New site won’t leak information it gets; leaving it to the media to verify and publish
- Rival whistleblowing website set up by Wikileaks defectors
Former members of Wikileaks are to set up an alternative whistleblowing site called Openleaks.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who was Julian Assange’s second-in-command until he resigned over differences in the way Wikileaks was being run, said Openleaks will allow people to post anonymously to a secure online dropbox.
But unlike Wikileaks, the team behind the site will not verify or publish information that it receives.
Domscheit-Berg who has been critical over the way Wikileaks has handled sensitive information, said the Openleaks team did not want this responsibility. Instead the site would act as an intermediary.
It would be left to others to check, redact or publish information they thought was in the public interest.
In an interview with Forbes magazine Domscheit-Berg said the project will initially partner with five newspapers worldwide. But he hopes to soon expand this partnership to anyone who wants to participate.
“Newspapers, NGOs, labour unions, anyone who wants to receive information from anonymous sources, we enable all these people to run something like this,” said Domscheit-Berg.
But if a newspaper doesn’t wish to publish information they have received, Domscheit-Berg said they can’t sit on it; after a while it can be sent to other media outlets.
Currently the Openleaks domain name leads to a page with a logo and the words “Coming soon!”
Whether it manages to be as efficient as or better than Wikileaks in obtaining and ultimately helping leak sensitive information remains to be seen.
But it shows that even if one controversial site comes under fire, another is always waiting in the wings online to take its place.
Author : Dinah Greek
