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The New WikiLeaks (newrepublic.com) 57

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
How the transparency collective DDoSecrets eclipsed Julian Assange. From a report: Whereas WikiLeaks cultivated an anti-imperialist mystique centered on the cultish figure of Assange, DDoSecrets professes something more modest: an unvarnished commitment to providing information useful to journalists and concerned citizens. As the DDoSecrets website puts it, data must fulfill two criteria: "Is it in the public interest?" and "Can a prima facie case be made for the veracity of its contents?" If it passes that test -- and the group, which now has approximately 10 members along with an advisory board and volunteer contributors, decides collectively that they can protect their sources -- then they publish the archive, sometimes as an easily downloadable torrent, other times through its slightly more difficult to reach onion site, which requires using the Tor browser. While many archives are published for a wide audience, others are withheld and only offered to journalists upon request; and in some cases, the organization will write about data it receives without publishing its contents.

At its best, the work of DDoSecrets reveals the limits of official transparency, of authorized government leaks and incrementalist beat reporting and FOIA requests that yield pages of useless redactions. Nowhere is this more visible than with BlueLeaks. "Reading the unredacted, hacked documents gives a very different picture than the selections you get from an open records officer," said Brendan McQuade, author of Pacifying the Homeland, a book about the modern surveillance state. Based on BlueLeaks information, he wrote articles that exposed police malfeasance and brought attention to a federal whistleblower suit against the Maine Information and Analysis Center, or MIAC. Maine's state house later voted to close the site (although the bill never cleared the Senate). To McQuade, and to the members of DDoSecrets, hacked data provides what official channels cannot: truth and the potential for accountability.
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The New WikiLeaks More

The New WikiLeaks

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  • At the risk of being modded into pulp (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @03:14PM (#61712629)
    I kind of lost interest in them when they released leaked docs that were damaging to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 but protected Trump. [thehill.com]

    I get it, Hilary is awful and wanted to go after Assange. But how'd that Trump presidency work out for you? [theguardian.com]

    The time to act would have been during the primary election before Hilary was the candidate. It's not like the docs weren't floating around.

    • > The time to act would have been during the primary election before Hilary was the candidate. It's not like the docs weren't floating around.

      Well you're assuming they leaked those docs because they wanted to expose corruption and criminal activity, rather than releasing the docs to maximize damage to Trump's political opponent.

      It's since been demonstrated that Wikileaks was under the thumb of, if not completely controlled by, the Russian government. Maybe they *started* with the laudable goal of airing

      • Ah, it has been demonstrated, has it?

      • "It's since been demonstrated that Wikileaks was under the thumb of, if not completely controlled by, the Russian government. " You're full of shit. Russigaters tried for years to drum up this belief, and every attempt flopped. How did that Manafort meeting Assange in London story work out for you? Go back to watching MSNBC.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Jesus christ, look, you may hate Hillary, the democrats, whatever.

          But don't try and pretend Russia hasn't interfered in Western politics significantly over the last 20 years. The evidence for this has come from multiple sources, be it leaked intelligence, formal statements by intelligence agencies, public investigations (i.e. by competent experienced journalists), law enforcement investigations, or failing that, just there in plain sight for all to see, like the St Petersburg conference in 2015 where Russia

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

            *I* never tied it to Trump. In fact, I never said anything about Trump. As DNI radcliffe noted in a 2016 memo, Russiagate is itself a complex designed meant first to distract the public from Hillary's emails, and was later used to move blame for her loss on outside interference on Trump's side.

            But before I even get to contrived matter of russian interference in 2016, it seems you apparently were sleeping or not alive for that entire arc in the 90s where we had a puppet ally in the form of Boris Yeltsin?

            http [washingtonpost.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Just means that wikileaks is a honeypot of specially prepared material. What the world needs is a bullet/bomb proof data dump repository that can't be altered or erased. I don't trust these new guys either, sounds too polished and pretentious

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BardBollocks ( 1231500 )

      If you lost interest, then you don't know what the hell was IN those documents.

      TLDR version of just two of the 'biggies'
      - Hillary Clinton had rigged the Democratic Party nominee process so that Bernie Sanders was not chosen
      - Hillary Clinton was involved in both the arming and operating of terrorists in Syria as part of a regime change effort, and while she was at it, She was DIRECTLY profiting from Oil sales those terrorists were making from the areas they had control of.

      Wikileaks doesn't have a time machin

      • I've been voting in primaries long enough to know a candidate as unpopular as Hilary couldn't win without a bit of cheating, and as for Syria who cares? That's just how US foreign policy works and has for hundreds of years. I'll complain about it in the primary but when the general election's on I recognize that unless I can pull off an upset in the primary that's what I'm gonna get because that's what Americans want. We want US hegemony so that we can have cheap oil because we all depend on it to get to wo

        • >> it was a bit much to ask for Americans to elect a Socialist.

          The voters disagree. Hilary Clinton wouldn't have won the nomination without superdelegates (well-connected Democratic party operatives whose primary votes count ~10,000x more than your vote). When the (extremely undemocratic) Democratic party decided to put their thumbs on the scale for Hilary, all those working-class white voters who went for Obama moved to Trump (search for "Obama/Trump voters" if you don't believe me). Hilary was a hi

    • The idea that Wikileaks did things because it favored Trump is the type of idiotic which appears as common sense because everyone agrees. As for the time of release , what was the last email in the first release again? 25 may 2016. Two months to verify and organize is hard work. When should wikileaks have released it? Before they got it?
      That docs were floating around is another matter. The DNC

  • Assange's Ego and Grudges (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @03:14PM (#61712631)

    Seemingly spelled the end of Wikileaks. His decision to associate with Trump officials and drop feed the Clinton email leaks put an heir of partisanship over the whole thing when it should have been a fairly "neutral" resource.

    Now I am not saying Wikileaks should not have released those emails, but they should have been dumped at once or released to news outlets but it sure seemed like they were released in a manner meant to do maximum damage to the Clinton campaign and Assange seemingly relished being the focal point of such things, even from his hidey hole in the embassy.

    None of this excuses how the man has been treated however, I don't frankly support his extradition to the US but even if he must I want to see him receive a fair an open trial, not black-bagged and in some military prison and WL has done some very important work and released very important information.

    Regardless though Wikileaks is now just an interesting thing of history, it never seemed to have the infrastructure to survive without Assange and for organizations with the goals that they purport that just isn't something that will work long term or endear you to the public you are trying to inform. I hope DDoSecrets learns those lessons.

    • aah, yet another line of reasoning based on Bullshit.

      How uninformed are you?

  • The name sucks. Won't gain traction

    "wiki" "leaks" was perfect, especially at the time

  • Ah, it's from a report, is it?

  • Emma Best talks up a history of whistleblowing, but it seems like the agencies don't find her to be much of a threat compared to Assange. In fact, smearing Assange is 90% of why her or her outlet have ever been in the news. DDossecrets is an obvious limited hangout that, unlike wikileaks, poses zero threat to power.
  • ddosecrets [ddosecrets.com]: “Some discussions use outdated names and incorrect pronouns. In citations, to avoid dead-naming or misgendering transgender people, [brackets] may be useful.”

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