Freedom of Info, the Wiki Way

[Dardedar]

Freedom of Information, the Wiki Way

Site to Allow Anonymous Posts of Government Documents

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 15, 2007; Page A13

You're a government worker in China, and you've just gotten a memo showing the true face of the regime. Without any independent media around, how do you share what you have without landing in jail or worse?

Wikileaks.org is a Web-based way for people with damning, potentially helpful or just plain embarrassing government documents to make them public without leaving fingerprints. Modeled on the participatory, online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the site is expected to go live within the next two months.

Organizer James Chen said that while its creators tried to keep the site under wraps until its launch, Google references to it have soared in recent days from about eight to more than 20,000.

"Wikileaks is becoming, as planned, although unexpectedly early, an international movement of people who facilitate ethical leaking and open government," he said.

The site, whose FAQs are written in flowery dissident-ese -- "What conscience cannot contain, and institutional secrecy unjustly conceals, Wikileaks can broadcast to the world" -- targets regimes in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but not exclusively. It was founded and partially funded, organizers say, by dissidents, mathematicians and technologists from China, the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa. The site relies on a worldwide web of volunteers and contributors to post and vet the information, and dodge any efforts to shut it down. To protect document donors and the site itself, Wikileaks uses its own coded software combined with, for the techies out there, modified versions of Freenet and PGP.

the rest...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Yes, but will "the truth" actually set anybody free? Hope it works.

[Guest]

It may not "set anybody" free in terms of romping and running
but will set people free in terms of not getting imprisoned or killed for
expose's. The one thing tyrants fear is embarassment and free presses.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Tyrant's do fear free presses, but they can't be embarassed. That requires an understanding of right and wrong. Tyrant's don't have that or they wouldn't be tyrants. Anything that "belittles" them is treason, not embarrassment. A protected "leak" site will protect the "leakers" but that wasn't the anybody I had in mind. Knowing the truth - as for example we do about W's "war" - hasn't stopped the it or prevented W from using our tax dollars to expand it over the course of the last 4 years. (I will keep calling my senators and rep to cut the funding now, of course.) It hasn't freed the military to get out of Iraq, nor freed the Iraqis from civil war. Knowing the truth about global warming isn't going to free anybody from it without action (and if it isn't already too late).