For some, Julian Assange is a hero. For others, he’s a criminal. I tend to hold more to the former, but it cannot be denied that some of his associates are not happy with how he has managed WikiLeaks. As a result, they are forming a competitive website called OpenLeaks. Will the new site be worthy of support?
As the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fights extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual wrongdoing, a dozen of his former colleagues are creating an alternative Web site for leaks to be governed by what they characterize as a revised vision of radical transparency.
The new organization, OpenLeaks, will begin work in earnest this summer, said Herbert Snorrason, an Icelandic programmer who is involved. It aims, he said, to avoid the “influence of a single figurehead” by refusing to handle documents itself. Instead, it will act as a neutral conduit to connect leakers with media and human rights organizations.
OpenLeaks emerges from the ashes of a struggle between Mr. Assange and many of his closest associates last September. About a dozen members of WikiLeaks left that month, accusing Mr. Assange of imperious behavior and of jeopardizing the project by conflating the allegations of sexual wrongdoing, which he denies, with the site’s work. The defectors, Mr. Snorrason said, decided to start their own project.
“It’s no secret that we had disagreements with how WikiLeaks was being managed,” he said, “and a large part of what we hope to accomplish with OpenLeaks is to avoid those problems.”
Mr. Assange has often said that he sees it as his mission, in part, to raise awareness of the material WikiLeaks releases by increasing its public profile. It is a strategy that has kept the documents he has released — including hundreds of thousands of classified United States government documents — on the front pages of newspapers around the world, including The New York Times. But it has also meant that Mr. Assange, a mercurial and charismatic figure with strong political views and a penchant for the unorthodox and newsworthy, has often become the story himself… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Personally I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Julian Assange, but I see the difficulties of identifying the credibility of the site with that of a single individual. We cannot know the quality of OpenLeaks until we can observe the results of their work, but I’m inclined to support it, while simultaneously supporting WikiLeaks. More than one source is a plus.
3 Responses to “A New WikiLeaks Competitor”
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I too support Wikileaks, while denying Mr. Assange his popularity while doing so. I am glad he did it – more transparency needs to be shined on our government and what they are doing with our money, but he has now established celebrity status by doing so, when the focus should be on the documentation. Plus, the sexual assault charges bring into question whether he did the for altruistic reasons and not to escape the charges.
I openly welcome OpenLeaks as well, and I like their idea of handling documentation from around the world and posting it. However, I hope they do some veracity testing to make sure that they are not getting playing as it would infect the integrity of the site.
I agree. If he knew he had these personal issues coming down, someone else in his organization should have taken the point. The charges appear to be trumped up.
I don’t think OpenLeaks plans to handle the documentation at all. Instead they will set up the eventual publisher receiving it from the source. If they deal with reputable outlets, the outlets will do the testing as the Times and Guardian have WikiLeaks material.