[PREV - INSIDE_WIKILEAKS] [TOP]
OPENLEAKS
July 24, 2011
"The Promise of OpenLeaks" INSIDE_WIKILEAKS
p. 272:
"At OpenLeaks, if sources think that
something is best suited to the local
press, they have the right to see that
this happens. If they believe Amnesty
International is the best recipient,
OL will honor their decision. This
idea had been one of the central
points of our application to the
Knight Foundation. At OL we put it
into practice. And this will ensure
that information gets to wherever it
can have an effect. Depending on the
material in question, that might be a Well actually, the sources
news outlet, a specialized NGO, or a of the leaks may be
trade union. Who knows better than novices in the business,
the sources themselves?" and they may not actually
know that much about where
information should go.
The relevant NGOs may not
be very obvious, for example.
p.272 again:
"For us there is only one
person who could
legitmately make the
decision: the source."
I can easily imagine cases where the Right
Thing to do with the information is different
than what the original source imagines. If a
right-wing, anti-immigration freak released
the bodycount of the Arizona militia to show
how bad the problem is with illegals, it
would not disturb me if it were used to
prosecute the militia members for conspiracy
to commit murder.
Why should the leaker be able to
control the use of the info?
Once it's out, it's out.
p. 272 (continued):
"Unlike WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks is not a
publishing platform. It concentrates
entirely on the first half of the
whistle-blowing process, ensuring that
documents can be submitted securely and that
those they are addressed to can work with
them. Like WL, OpenLeaks does this via a
kind of protected mailbos into which the Note: if OpenLeaks is only
whistle-blower can deposit documents known among the publishing
intended for specific recipients. We will partners, it will fail,
be offering a whole series of such digitial because it won't recieve
mailboxes-- for every one of our partners." any submissions. Because
WikiLeaks itself was a
"publishing platform", it
became famous, well known
among the important part of
the audience, the people
with the leaks.
D. and friends are looking for
clean Technical Fixes to get
them out of the difficult
position of exercising human
judgment.
"The great advantage in not making
qualitative distinctions between
individual documents and publications
was that, if things went wrong, no one
was personally responsible. Instead,
we wanted to rely on principles and
automatic mechanisms. But that was
wishful thinking. We had no choice but
to make decisions, and we did so
without defining any rules for the
process." -- "My Suspension", p.219
Maybe: the whole need for a "wikileaks"
is a hedge againt systemic breakdown.
Maybe there *isn't* any reasonable way
to systemtize it.
Compare to the problem of deciding
how to set-up a democracy before you
have one. Do you vote on how votes
will be taken?
p. 272-273:
"The source can not only choose a
recipient from the partners with OL
mailboxes, he or she can also decide
how long the recpient has exclusive
access to the documents. After that
interval has expired, if the source so
desires, the submission is opened up to This is a cute thought...
other OpenLeaks participants. This but once again, it seems
mechanism guarantees that a submission to rely on a lot of
can't be simply suppressed." sophistication on the
part of the submitters.
CREATIVE_COMMONS
I might come up with
countervailing
examples: a wide
range of choices
p.273 (continued): makes it harder to
find the one group
"It would be naive to think that that knows what
newspapers, most of which are they're doing.
financed largely by advertising,
are fully free in their decisions A familiar principle,
about what to publish. There are at this point:
enough examples of companies the wider the pool
yanking ads if they don't like an the less prone to
article about their products or corruption.
management. We hope that by
enlisting the broadest possible It's often seemed to me that
poll of participants, there will "The Bay Guardian" retains
always be someone to publish it's independance by relying
important information." on a large group of small
advertisers. Lately I've
been wondering about the
incessant parade of front
page stories about dope
smoking, and the large
numbers of ads from
marijuana dispensaries...
In retrospect: might all
those sexual freedom
articles its published
over the years have been
driven in part by the
sales of personal ads and
900 numbers?
--------
[NEXT - GLASNOST]