14-04-2010, 10:43 AM
hahaha they keep repeating the same stuff. WHERE IS THE JOHN YOUNG QUOTE THAT WIKILEAKS IS A CIA FRONT? There isn't one, but they keep saying there is. They quote an internal list-server email when John Young distanced himself from the project, without context.
Several points spring to mind concerning the above-reposted media coverage:
Assange's ego: Before the Iceland saga, I'd never ever seen a photo of Assange. The only reason I did see one was because Norway has some great journalists who dug up an archive photo from an awards ceremony. The Kenyan hitmen story only came out AFTER Iceland, afaik, so, so much for Assange publishing potboiler accounts of his sekrit dangerous life as a wikileaker. If anything, he's been incredibly private about his private life. This goes into the alleged board of wikileaks: Assange seems to have elected a bunch of big names without their permission. This is probably meant to confuse the process servers and researchers. If wikileaks has no physical presence, it can't be attacked as easily.
Journalistic ethics: the above-quoted "specialist" is simply wrong, or doesn't have a clue about what she is saying, because the wikileaks interface to the world is an upload page that promises confidentiality. If wikileaks publishes something, it is abiding by the agreement on the upload page to keep the identity of the submitter confidential. If the sources "don't deserve" confidentiality, then wikileaks' choice is simple, that is, it can't publish that information from that source. there are even laws demanding wikileaks abide by this sort of confidentiality agreement with submitters in Sweden, I believe.
Wikileaks came under attack in more venues than listed. One memorable event was the publication of information about the operation of child-porn servers in Germany. Internal German "FBI" (VfD I believe is the acronym, or BND) dox led to searches and seizures inside Germany. Denmark and Australia jointly attacked wikileaks for publishing lists of internet addresses blocked by both countries' internet-filtering projects.
The Kenyan author Wrong's book is a canard if I recall correctly. In fact, wikileaks purposely did not distribute the book, and instead provided information for contacting the author in order to purchase a copy or request a hardship copy. It's possible wikileaks did this following an initial posting of her book, but this is all I saw, no free book.
Assange is connected with an early ebook on hacking around about the time CultoftheDeadCow began attacking China in retalliation for their execution of a Chinese hacker or 2 Chinese hackers, or slightly before CDC's "hacktivism." CDC was designing software for remote control of computers around this time, BackOrifice, an early hacker's version of Remote Desktop by NSA/Microsoft. I would place Julian Assange in that milleu rather than John Young's cryptome, which was similar but different, but of course the point is divide-and-conquer, to play Young against Assange rather than addressing the information itself.
On the copyright symbol on the Apache snuff film: so what? They did subtitles, they edited, they commented. Everyone puts a copyright symbol on things nowadays to claim it as their work. Somone types a public domain book into a digital format and they slap a copyright on for the typing effort. I did enjoy seeing Brigitta Jonsdottir's name in the credits at the end. In this case I don't think Assange was just adding famous names to things on a whim. She was and is involved with Assange in the IMMI, immi.is
Several points spring to mind concerning the above-reposted media coverage:
Assange's ego: Before the Iceland saga, I'd never ever seen a photo of Assange. The only reason I did see one was because Norway has some great journalists who dug up an archive photo from an awards ceremony. The Kenyan hitmen story only came out AFTER Iceland, afaik, so, so much for Assange publishing potboiler accounts of his sekrit dangerous life as a wikileaker. If anything, he's been incredibly private about his private life. This goes into the alleged board of wikileaks: Assange seems to have elected a bunch of big names without their permission. This is probably meant to confuse the process servers and researchers. If wikileaks has no physical presence, it can't be attacked as easily.
Journalistic ethics: the above-quoted "specialist" is simply wrong, or doesn't have a clue about what she is saying, because the wikileaks interface to the world is an upload page that promises confidentiality. If wikileaks publishes something, it is abiding by the agreement on the upload page to keep the identity of the submitter confidential. If the sources "don't deserve" confidentiality, then wikileaks' choice is simple, that is, it can't publish that information from that source. there are even laws demanding wikileaks abide by this sort of confidentiality agreement with submitters in Sweden, I believe.
Wikileaks came under attack in more venues than listed. One memorable event was the publication of information about the operation of child-porn servers in Germany. Internal German "FBI" (VfD I believe is the acronym, or BND) dox led to searches and seizures inside Germany. Denmark and Australia jointly attacked wikileaks for publishing lists of internet addresses blocked by both countries' internet-filtering projects.
The Kenyan author Wrong's book is a canard if I recall correctly. In fact, wikileaks purposely did not distribute the book, and instead provided information for contacting the author in order to purchase a copy or request a hardship copy. It's possible wikileaks did this following an initial posting of her book, but this is all I saw, no free book.
Assange is connected with an early ebook on hacking around about the time CultoftheDeadCow began attacking China in retalliation for their execution of a Chinese hacker or 2 Chinese hackers, or slightly before CDC's "hacktivism." CDC was designing software for remote control of computers around this time, BackOrifice, an early hacker's version of Remote Desktop by NSA/Microsoft. I would place Julian Assange in that milleu rather than John Young's cryptome, which was similar but different, but of course the point is divide-and-conquer, to play Young against Assange rather than addressing the information itself.
On the copyright symbol on the Apache snuff film: so what? They did subtitles, they edited, they commented. Everyone puts a copyright symbol on things nowadays to claim it as their work. Somone types a public domain book into a digital format and they slap a copyright on for the typing effort. I did enjoy seeing Brigitta Jonsdottir's name in the credits at the end. In this case I don't think Assange was just adding famous names to things on a whim. She was and is involved with Assange in the IMMI, immi.is