Wikileaks defectors to launch Openleaks alternative

[EnglishLady]

BBC News Dec 13

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."

For more on this story .........

BBC News - Wikileaks defectors to launch Openleaks alternative

 

[RLENT]

Absolutely a good thing IMNSHO ..... and the spokesman for Wikileaks (and IIRC Assange, as well) has said the same.

With IndoLeaks, this will make 3 organizations that are actually devoted to transparency and keeping the peoples of the world informed about matters that (potentially) affect them.

One of the possible flaws in Domscheit-Berg's organizational model is that they plan on only forwarding info to journalistic/press organizations that the info submitter specifies ....

The potential problems with this are several:

1. The submitter may not have a good idea of who in the press would be best suited, or even willing, to pursue and publish the story. One of the analogies that has been made about typical MSM organizations is that they have become akin to "stenographers, who only take notes ....." (of what government officials say) and then report that, without much effort or resources being devoted to digging out the all facts (including secret ones, that are being withheld by the government) and reporting the real story. Part of this is a consequence of most MSM news organizations being nearly broke.

Additionally, many MSM organizations are well aware that it is the government itself which controls their access to officials, and that to some degree, they are dependent on the government for much of what they report - and that the government has a tendency to marginalize organizations which fail to tow the (official) line, ask difficult questions, and pursue or report things which administrations would prefer not be covered.

Two examples of this are, more recently Fox News under the Obama administration, and Les Kinsolving of NewsMax (his difficulties may run even further back into the prior Bush administration, don't recall off hand)

The Founding Fathers would, no doubt, be utterly horrified at the thought of the "free press" serving only as a mouthpiece for the government.

2. If the info submitted receives no coverage or reporting by the organization it is submitted to, what happens then ? Are facts and matters which are clearly in the public's interest to know just left in the blackhole of the public's unawareness ?

3. If Openleaks fails to publish the actual documents or info itself then the public has to rely only on the coverage that media organizations provide - which may leave out critical or relevant facts, that are necessary to have a complete or full understanding.