Wikileaks needs help

KyussBishop

From Wikipedia:

Wikileaks is a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, or religious documents, while attempting to preserve the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors. Within one year of its December 2006 launch, its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks

Wikileaks is potentially one of the most important resources for investigative journalism on the internet, and almost equally important as an exercise in free speech.
They are currently having trouble with bandwidth issues, due to the massive popularity of some recent articles, and need donations in order to keep the site going; please help them out by donating (PayPal is one way), and by passing on word about the website:
www.wikileaks.org

It's also reported here that this Google cache link should work as well, when the site is down:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:FHbFHIav7usJ:wikileaks.org/+site:wikileaks.org&cd=1&ct=clnk&ie=UTF-8

monument

KyussBishop wrote: »

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks

Wikileaks is potentially one of the most important resources for investigative journalism on the internet, and almost equally important as an exercise in free speech.
They are currently having trouble with bandwidth issues, due to the massive popularity of some recent articles, and need donations in order to keep the site going; please help them out by donating (PayPal is one way), and by passing on word about the website:
www.wikileaks.org

It's also reported here that this Google cache link should work as well, when the site is down:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:FHbFHIav7usJ:wikileaks.org/+site:wikileaks.org&cd=1&ct=clnk&ie=UTF-8

Info is already leaked to journalists... how is putting a load of unverified info on the net better than they way leaks are done now?

Do you not think having possible ground breaking information online side by side with nonsense debased and discredits the good info?

KyussBishop

Journalists and newspapers can, in some cases, be ordered by courts to name their sources, and can be subject to intimidation (legal or otherwise) in order to suppress a story.

This site is a singular location with which people can release documents with complete anonymity, without having to undertake any risks by exposing their identity to journalists.
The people running that site go to great lengths legally, in order to ensure that no information is removed from the site (i.e. no censorship, though I do think the owners may cut down on obvious hoaxes; not 100% sure) and that nobody's identity is exposed.
With the proper precautions on the part of someone uploading information (i.e. making efforts to conceal their real IP address), identifying someone can be made practically impossible, even if the websites servers are confiscated through court order.

In addition, due to the growing popularity of the site, released documents achieve a large amount of publicity and may be picked up by any number of news sources.

You're completely right that some nonsense information has potential to discredit the site, but it's up to journalists to discern whether or not information there is accurate or not, through fact checking (where possible).
They have an impressive track record thus far though (check the Wikipedia link), having helped to host and release some very interesting documents.

monument

KyussBishop wrote: »

... identifying someone can be made practically impossible, even if the websites servers are confiscated by court order.

I don't think "practically impossible" is true here. We're not talking about hackers here, people who are willing to put info are unlikely technical enough even with the site's help to hide all of their tracks.

While sending the documents to a newspaper -- by say, post -- will leave no tracks at all.

Both cases, a journalist should still have to go to a second source to verify the documents.

I'm not dismissing the site, I just have questions over it and it's clearly not as excellent as many are trying to make it out to be.

KyussBishop

Even without full precautions to hide IP addresses, the site keeps all of that information private anyway (if they store it at all); the only way they will release that information is through court order, and they have been successful in preventing that (EDIT: Upon further reading, the anonymity is in fact protected by Swedish law).

monument wrote: »

While sending the documents to a newspaper -- by say, post -- will leave no tracks at all.

That isn't an option for everyone, especially in countries where newspapers are heavily censored (Wikileaks isn't specific to any location, it's for releasing information worldwide).

While the site clearly isn't 'perfect', it is potentially one of the most important journalistic resources on the internet, as the site allows the publication of information which many newspapers can not publish; e.g. recently The Guardian received a court order to remove documents from its website, detailing tax avoidance by Barclays, and the documents later appeared on Wikileaks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks#2009_leaks

Of course, there are many legitimate concerns/questions about the effectiveness of the site, and moral issues surrounding it etc, but I don't believe that any of that undermines it's fundamental importance, since it is (as far as I know) a completely unique resource.


EDIT: Also, site seems to be back up.

KyussBishop

Hadn't look at this particular page before, but it seems that just about all likely questions/concerns are answered here:
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:About

There's a great deal of information there.