The beginning of the end of Wikileaks?
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- How can you trust Wikileaks to protect whistle-blowers’ identities when it can’t protect its own donors? – asks Dan Tynan in Tynan on Tech.
The question comes up because Wikileaks accidentally revealed the email addresses of, “dozens of its financial supporters,” says Tynan, wondering, “Is this the beginning of the end of Wikileaks?”
Answer? Nope, IOHO.
However, “Wikileaks is now dangling by its own petard, after someone in its fundraising arm sent out an e-mail shilling for donations but put the addresses of its 58 recipients on the ‘To:’ field instead of ‘Bcc’,says the story, going on »»»
Someone quickly submitted the e-mail to the Wikileaks foundation as a “leaked” document, presumably to test just how devoted Wikileaks is to its own mission.
To its credit (and probably to some donors’ horror) the site posted the document in full, including all 58 email addresses. Many of them feature aliases like “eekameeka” and “phantom 7266,” while other less fortunate folks included what appear to be their real names and work email addresses. But even a pseudonymous address can yield a lot of information about someone if they use it to sign onto multiple sites across the Web.
Nothing wrong with giving money to a site that exists to promote freedom of the press, Tynan says, continuing:
“Wikileaks claims it’s better at protecting the sources of its information, even if it’s not so hot at protecting the sources of its funding. In a comment posted on Wired’s Threat Level blog, organization spokesdude Jay Lim says:
” ‘…while definitely not good form, the mistake was a missed shortcut made by one of our admin people and is not related to the efforts or systems involved in source protection’.”
Really, Tynan adds, “Wikileaks was hosed regardless of what it decided to do; if your whole schtick is exposing the unvarnished unredacted truth, you can’t suddenly start making exceptions for yourself. But this dumb mistake is likely to cost it contributions, both monetary and otherwise.”
However, as has been observed on many an occasion, shit happens.
And it can happen to anyone.
Tynan on Tech – Wikileaks springs a leak, February 23, 2009
Wikileaks – Julian Assange: the man behind Wikileaks, July 8, 2008
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February 27th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
so when they get my donation , see how i send it to a post office box where they can pick up the loot.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
At least they didn’t hide it, like so many do.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Fu**ing retards.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Live by the reveal, die by the reveal.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
well, lets hope no one ends up in a bag for this.