Wikileaks Needs Help, and Not Just Money 134
st1d writes to tell us that Wikileaks has put out a call for help. However, instead of just asking for money, they have also suggested technical and legal avenues for support. In the site's short life, Wikileaks has been at the center of many breaking scandals and investigations. "Wikileaks is currently overloaded by readers. This is a regular difficulty that can only be resolved by deploying additional resources. If you support our mission, you can help us by integrating new hardware into our project infrastructure or developing software for the project. Become patron of a WikiLeaks server or other parts of our technology, adding more pillars to the stability and balance of the WikiLeaks platform. Servers come trouble-free and legally fortified, software is uniquely challenging. If you can provide rackspace, power and an uplink, or a dedicated server or storage space, for at least 12 months, or software development work for WikiLeaks, please write to wl-supporters@sunshinepress.org."
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Jokes based on racial stereotypes can be funny, but the GGP's comment wasn't a joke at all, it was just a nonsensical statement with something about Native Americans.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
it was just a nonsensical statement with something about Native Americans.
Ever heard of the term "indian giver"?
It's even on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
it was just a nonsensical statement with something about Native Americans.
Ever heard of the term "indian giver"?
It's even on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver [wikipedia.org]
Thank you. I was starting to think that Slashdot's collective IQ had suddenly dropped while I was away, but you've restored my faith.
Re: (Score:2)
So IQ is measured by the number of obscure insults you know? Why don't you explain your ideas to the psychologists, I'm sure they'll be glad to finally have a precise definition for intelligence.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
So IQ is measured by the number of obscure insults you know?
To most people in my country (you know, where we have Native Americans, who at one point were known as "Indians") the term "Indian Giver" is not remotely obscure. And yes, it is a minor insult but one which was perfectly in line with the original poster's remark (he gave in good faith and then took the gift back.) Nor do I feel the need to concern myself as to whether those who are not familiar with colloquialisms common to American English understand those references. Besides, I'd have been happy to explai
Re:I donated money (Score:4, Insightful)
Making a potentially offensive joke and then complaining about the moderators not getting the humor in it is also being an ass. So is continuing to post when the mass of "offtopic" moderators would prefer you to leave quietly.
BTW, I quite honestly had no idea that your "probably Native American" post was supposed to be funny.
Re: (Score:2)
What does it have to do with anything if its a term? It's still a racist term. Even the wikipedia article says its offensive.
Re: (Score:2)
I bet your the same kind of person that finds the word blackboard "racist".
Grow up and get a life please. The words black and white are colours, it's only if you choose to attach a racial connotation to it does it become something else.
Please stop trying to see racism everywhere, sometimes a spade is just a spade.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you need an explanation of this in kindergarten level?
There is 30 people in your class;
Out of those, 29 of them make a joke about 1 of them.
vs
That 1 boy makes a joke out of those 29 people.
Is it a same situation?
Re: (Score:2)
Both missing the point. A racist joke is a bad thing because it neglects who someone is in favour of a false generalisation. It may be worse when a majority make it about a minority, because unlike the other way around it suggests there will be an accompanying abuse of power which is even worse than just insults. The poster that says that the acceptability of such comments is dependent on whether its a minority member making jokes about the majority (acceptable) or a majority member making jokes about a mi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's really funny though. If you make a joke about the mean, bad, imperialist pigdog Americans you get a +5 Funny - but woe on those who dare to play jokes on other racial or cultural stereotypes...
When you are an 800lbs gorilla, you have to watch where you sit.
When you are a gnat, it doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:2)
You got it the wrong way round.
No, I got it precisely correct.
Read up on what happened to Lemuel Gulliver when he didn't pay attention to where he sat.
Not racist. Wiki joke. Woosh? (Score:1)
The joke is about wikis, which anyone can edit. Reverting is a common action of contention on Wikipedia, hence revert wars, 3RR and all that jazz.
Why is the default reaction to assume racist intent?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Theres nothing funny about racist jokes. Leave that junk on 4chan and Digg.
I disagree. And let me point out that, as someone of Greek extraction, I personally have been the butt of many jokes over the years ("... so the Jew bent over, and the Greek disappeared", yeah I know, that's an oldie, but it manages to slam Jews, Italians and Greeks simultaneously.) I'm also part Irish, and if you have any awareness of ethnic humor at all you'd know how much ribbing I've taken from that part of my typically American polycultural background. "What do Irish do on their first date? Get drunk a
HTTP gateway timed out (Score:3, Funny)
For once, the article submitter isn't lying!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It was down before story too
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but using Mediawiki for read-only content is not the smartest thing to do, it prohibits caching.
If Mediawiki would allow proxies to cache their content (maybe there is a plugin, but Wikipedia doesn't allow it either), a lot of trouble would go away. And does Wikileaks need uncached requests? No.
I am not talking about (web) server-side improvements [mediawiki.org], I am talking about the problematic 'Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate' HTTP header. HTTP caching is so misunderstood. http://w [mnot.net]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, the people who think that the only way to get an iPhone is to buy it locked (if they even understand the concept of a SIM-lock) and on a lon
Re:Torrents (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm surprised nobody yet thought up a BitTorrent analogue for HTTP - to offload/share traffic from busy sites.
I guess latencies are the problem, but faced with information being not available at all, higher latencies are probably a good compromise.
Sites like Wikipedia or WikiLeaks could definitely benefit from such technology.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm surprised nobody yet thought up a BitTorrent analogue for HTTP - to offload/share traffic from busy sites.
It wouldn't be difficult to put a torrent backend on HTTP, wherein the URLs would actually just be trackers for the peers, but dynamic content obviously couldn't be served in any practical manner this way. And usually serving static content is just a solved problem - bandwidth is cheap (until someone DoS's S3, anyways).
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't be difficult to put a torrent backend on HTTP, wherein the URLs would actually just be trackers for the peers, but dynamic content obviously couldn't be served in any practical manner this way. And usually serving static content is just a solved problem - bandwidth is cheap (until someone DoS's S3, anyways).
It's called a Content Delivery Network, and they have been in use transparently for over a decade. If you didn't notice, that's good. A full P2P CDN could be made to work, but has many awkward deployment issues (e.g., most of the downloading endpoints really don't have a lot of upstream bandwidth) so the traditional model is likely to persist since it's a proven model at both technical and business levels.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called a Content Delivery Network
Who cares. The point is that whether free web can be user support or it has to rely on large businesses (which operate backbones).
Problem of CDNs in the context is obvious: WikiLeaks can't use them for political reasons and CDNs likely to refuse serve WikiLeaks for the vary same political reasons.
The difference P2P (or "user-supported cloud") makes is that the CDN is fully user supported thus can be apolitical.
Yeah. I figured it. The problem in the case with BitTorrent is that it doesn't have decent
Re: (Score:2)
bittorrent is GREAT for helping distribute some official file.. but for anything 'underground' it's awful - even with the trackerless torrent hack .
Nobodies talking about something underground. There is nothing 'underground' about how WikiLeaks operates - it is just way to political meaning that it might become a target .
Why has everyone moved to torrents when something like gnutella would be far more appropriate?
Gnutella is good for small stuff, but even at MB sizes, lack of proper check-summing oftentimes results in a corrupt download. Also it is susceptible to poisoning attacks most of all P2P networks. And depends on central specilized servers to do searches.
It's like eDonkey/eMule/Kad and BitTorrent learned from Gnutella how NOT to do
Re: (Score:2)
Freenet (Score:5, Interesting)
Freenet has been slow and hard to use in the past, but its improved quite a bit. It is the obvious platform for something like Wikileaks. Of course, there is nothing to prevent people from mirroring content on the web (since installing Freenet, like any piece of software, is a hassle). But at least there will be an unimpeachable backup of all data on Freenet.
Re:Freenet (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems that Wikileaks should operate over Freenet [freenetproject.org]. Leaks could be submitted anonymously that way, and also distributed anonymously. The advantage would be that it would be entirely decentralized, so there would be no organization vulnerable to legal action.
Freenet has been slow and hard to use in the past, but its improved quite a bit. It is the obvious platform for something like Wikileaks. Of course, there is nothing to prevent people from mirroring content on the web (since installing Freenet, like any piece of software, is a hassle). But at least there will be an unimpeachable backup of all data on Freenet.
I wish a comprehensive group of security experts with varying backgrounds and specialties would get together and try to compromise both Freenet and Tor to see just how secure and anonymous they really are. By this I mean in an open, public, collaborative sort of way. This could only be a good thing, as any vulnerabilities or weaknesses could potentially be addressed. Then we could be a bit more confident about the confidentiality of those who contribute documents to sites like Wikileaks. I am sure that many such folks are doing so at great risk to themselves, especially when they live under repressive regimes, yet they believe in our right to know and are willing to take that risk. It really would be nice to know they are a bit safer doing it.
Re:Freenet (Score:4, Interesting)
TOR is already proven to be pretty unreliable since the exit node can sniff all the traffic, have enough exit nodes and you can track your target.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
That was probably the point to begin with. All of the hidden services (.onion links) I've been to seem like honeypots for LEA or contain nothing of interest (so why are they up?).
Tor is a giant filter through which suspect traffic may pass and the powers that be laughing over the whole inhumane rodent-glue trap.
PS: If you use Tor, block the 149.* domains by exluding them in your torrc file, along with the "bloxor" nodes (search through your cached-descriptors file for them, they are a plague!)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"High-Traffic Colluding Tor Routers in Washington, D.C., and the Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity"
http://cryptogon.com/?p=624 [cryptogon.com]
As for tracking scripts see this post
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12691-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=31021&messageID=574848&start=-1 [zdnet.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
TOR is already proven to be pretty unreliable since the exit node can sniff all the traffic, have enough exit nodes and you can track your target.
Even without compromising or joining up exit nodes, deanonymizing (see: 1 [ckers.org] 2 [dewinter.com]) is a problem for the uninformed users of onion routing and proxies.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Freenet (Score:4, Insightful)
From the site [freenetproject.org]:
For best performance, Freenet will run continually. It should not interfere with your computer usage, as it requires around 200MB of RAM and 10% of one CPU core, plus some disk access.
And no wonder considering that it is written in Java...
Not all PCs have Java installed. First. Second. With that kind of resource utilization, I do not see Freenet catching with average consumers.
Probably they should invest into a lightweight C/C++ client. That even I would let run on my systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Oops. Was a reply to GP.
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it really should be rewritten in Python (or what is the cool language today).
Seriously, I much rather pay the memory penalty of Java than fight against the numerous security bugs C/C++ program would give.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Freenet (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Freenet is that no-one uses it. Wikileaks kicks real-world arse because it's on the World Wide Web, where everyone else is.
Re: (Score:2)
Put it on Freenet, and few people will read it because it's hard. The Powers That Be then win, and probably don't try to stop it.
Might be a good idea for dual-deployment, however, if it would take any load off the http.
Re: (Score:2)
Put it on Freenet, and few people will read it because it's hard. The Powers That Be then win, and probably don't try to stop it.
How do they win if journalists are among the few that read it?
Sure, I may think too highly of journalists in general, but I think that's a problem with journalists, and not a Wikileaks on Freenet.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
What has Wikileaks done so big? I ask because I have not seen anything earth shattering on it and a lot that is nothing but tabloid press level junk. Just some examples would be nice.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that this story from the BBC from months earlier already documented the police killing people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7194744.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Yes it is good that they reported this but the fact that Kenya police where killing people was already documented by the BBC so it isn't exactly some big leak that they broke.
Still it is a good thing but not earth shattering or even really new but a continuation of an already published story.
Re: (Score:2)
Setting up a torrent tracker would be a much better idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Setting up a torrent tracker would be a much better idea.
Heck, skip the centralized tracker there and use Magnet links instead. :)
Sites would only need to serve the latest news stories (to let people know if there's anything new and/or interesting), and then a zip with a Magnet link pointing to it. :)
Re:Freenet (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not that of which we do not speak?
It's distributed world wide, mirrored about everywhere, everyone has access to it, it's fast as hell (maxes out my connection), you can post massive binaries to it, text files. Most places have up to 400 day retention now. It would be trivial to setup a script to repost stuff every 100 days. Put everything in a 7za and it shouldn't take up too much space.
If the RIAA/MPAA hasn't figured out how to touch it, I doubt many will.
Re: (Score:2)
If "that" is what I think it is, it's not exactly a place where common folk go. Now, there are http caches... But it can also be a great jumbled mess. How do we verify authenticity of posts? Cause lets face it, that frontier is a place where everyone can contribute... Everyone...
Re: (Score:2)
If "that" is what I think it is, it's not exactly a place where common folk go. Now, there are http caches... But it can also be a great jumbled mess. How do we verify authenticity of posts? Cause lets face it, that frontier is a place where everyone can contribute... Everyone...
There are moderated ****groups.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you mention a good one to use (or email me the name of one? I don't hide my email address.)
I have looked into this but find it difficult to know where to start.
I know each server has different groups or rooms that have different content. Do servers mostly have the same content (just different group names?) If I was interested in scifi information, would one be better than another?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bad times (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bad times (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily; even though people are struggling there are always people who are doing very well. Just a few of those pitching in can help considerably.
It never hurts to ask, the worst that can happen is "no".
Re:Bad times (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily; even though people are struggling there are always people who are doing very well. Just a few of those pitching in can help considerably.
I have the feeling that most of the people that are doing "very well" these days are not particularly interested in supporting a project that reveals secrets.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's with the negativity? Even if most = 99.9%, there's still enough potential support to make asking for help a worthy effort, especially since it didn't cost anything. So just read gp post again, and ggp, and see if there's anything new in your comment.
In fact, since the entire purpose of the site is to protect most people from those few who try to keep secrets, times like these are when help is needed the most.
Re:Bad times (Score:4, Insightful)
They're also one of the few places where I feel we can see the facts behind some of the reasons so many people are struggling right now.
Seriously - We get fed all sorts of BS from the news agencies... WikiLeaks posts the stuff that can often verify or debunk much of that BS.
The Cloud ... (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't "The Cloud" solve all of WikiLeaks problems?
I'll donate bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
Mirrors for popular files (Score:3, Insightful)
I downloaded ba-038-air-traffic-control-tape.wmv from wikileaks and distributed it to a few co-workers and friends. I don't have the resources to run a full mirror but I would be happy to mirror that file. If wikileaks had the ability to point to mirrors for specific files and verify the MD5s of the files on an ongoing basis then some load could be taken off their servers.
I suppose a sneaky mirror host could serve different files to different IP addresses though but I can't immediately see a reason for that.
Re: (Score:1)
Change the files to install malware to collect a list of potential troublemakers?
wikileaks huh? (Score:1)
More than Money (Score:2)
I'm suddenly reminded of a scene an early Simpsons season. It goes something like this.
Homer searches through the couch, while looking for a dropped peanut. He finds a bunch of stuff including a $20 bill. ... 20 dollars!? I wanted a peanut.
Homer Simpson: Awww
Homer's brain: 20 dollars can buy many peanuts!
Homer Simpson: Explain how!
Homer's brain: Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
Homer Simpson: Woo hoo!
So... why not exchange those donations for goods and services?
I'm at the point in my life... (Score:5, Insightful)
...that I can't afford to be the legal test case for running a Tor exit node or a Wikileaks server, much as I believe in both of these projects. And I would imagine there are many who, while they possess the desire and the technical know-how to engage in such activities, simply cannot be expected to do so without some form of legal immunity (or at least a guarantee of unlimited legal representation). Until that time comes, I simply don't see many people stepping forward with offers of hosting assistance.
Perhaps an effort should be made to secure guaranteed legal representation from the EFF, FSF, and other groups for those who volunteer to run exit nodes, servers, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
simply cannot be expected to do so without some form of legal immunity
Anyone volunteering to pitch this to AT&T?
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm at the point in my life that I can't afford to stand for what I believe.
There, fixed it for you. Enjoy your "safe" life.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, an AC criticizing somebody for not standing proud for his beliefs.
Bwahahaha!
Couldn't we just avoid reading Wikileaks? (Score:2)
If Wikileaks' biggest problem is that it's overwhelmed with readers, wouldn't our simplest and most direct way to help solve the problem be to simply not read Wikileaks?
An Anarcho-Capitalist Perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm a big fan of Wikileaks. I run a local caching proxy (sorta like a mirror) that I and others access it through, and I certainly would encourage everyone to send a few bucks their way whenever possible (and I do try to follow that advice myself).
However, what comes to my mind when I read about the legal troubles of sites like that is a paraphrasing of a famous Alexander Haig quote: "Let them march all they want, as long as they pay their taxes." Winning back your right to march (or to Wikileak) is comm
Re: (Score:2)
The day Wikileaks decided to publish private members addresses of political parties, they stopped (in my eyes) being part of the 'Freedom of Speech' movement, and part of the system that prevents speech they don't approve of.
When they became unethical, I stopped being interested in supporting them..
For the rest of your post, it'll give me some fun reading to follow up on! Looks interesting..
Distributed Hosting (Score:3, Interesting)
I've often wondered if it is possible to involve the community in hosting websites like Wikileaks and Wikipedia. A large part of the cost these organizations have is the hardware and bandwidth required to serve the content. However, this content is mostly static. It seems to me it ought to be easy to set up an extensive mirroring system for such content. It also seems to me that it ought to be able to set up a system where people can contribute a bit of disk space and other computer resources and form part of a sort of distributed hosting system. I think Freenet does something like this, and even optimizes things by moving frequently requested content closer to where it is being requested.
Can we set up such a system for the worldwide web? Is there any existing software package that makes this possible? Can we write one? Or can we perhaps modify open source web browsers so that distributed hosting can really work?
I think I speak for many others when I say that I have plenty of disk space, bandwidth, and CPU cycles available, but my capacity to support worthy causes financially is rather limited. So if I could contribute my computer resources, I think I could help out a lot more then I can by making donations. So if we have the technology to make that possible, let's start using it! And if we don't have the technology, let's build it!
Re: (Score:2)
Some things have no business being leaked or their leaking can lead to unintended consequences.
Perhaps. On the other hand, stuff that should get leaked but doesn't can also have negative consequences. It cuts both ways, my friend, and the problem is that government, for one, too often uses the mantra of "national security" to hide its nastier activities. The private sector is rarely any better, mainly because in both cases they know the odds are they'll get away with it. Me, I think it's better to err on the side of caution, and let a little fresh air in now and then. If those whose deeds need coveri
Re: (Score:2)
Me, I think it's better to err on the side of caution, and let a little fresh air in now and then. If those whose deeds need covering-up know that a very public exposure is just a mouse-click away ... maybe they'll be less inclined to perform those deeds in the future. Maybe that qualifies as an unintended consequence, but if so, I'm all for it.
Does the "fresh air" resulting from my publishing that you like to wear women's clothing and are having an affair with a male cubicle mate make you less inclined to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the "fresh air" resulting from my publishing that you like to wear women's clothing and are having an affair with a male cubicle mate make you less inclined to indulge that behaviour?
Yes, actually, it probably would. But I agree: for the average citizen that information should remain private. However, public figures have to play by different rules, at least under U.S. law, and if those public figures happen to be people who make decisions that affect me ... you're damn right I want to know about it. I may want to vote against them next time.
Yours takes the form of a zero-tolerance policy that, by definition, precludes any such requirements, or any thinking generally.
The only zero-tolerance around here I see is yours. I made no such statement, and quite deliberately limited my remarks to governments and corporati
Re: (Score:2)
Who would waste a mod point on an Anonymous Coward?
Re: (Score:2)
Who would waste a mod point on an Anonymous Coward?
The editors?
(they have infinite points, and per the FAQ they are not shy about using them...)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I post this in the expectation group-think will mark the comment down as a "troll" and it will come back and bite you bunch of bastards down the line.
Ah yes. The old "if you mod me down, I'll become stronger than you can ever imagine!" ploy. In this case though, you're just crazy.
As for your refugees comment, why would someone want to post the refugee information online where everyone can see it, rather than just send it to whoever is doing the slaughtering? Plausible deniability? Right. Because when sending troops to slaughter refugees, you will care about an email that says "refugees be here".
Face it: the only thing that is useful to be distributed onl
Re: (Score:2)
A career that was ruined because something became publicly available is a career that should be ruined. After all, I'm pretty sure you're not talking about esoteric cases where a worker with a grudge would out an undercover CIA agent.
And your Copenhagen example is retarded. The only possible thing that would destabilize that is either a faked document or a pre-release document. The first will be dealt with best in the open and the second has already happened without wiki-leaks. And guess what - nothing happ
Re:Irresponsible (Score:5, Interesting)
A career that was ruined because something became publicly available is a career that should be ruined
What if the "something" that became publicly available had absolutely no direct bearing on the career of the person (ie sex scandal)? Could this not be a reason for why the U.S has so many seemingly perfect, dull, boring politicians that are good at playing the game, but bring no dynamicism to the political arena?
I'm the type that understands that sometimes backroom deals are best left in the backroom, and that people should stop interfering and meddling in personal affairs. Context is everything, and your black vs white argument might be right in some situations, but very wrong in others.
I agree that wikileaks needs to exist, and it gives freedom to those of us with less power and connections. Still, the power it has can be wielded wrongly, turning people like you into those that you're railing against. Your argument makes it sound like you would like power more than you would fairness.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is how it works if there's a sex scandal: you go to a tabloid, dish the dirt, and presto - instant sex scandal. No need for wikileaks. If you want to ruin someone's career because of what they do in their private lives, it's already trivial - you go to the people in their social circle, and drop some not so subtle hints. In the case of the teacher, email the parents some compromising photos, browser history, etc. It's easy, and absolutely requires no Wikileaks.
What do you actually need Wikileaks for? S