Wikileaks defectors to launch Openleaks alternative

[frigidmagi]

BBC

[quote]Wikileaks' former second-in-command is gearing up to launch an alternative to the high-profile website.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who left the site after disagreements with its founder, plans to launch Openleaks in the coming months.

The technology, which can be embedded in any organisation's sites, will allow whistle-blowers to anonymously leak data to publishers of their choice.

Its founders say it will address problems they had with Wikileaks.

"We felt that Wikileaks was developing in the wrong direction," Mr Domscheit-Berg told BBC News. "There's too much concentration of power in one organisation; too much responsibility; too many bottlenecks; too many resource constraints."

He said that the team did not want the responsibility of deciding what was or was not relevant and what would be good for the organisation as a whole to publish.

"This is the wrong question and should never be asked."

Network effect
Unlike Wikileaks, Openleaks will not publish or verify material; leaving that role to newspapers, "NGOs, labour unions and other interested entities".

"We are trying to build a community of various organisations that need or have use for anonymously submitted information," former Wikileaks member Herbert Snorrason told the BBC.

Mr Domscheit-Berg, said the decision to be a "conduit" rather than publisher was made because of the team's experience at Wikileaks.


The idea came out of a project developed during the team's time at Wikileaks
"That was another constraint we saw - if your website becomes too popular then you need a lot of resources to process submissions," he said.

Instead, Mr Domscheit-Berg said the organisation would be a "technology provider", supplying anonymous online drop boxes for organisations.

"[Openleaks] aims to provide the technological means to organisations and other entities around the world to be able to accept anonymous submissions in the forms of documents or other information," said Mr Domscheit-Berg.

This would form a distributed network of submissions pages across the web, powered by Openleaks technology for keeping sources anonymous and documents secure.

Whistle-blowers would be able to submit documents to an organisation's site, which would then be available for them to use for an exclusive period, specified by the source.

"If after that time you choose not to publish the document yourself the document will be shared with the rest of the subscribers in the system," said Mr Domscheit-Berg.

"If you choose not to publish it, many other parties will receive the document - and we are pretty sure that one of them will publish it."

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We do not think that Openleaks will be in Wikileaks shadowâ€

[General Havoc]

This is a good thing. Redundancy within "leaking" institutions can only promote further dissemination vectors for the information in question.