Wikileaks defectors to launch Openleaks alternative

[malaise]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11981301
<snip>
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.
Wikileaks website 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.
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Between them they will be way better than AP and the rest of them - this is credible stuff.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

1. More is better. I don't see it as competition but just MORE of a good thing

let er rip!

The more the merrier. just as long as they are legit and putting out real info,
not FAUX NOISE

[malaise]

2. I agree

Very interesting ideas

[Arctic Dave]

4. Doesn't make sense. Why would they even bother?

If they are going to do nothing more then be a middle man to the lazy MSM why go through the headache at all?

That is what makes WL so valuable, they don't let they MSM bury it or release it at their leisure, WL post it for the world to see without a filter.

[Arctic Dave]

3. So in other words they will be a useless middleman.

If the person wanted to give to a media outlet wouldn't they do that already? Sounds like a new front group to get information and the person who is leaking it and still bury it the way the MSM does already.

[Ohio Joe]

5. If they do not verify anything, what makes them credible?

:shrug:

[Luminous Animal]

6. While I think more is better, would they be afforded 1st amendment protections?

[Xithras]

8. They won't be publishing themselves.

So no 1st Amendment argument one way or the other. They're simply routing the leaks to other media organizations for dissemination, instead of publishing it for the world like Wikileaks currently does.

[Luminous Animal]

9. You could make the argument that, since that are not a media organization...

they do not have Constitutional protections. That is, without that, they may be more vulnerable to criminal prosecution.

[Xithras]

10. Actually, their system would be protected in the U.S. under the DMCA

They are, for all practical purposes, merely acting as a communication service between media organizations and whistleblowers. Under the terms of the DMCA, they'd be protected in the U.S. if they responded appropriately to takedown notices. Because the communications would be private, the odds of a takedown notice would be slim.

Of course, there IS one major downside. Like all service providers, they would be vulnerable to warrants attempting to uncover the identities of the leakers. It would be very important to locate the servers in a country with strong online privacy laws.

[Xithras]

7. Reading up on it, I like this system.

You have information to leak, so you hit OpenLeaks and choose a "destination" (like the New York Times or the Sun). OpenLeaks acts as a shield to protect the identity of the submitter, while still allowing two-way communication between the two. Remember, many nations do NOT have media shield laws, and can force the media to reveal their sources.

If the original destination decides not to publish, or ignores the submission entirely, the files get opened up to OTHER media organizations with OpenLeaks drop boxes. If the target media organization won't run with it, the odds are good that someone else will.

The only problem I see is a vulnerability to deliberate spam submissions. If the New York Times is receiving 5000 submissions a day from people trying to undermine the project, it's highly unlikely that the NYT is going to waste a lot of time trying to vet each of them. The one real advantage of the current WikiLeaks system is that it acts as a noise and junk filter. I'm not sure how they plan to accomplish that on OpenLeaks.

[malaise]

11. Good spot

And the spammers will set out to destroy them