentiality. Only in wikileaks case, fallout for "patient" is far more dramatic.
Exactly, if a doctor breaks his confidentiality agreement the patient usually doesn't end up in a cia black hole prison being tortured for the rest of their life.
Re:Psychological Warfare (Score:4, Informative)
Why exactly would this document hurt Wikileaks image. For people who wish their identities to remain confidential when they release information, this penalty would be very reassuring.
So you have, the 'New Statesman' and a junk journalist DAG, trying to put a negative spin on what many whistle blowers would find very comforting.
So how great is the penalty that many whistle blowers suffer, well you need look no further than the psychological abuse suffered by Bradley E. Manning. So what value does that rag New Stateman and DAG, put on that, apparently nothing.
Obviously the term 'confidential source' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidential_source [wikipedia.org] means absolutely nothing to that hack DAG or the New Statesman.
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Re:I like it! (Score:5, Insightful)
EXACTLY. Wikileaks can't seem to win. If they ever leak anything, people scream about how they are "endangering lives". If they do anything to control the level of detail in the leaking to address that issue, people (possibly the very same people) scream about how they limit leaking.
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No, I'm saying that much of the criticism they get is of limited merit and that they are unlikely to be able to do anything at all (including disband) that will satisfy all critics.
Re:I like it! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll agree with the "unable to satisfy all critics" part. If you're not pissing someone off, you're doing it wrong.
However, the criticism that they tend to get is actually rather important. It comes down to much larger questions of what happens when you have someone freely leaking information who are not even tangentially responsible to the greater community.
On one hand, there's no doubt that stuff gets hidden as classified for unacceptable reasons.
On the other hand, just because people haven't been hurt yet, doesn't mean it can't happen. Half the data that an intelligence analyst looks at would be considered to be mundane, boring, or even pointless by untrained and uninformed people. A detail that seems unimportant and not dangerous to you may actually be extremely important. Having that information thrown to a group of volunteer outsiders who have no responsibility to anyone but themselves means that there is a higher chance that adequate care will not be taken, or even *cannot* be taken with that data.
Don't get me wrong, I like seeing stuff like this, and I am not against seeing more leaks, but some of the criticism of what they have been doing is very spot on. The question is, can the leakers control themselves to a degree where the fact that people haven't been killed isn't just good luck, because that's what the low level of review of previously reviewed material has meant so far. As it stands, I imagine that some intelligence agencies are already quietly capitalizing on some of the things that came out in the diplomatic messages. You know that at least a few subjects of the candid reports are probably more than a little pissed at the US right now, and when world leaders get pissed, bad things happen.
Re:I like it! (Score:5, Insightful)
i'd be surprised if diplomats from other countries don't talk about each other in as bitchy a manner as the americans do. it seems a bit naive to think having bitchings aired could spark an international incident - if anything it can help communication, now that both parties have a little bit less pretense they can talk more openly and productively.
if diplomats are prone to hurt feelings, they're REALLY in the wrong game.
of course, feigning offense and hurt can be good from a propaganda perspective.
on redaction, observations so far have shown that wikileaks have redacted more information than their traditional press counterparts.
aside from the sheer volume leaked, it seems safety per-leak has actually increased.
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They have harmed nobody, and have clearly taken steps meant to keep it that way including getting respected media outlets to help them in screening the information released.
I see no evidence for the idea that the lack of deaths so far is just lucky. It's like saying that (pick any average person) just hasn't happened to go on a multi-state killing spree.
TFA itself shows that they are working to mitigate any unacceptable leaks.
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I have some diplomats in the family and boy do they tell some dirty stories about "the people in power". Presidents, prime ministers, ambassadors, military attach
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I have a contrary viewpoint. I believe the fact that they are making changes that are counter to their initial statements validate much of the criticism. But at the same time, it opens them up to additional criticism from those who got behind some of the initial ideals Wikileaks no longer practices. Meanwhile, some of the behavior from WikiLeaks simply adds fuel to other controversies like financial interests / claims (which seems to be the angle of this article).
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you can expect big changes from a group that are working it all out as they go along...
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you can expect big changes from a group that are working it all out as they go along...
Well, sure. There's growing pains. But it should be noted that what WikiLeaks is doing isn't without historical precedent. And growing pains doesn't negate criticism. Wikileaks wants to operate on a big stage and get lots of attention - both of which rightfully draws a critical eye.
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Yeah, right. The very first thing that stood out to me from that wonderful document:
E. By reason of the matters set out in A-D above herein any breach by you likely to cause loss and damage to WikiLeaks including without limitation loss and damage in the nature of:
- Loss of opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers;
So much for the image of selfless anarchists righting the wrongs...
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The reason I love this is that I enjoy when self appointed guardians of right and wrong are proven to be less than the paragons of virtue they like to have everyone believe they are. Nothing more.
One last time. Not hate. I get a great laugh from hypocrisy.
As opposed to the armed forces.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which threaten court martial and execution for breaching confidentiality, or a lifetime in prison. I'd take a $12 million fine which I can default on, any day of the week.
Re:As opposed to the armed forces.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Armed Forces, where one takes an legally binding oath after volunteering, then volunteers again for the security clearance while taking another legally binding oath.
Dude knew what he was getting into
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You know what you're getting into in legal terms, but you can't possibly know if you can justify keeping quiet before seeing the confidential information. I can easily imagine someone signing a confidentiality agreement in good faith only to find out that the information does warrant whistleblowing, despite the possibility of dire personal consequences.
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Don't do the crime if you can't do the time? That's a fairly simpleminded way to look at it. You need to be aware of the consequences your actions might have, but you don't have to accept them, you're well within your rights to complain about treatment you perceive as unjust and fight for better treatment (even violently, I suppose, and I don't say this lightly). Dissidents in corrupt countries almost always run afoul of some kind of law. Whether or not this applies to Manning or other Wikileaks-related peo
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Yes, if you make an agreement that says you will agree not to do something lest you face consequences and you choose to break it you have little or nothing to complain about. If the guy truly believes in what he did, he should be more than willing to face what is coming.
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You're missing the point. Confidentiality agreements necessarily involve agreeing to something the nature and scale of which you can't know at the time you agree to them. The point isn't whether or not you should have to face the consequences -- whatever, maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't, I don't really care to discuss it -- but rather that by it's very nature it's not an agreement any ethical person can agree to with complete confidence. That's very, very different from a typical contract involving, s
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Being held in conditions described as torturous does merit "whining"
Given the USG was too scared to even allow the UN Torture commisioner the access required to assess Pvt Mannings holding conditions, it tells you this really isnt "whining" but legitimate criticism of inhuman conditions.
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Whistleblowing is something I support, but the data dump that someone exposed is not whistleblowing.
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Re:As opposed to the armed forces.. (Score:5, Informative)
No, he did not. There are some obligations you can't sign away, among them the obligation to not perform human rights abuses or war crimes.
According to Lamo's logs (a known liar who has every reason to demonize Manning, by the way), Manning was asked to assist in a human rights abuse - rounding up peaceful dissidents who merely published a scholarly article criticizing the Iraqi government. You are not allowed to obey an illegal order, so he tried to alert his superiors. When they told him to shut up and get back to work, rather than blowing the whistle on them, he concluded that the whole system was rotten and needed to be exposed.
Now you may disagree about that (though if you have never been in such a situation, I don't value your opinion much) but it was not done "[out of loyalty to] to [the nations's] enemies, to give them aid and comfort" - which is the ONLY definition of treason the US constitution permits short of declaring war. Manning did what he thought was necessary to uphold his obligations to the US constitution and binding international agreements on human rights, and action taken for that reason, no matter how misguided, can never consitute treason in the US.
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Yep, just like the legally binding oath the president swears to and then seems to forget as soon as convenient...
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying the US armed forces should return to conscription?
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For how long have you been suffering from comprehension problems ?
Apparently for 7 minutes minus the few seconds it took to read your post? How does an all volunteer military create desperate young men with no other option?
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I suspect he's complaining about the socio-economic pressures that lead to lower class/poor people having a much higher representation rate in the armed forces.
Of course, the military still does have standards. Even the US military won't take *everyone*, and if you're going to do anything that actually requires clearance, there's a skills and IQ test you need to pass before they'll even consider you for it.
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I have never served in the military however, I live near an army base, a number of my co-workers are either ex-military or military spouses, my ex-wife and all of her siblings and parents have served in the military, many of my friends growing up choose to join the military. Out of all of these people I don't know of any that had no other option, they may have seen the military as their best option (in retrospect for many it probably was) a way to learn a trade, something to belong to, etc. I am sure your
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That's not terribly unfair a description. Yes, a lot of people join the military because they don't see any better options in life. No job, no scholarship, join the military, or go hungry, or stay in Mama's basement? And, corporate America is perfectly happy to push youngsters into that position, because the military, in almost all instances, is "protecting" corporate interests abroad.
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As I noted later on (http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2146120&cid=36100472) it appears New Statesman made up the entire angle that staff would be fined £12,000,000. Read the entire agreement start to finish, and the only penality implied by the confidentiality agreement for a breach is employment termination. Employment termination IS enforceable. The £12,000,000 fine never existed. All smoke and mirrors from folks trying to muddy Wikileaks.
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"Disinformation Wants to be FREE!"
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"Disinformation Wants to be FREE!"
Information, Anonymity, Anarchy, please meet Veracity, Authenticity, and Perception.
Have fun!
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The 12M pounds would qualify as liquidated damages.
It's a contract issue. It's not a fine, but you could be liable for it and in theory Wikileaks could sue you over it.
However, since Wikileaks is almost universally deemed a criminal enterprise owing to the stuff they are usually involved in leaking, they would probably not have standing.
Re:As opposed to the armed forces.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Can you list one nation which has listed Wikileaks as a criminal enterprise? (including the US).
please show me which regulation (Score:2)
provides for execution for 'breaching confidentiality'.
my impression is that there are only a few things that get you executed, including
Aiding the enemy
Treason
Misprison of treason
bradley manning isnt even charged with treason, he is only charged with aiding the enemy.
every other charge against him about giving out information only provides for jail or fines. not death.
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Leaking classified information *is* aiding the enemy. Depending on what information is leaked, and when, it can also be Treason.
uhm so if i told you Qadafi has a hot nurse (Score:2)
would that be treason?
because that information is classified.
i mean, technically, im breaking the law RIGHT NOW telling it to you.
and unless you 'deliver' that information to a government agent 'entitled to receive it', you are breaking the law just by having this information in your computer memory.
i cannot get a foreign service job because of my discussing this fact with you... should i also be in prison?
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Wow (Score:3)
How, er, ironic.
Well, I guess it's actually just hypocritical, but it sure smells like irony to me...
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Actually, it's just a standard confidentiality agreement. It nowhere states that anyone will be fined. The New Statesman just made that up. Sorry to disappoint. It does have a clause stating the agreed value of a significant breach, but the only penalty inferred in the agreement is employment termination.
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Sorry, didn't read TFA. Just tickled my funny bone, is all.
It's nice to know that the leaker can 'only' be fired, if we infer correctly...leaving it up to whomever the leaked information was about to take it up in civil court with that handy 'value of a significant breach' number.
Why would they have a dollar value assigned if it weren't intended to be used somewhere? IA*definitely*NAL, so I'm honestly curious here.
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Oh, it definitely is so that they can sue, both the leaker (who leaked information with known x value) and whomever is purchasing it. This is primarily to stop staff who recieve leaks from selling information to news organisations themselves, for personal gain.
The point here is that "Clause 5 of this "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of "£12,000,000 – twelve million pounds sterling" on anyone who breaches this legal gag." in the linked article is not true. There are several sim
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Not even that - "The parties agree that a genuine and reasonable pre-estimate of the loss to WikiLeaks from a breach of this agreement based on a typical open market valuation for the information for a significant breach of the agreement is in the region of 12,000,000 pounds (12 million pounds sterling)."
So, it's just a "pre-estimate" - useless.
And "based on a typical open market valuation for the information" - good luck with that
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
It's neither hypocritical nor ironic. They've never said that they would provide all the documents without redaction, in fact they've gone to great lengths to redact information that's not necessary and would be likely to reveal the sources.
Sounds like they want to be the only ones who determine when information is 'necessary'. Redaction to prevent source identification, that I can understand, but if one of their employees feels the redaction marker has been applied a bit too liberally? What recourse then...release it to Wikileaks? Oh, wait...
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If I worked at wikileaks (Score:3)
and found something damning (like Assange is a paid lackey of Putin), I sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to leak it to the press. Confidentiality agreement be damned.
Why do these groups think these things hold any power? It's just words on a page.
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words on a page backed by men with a guns.
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Their confidentiality agreement is backed by guns only if they can find a country who will enforce it for them. They don't currently seem to have a lot of countries in such a mood.
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>>>words on a page backed by men with a guns.
i.e. Fear the government men with the guns.
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This is a great way to owe someone 20 million dollars. Just agree to shit on paper because you think it doesn't mean anything.
Re:If I worked at wikileaks (Score:5, Insightful)
and found something damning (like Assange is a paid lackey of Putin), I sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to leak it to the press. Confidentiality agreement be damned.
Why do these groups think these things hold any power? It's just words on a page.
It isn't meant to stop really damning truth.
It's to stop "volunteers" from profiting immensely by pre-leaking the documents for a price.
A monetary fine is not a a deterrent for someone "doing the right thing".
It does deter people from profiting off the compromising of valuable data and the organization itself by altering the reward calculation.
Well (Score:3)
Given that WL 'clean up' the documents before they leak them to the media, don't you think someone who'd leak the top secret information to the media, or the entire batch of uncleaned files... would be both dangerous and would ruin WL's credibility?
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That's a point that a lot of people here have missed completely. Wikileaks doesn't release material complete without redactions, the redactions might not be sufficient, but it's hard to say how much should be released when the party that doesn't want them released at all refuses to negotiate or participate.
The measures there are primarily to ensure that they are finished before they make it to the press. I doubt very much that it'll ever get to the point of legal proceedings.
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Probably they aren't missing it at all and are just a bunch of CIA agents trying to astroturf on /.
The idiocy I see in wikileaks deterrents is not something that I would expect form a nerd gathering like this.
Actually, that's not what it says... (Score:5, Informative)
It appears nobody RTFPDF.
It nowhere states that anybody is going to be fined any amount of money.
E ... any breach by you is likely to cause loss and damage to Wikileaks including..
d. loss of value of information
5. The parties agree that a genuine and reasonable pre-estimate loss to WikiLeaks from a breach of this agreement based on a typical open market valuation for the information for a significant breach of the agreement is in the region of £12,000,000.
Nowhere does it state that the signee will be liable to that value. Only that they agree they'll be terminated for a breach thereof. Agreeing to that value of a breach may open the path TO be sued for a figure in that region, however the summation that anyone who breaches will be fined £12,000,000 is a blatant falsehood.
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And we can't downvote stories anymore... Great.
So basically the entire submission is bullshit and there isn't a whole lot to be seen.
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Indeed, the section E he refers to as saying that folks can be sued, never says anyone can be sued. Just that the parties agree as to what damages Wikileaks may suffer as a result of a breach. David Green simply made up the entire angle of staff being fined. Indeed, it is all bullshit. Thats why he stops 'quoting' directly, and starts saying stuff like:
The fifth recital paragraph, "E", is just as astonishing. It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached. WikiLeaks says it can sue for both "loss of opportunity to sell the information to other news broadcasters and publishers" and "loss of value of the information".
Well, if the agreement actually said that - he could quote it. Instead he puts his own words, and then inserts random quotations as to what folks can be "sue
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It does say that. It's not a lie, it's the truth.
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No it doesn't.
8. You agree and accept that the information disclosed, or to be disclosed to you pursuant to this agreement is, by its nature, valuable proprietary information, the misuse or unauthorised disclosure of which would be likely to cause us considerable damage, and accordingly you concede that, without prejudice to any other rights and remedies that may be available to us in respect of Breach of this agreement, we are entitled to relief by way of injunction including any interim order available from any competent court having jurisdiction over its terms.
An injunction is not a £12,000,000 fine. It's an injunction. The injunction is the only legal remedy offered directly by the agreement. David Allen's (and New Stateman's claim) that "It purports to extend what WikiLeaks can sue for beyond any direct loss that it might suffer if the gag is breached." is completely false.
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Hypocrites (Score:2)
What a bunch of hypocrites.
It would be kinda funny (Score:2)
if the quoted figure of 12,000,000 was slightly different for each employee. Makes it easier to find out which one leaked the document then.
Like it or not (Score:2)
This is probably the only way for wikileaks to a. survive and b. get exposure through mainstream media. If information is not filtered to avoid imminent damage to life and limb of people on the ground, wikileaks and its sources will be subject to aggressive prosecution, not to mention seriously bad karma. And no newspaper will run a story without some kind of exclusive access agreement. If you truly want uncensored publication, there are millions of way to do so on Internet. You just will not get the same m
GNU is Not Unix? (Score:2)
a legal document that states leaking our documents will subject you to a fine is leaked.....
I espect that this agreement exists... (Score:2)
...to be shown to whistleblowers who ask "How can I be sure one of your staff won't sell me out"?
Good thing they do (Score:2)
Ok, let the discussion begin (Score:2)
Is Wikileaks hypocritical? Is it a false flag op to discredit them? If it's real, why is it there? If it's not, who would benefit from such a (pretty dumb, I have to add) attempt to destroy their credibility?
Personally, I won't make up my mind 'til I hear the other side. What does WL say 'bout it? I don't put one-sided trust into publications from a paper owned by a politician.
Wikileaks wants to retain the OPTION TO SELL (Score:2)
Wikileaks expressly discusses the value of the leaked material as material to be sold to news organizations.
Assange's organization is EVIL.
Support open and free alternatives.
Bad precedent for them (Score:2)
Do you *want* them to be trusting? (Score:2)
sounds like they don't trust their employees
Yeah -- you think there aren't attempts to infiltrate them left and right? How dumb and naive would they be if they *did* trust their employees? Would you want to turn over documents to them if the person to whom you did turned out to be a secret agent?
Or maybe they're just going to happen upon trustworthy employee by an extensive screening process and three rounds of interviews.
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How dumb and naive would they be if they *did* trust their employees?
Well, they'd be consistent with the ideology of openness if they did. As it is, Wikileaks appears to be morphing from an open-source intelligence collective into something midway between an independent journalism organisation and a private intelligence agency in the style of "Global Frequency". While either of those are possibly not a bad thing to have, it is a bit depressing to see that the desire for openness evaporates when it faces real secrets with real consequences.
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Yet all other confidential info in the world is fair game?
*facepalm*
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If Wikileaks positioned themselves as a whistleblower safe harbour; then there would be no contradiction.
But if people in Wikileaks and within the institution's orbit get preachy about the necessity of an open and free society then yeah; they are hypocrites.
I guess they could say their ultimate goal is open and free society and whistleblower support is a first tentative step along the way. (whether this is actually achievable is beyond my capacity to visualise, I suspect that it is impossible to construct a
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That's my take anyway.
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If it is, it's a bad one. The agreement never says anyone will be fined. New Statesman made that up.
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This posting from Anonymous Coward makes the whole joke even better.
Re:How Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll try to explain secrecy within wikileaks once more, hopefully before a hundred other comments spout the same nonsense. Wikileaks gets information from people within the organizations. These documents or memos they receive may have the submitters information on there. Maybe they have an IP, or email address, or mailing address or something that the submitter didn't hide. So wikileaks goes to the trouble of redacting this information from these documents so the submitter doesn't get identified.
Lets say Company A offers to bribe Country B's corrupt government to allow some dumping of chemical waste near some poor neighborhood in that country, but someone gets wind of this information floating around and submits it to wikileaks.
Now when these two entities find out their plan was leaked, they're going to be very pissed off. There may not be that many suspects for this leak, so they might start investigating to see who sent this information. Well guess who has this information? The wikileaks staff! Company A and Country B probably have deep deep pockets and wouldn't mind getting to the bottom of this, and who knows what the hell they'll do to the guy if they ever found out who it is (see : Bradley Manning detainment conditions).
Well the wikileaks staff are still human, and despite whatever moral integrity they have, maybe one of them can be tempted by large sums of money (as my dad used to say, Everyone has their price). So the best solution for the wikileaks organization at this point is to enforce a confidentiality agreement with an astronomical sum of money, as to potentially discourage any of their staff from leaking sensitive information that governments and organizations would love to get their hands on. Make it so whatever they might receive clearly isn't worth the 20M they'd have to pay back (assuming it was enforceable). This agreement isn't there to prevent the staff from disclosing the wikileaks budget, or to hide the fact that Julian assange uses Rogaine, or stays in 5 star hotels for conference visits. This is prevent the leakers from "mysteriously disappearing" because someone at their organization found out what they leaked.
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Nice summary, and I mostly agree with you. However - you seem to sympathize with Private Manning, and I do not. More, Manning's detention has been characterized as for his self protection. I'm not real sure how much I believe that, but it's out there, and it's reasonable.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I support Wikileaks, and I also support Assange. Some people might not understand, but I detest manning for violating his oaths, general orders, and a myriad of orders from his superiors. On the other
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There is no proof that manning has done anything.
where is his trial, where are the proof of facts?
Maybe you should think about that before you play this "manning is bad" shit.
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(see : Bradley Manning detainment conditions).
Boohoo. Bradley Manning made an agreement with the government to not expose secret information lest he receive rather severe punishment. It's rather hard to feel sorry for him when he voluntarily signed the contract.
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Just curious if you apply the same skepticism to each leaked cable and Iraq/Afg document? Couldn't some of those be plants? Either by the US or even by Wikileaks?
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Yes? It's a standard confidentiality agreement, upheld by courts worldwide.
Considering the value, and danger related to the documents they handle, 12 million seems like a reasonable sum.