Various people around the globe are feeling rather peeved at Wikileaks following the revelations featured in Daniel Domscheit-Berg's recently published book "Inside Wikileaks".
Alan Taylor, admin of PGPboard.com, suggests Assange is peddling snake oil, "bullshitting gullible media outlets with techno-babble and downright lies in order to serve their own interests," referring to the reaction of a certain Maria Technosux who has posted various inconsistencies and lies uttered by Wikileakers.
The disappointment and outrage vented about the past behaviour of Wikileaks and the current antics of Julian Assange are thoroughly understandable. After all, Daniel Domscheit-Berg admits lying about the capabilities and, most importantly, the security of Wikileaks.
One of the other main aspects that has to be considered is not only Wikileaks' past blatherdom and technospeak with regards platform security, but also its honesty with regards to its financial situation. Information about donations is, at best, murky. This is arguably unacceptable for a journalistic platform which preaches transparency and openness.
In his book, Daniel Domscheit-Berg writes their main Paypal account held €1,900 on 1 March 2008, at the time of the Julius Bär leak. Two days later, donations reached €3,700, on 11 March the amount was €5,000. Over one year later, in August 2009, the main account had a balance of €35,000.
At that time, Wikileaks was running only on a single server. Daniel Domscheit-Berg said he wanted to use the money to upgrade the hardware and secure Wikileaks, Julian Assange however is said to have wanted to pay $15,000 to lawyers to register front companies in order to protect donations from outside interventions.
According to Domscheit-Berg, Assange starting fantasising that Wikileaks had to become an "untouchable" insurgent operation, as it was being shadowed, searched, having mail checked and there was every possibility they could be snatched from the street.
Both started fighting about how to answer questions from the Wall Street Journal about finances.
While Domscheit-Berg said donations were transparently recorded on a regular basis in Germany through the WHF as required by law, Assange told the paper "accounts were skillfully and explicitly managed to prevent them from being attacked by anyone on the outside. [...] he portrayed our nontransparent bookkeeping as a clever method for preventing our enemies from shutting off our cash flow."
Assange tweeted that criticism in the press was a Pentagon smear campaign and later said he had been "misquoted". TechEye asked the Wau Holland Foundation about its handling of Wikileaks' donations on 13 July last year. What was not known at the time was that Julian Assange had created a second Moneybookers account only he had access to, and linked to it via the donation page on Wikileaks's website. Daniel Domscheit-Berg had no insight into this account, so no information is available.
On 2 December, it was claimed Wikileaks was to publicise expenses and salaries. So far, this has not happened. It can be presumed Wikileaks is bogged down by the extradition proceedings and perhaps even a lack of interest to do so.
Further money was channelled to Wikileaks through Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera, which allegedly paid £50,000 and £110,000 respectively for five minute clips edited from the uncut "Collateral Murder" video. The clips were edited by Iain Overton, chief of the Bureau for Investigative Journalism. Overton claims the money "went toward funding his substantial production costs," yet "the Bureau ended up with a loss from the deal". More is not yet known, but Overton has told Domscheit-Berg he plans on revealing further details.
During the troubles with the Guardian, "Assange and his attorney stormed into the Guardian's offices, claiming that the information in the documents was personal property, and that any publication would affect him financially."
Was this argument a threat to prevent the newspaper from publishing cables without asking him beforehand? Domscheit-Berg also rightly asks what on earth Assange might have meant.
After all, the WHF had received donations totalling approximately $600.000 by summer 2010. At the end of September last year, Germany's Wau Holland Foundation (WHF), which handles German and European donations, told TechEye that close to €54.000 had been handed out to Wikileaks to cover travelling expenses, alongside costs for hardware and communications. In mid July, the foundation had given around €30.000 of donations to Wikileaks.
"In the following two months, a far greater sum was withdrawn - probably because a way had been found to pay salaries," writes Domscheit-Berg over financial dealings in November 2010.
Wikileaks staffers had no income and lived on savings, or what supporters supplied them with. The main problem seems to have been a legal issue concerning employment status, making it a tad more complicated for the WHF to hand out money on a monthly basis.
Assange's German lawyer Johannes Eisenberg has also threatened to take Domscheit-Berg to court over material taken away from Wikileaks in order to keep them safe, as Domscheit-Berg claims. The former Wikileaks speaker stated the platform is non-functional after main programmer "the architect" took the submission system he had coded away.
Can leaked materials be private property and is it morally sound to utilise such materials to earn money?
Leaked materials certainly need to be disseminated by the media to be viewed by the public. No good arguments can be found for utilising leaks as a source of revenue. Any organisation like Wikileaks ought to depend on donations or trust exclusively, and, most importantly of all, in a transparent manner.
It is not known how much money has been donated to Wikileaks since Domscheit-Berg left the organisation. What is known is that both Domscheit-Berg and Julian Assange signed book deals, Assange reportedly for over one million pounds. Assange allegedly had to resort to writing a book to cover legal expenses. So far Assange has raised £17,985.50 through donations to a defence trust fund.
Private Bradley Manning, in jail and solitary confinement for 257 days, received $15,100 from Wikleaks in January as a contribution to his legal expenses - which are figured to be $100,000 to $115,000. Julian Assange had originally pledged $50,000, the sum dropping to $20,000 in December.
Criticism of financial dealings is not a Pentagon smear campaign, but a serious question Wikileaks and Julian Assange have brought on themselves. Not only that, but it also made an easier argument for the US government to cut off Wikileaks' cash flow. Transparency could have laid waste to any notions the organisation has been embroiled in criminal activity.
After all, how can an organisation wishing to create transparency and openness through the non-discriminatory publication of leaked materials think it can be taken seriously if it doesn't adhere to its own rules?
I fully support WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. I would also appreciate it if we would focus on the real criminals WikiLeaks reveals, instead of trying to turn the messengers into criminals, and even turn into criminals, ourselves, trying to destroy the messengers.
Thank you for your article. I am a person who intended to use WL for the purpose of leaking a number of primary documents concerning an individual (European royalty) who has been harassing bloggers such as myself for merely referencing articles by others that quote or paraphrase whatever is in those primary documents. I have read Daniel Domscheit Berg's book _Inside Wikileaks_ and was shocked at the poor state of WL's actual technological means versus the hyperbolic descriptions of WL's supposedly state-of-the-art submission system we've now all read and heard about in the media. As a potential leaker I feel seriously duped. What bothers me particularly is the fact that while DDB himself has finally confessed, so to speak, others involved with WL have shown less remorse over their willingness to promote, by means of what I consider to be blatant lies, a system that was fundamentally flawed to begin with. Hence my blog entries, where I try to mix serious criticism with biting humour and a personal narrative.
Maria Technosux
anti-fascist blogger
'To me, it was quite clear that our aim was to earn a living from WikiLeaks one day.'
As for the security, DDB writes that:
'When I left WL in September 2010, the project was in the sort of technological shape I'd always dreamed of. We had Cryptophones, satellite pagers, and state-of-the-art servers - everything we needed. We were on solid footing, and our architecture was exemplary.'
On source protection:
'We took care that controversial documents were sent through so many detours, encryptions, and anonymizing procedures, and were accompanied by such large amount of white noise as a diversion, that no one could trace where they came from.'
The only reason WL has a security problem now is because the 'architect' took away everything that he built for WikiLeaks - you have to admit that they crossed the line here, they were no longer acting against Assange but against WikiLeaks by doing this. Also, WikiLeaks has encouraged whistleblowers to hand over documents by mail for months now.
On Assange threatening to sue the Guardian, DDB writes:
'We decided to get the media involved right from the start but remain in control of decision making.'
'I had always asked myself why Julian was in such a big hurry to release the documents. Julian had said his hand was forced because the Icelander had already passed on the material . . . There is no way the old WL core team would have agreed to release the material at this time.'
Also, Der Spiegel reported that 'Assange had threatened to immediately publish all of the cables online if the two publications went ahead with their plans.'
(http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,742163,00.html) I don't know why this wasn't reported on that stupid Vanity Fair article or by the Guardian staff.
On Assange selling leaks to others, DB writes:
'In conjunction with the "Collateral Murder" video, the question of rights arose for the first time. TV stations were calling us to ask . . . how much [the video] would cost. We agreed that they should make a donation or, if their statutes prohibited such contributions, pay us a fee for being interviewed.'
Assange is clearly desperate for money - I know of seven lawyers who are working or have worked with him (Mark Stephens, Leif Silbersky, James Catlin, Jennifer Robinson, Robert Stary, Geoffrey Robertson, and now Alan Dershowitz).
I do agree that WikiLeaks could be more transparent about its spendings, but you can't possibly think that Assange is financially motivated. DDB mentions Assange as 'chief revealer of secrets and unshakable military critic on his global peace mission' - if he wants money he's using it to help make a better world through the truth. If he's financially motivated he would have sold his leaks to foreign intelligence instead of leaking it to the world.
Besides, whatever mistakes WikiLeaks has made so far is far smaller than waging a war on two countries and killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Or isn't it?
Or is it?
Innit? Eh? Eh? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
How much did Domscheit-Berg get for his own tell-all book? Funny how that seems to be kept quiet.
You write:
"Leaked materials certainly need to be disseminated by the media to be viewed by the public. No good arguments can be found for utilising leaks as a source of revenue. Any organisation like Wikileaks ought to depend on donations or trust exclusively, and, most importantly of all, in a transparent manner."
If 'no good arguments can be found [for using] leaks as a source of revenue,' how do you explain the sale of daily newspapers (like NYT), all those 'Pentagon papers' peperbacks sold (many for college classes), and any book every written by Woodward?
You also write:
"Any organisation like Wikileaks ought to depend on donations or trust exclusively, and, most importantly of all, in a transparent manner."
Excuse me but umm, sez who? On what authority do you make such a claim? There is no 'organization like WikiLeaks' -- there is only the original Wikileaks and its mirror sites (Cryptome is not 'like WikiLeaks' and Domscheit-Berg's OpenLeaks - if it ever gains traction - will be an imitation of WikiLeaks).
So -- no thanks, no Koolaid for me.
The Author quite disgustingly implies that this was indeed fantasizing. The opposite is unfortunately true. Wikileaks has been attacked by DDoS constantly (likely by disgruntled states such as the US), has been their funding cut off by illegal government pressure, has their members seen harrassed, robbed of their personal possessions (laptops, cell phones, electronic equipment) on US border crossings, and had Wikileaks members threatened with death and illegal execution.
Hardly fantasizing now, is it?
The above article is nothing but obvious government propaganda. Sad.