Update 4: The very positive New Yorker piece on Wikileaks that I cited is by one Raffi Khatchadourian who happens to be an alum of the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of International School, a hotbed of neoconservative policies, which hosts, among others, Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Eliot Cohen. Of course, I studied there for a while too, so that doesn’t say anything definitive by itself.

But Khatchadourian also wrote strongly in support of the Iraq war…

Update 3 (June 27) A blog called Civilities discusses the Bank Julius Baer case, in which whistle-blower Rudolf Elmer uploaded financial information to Wikileaks that included tax information that’s private under Swiss law, as well as personal information. Civilities draws a somewhat negative conclusion about the “full-transparency” model Wikileaks promotes and the writer Jon Garfunkel makes the point that Wikileaks works better as a source for original documents than as journalism, because it lacks accountable editing. It simply uses the signature Wikileaks, which conceals the identity of the editor.

However, Garfunkel, who is also a Wikipedia editor, seems to think Wikipedia is a perfectly transparent and objective information source. That makes you wonder if he has the experience to make a credible judgment on this issue. Anyone who thinks Wikipedia is always balanced or objective clearly isn’t too familiar with Wikipedia or has a motive to misrepresent it. In his case, the first explanation seems the right one.

Meanwhile, here’s the Guardian’s take on Wikileaks. It brings up an unsavory story about the outfit pirating an activist author’s book and posting it on the web, thus depriving her of her royalties. This seems rather two-faced, considering that Assange has said he needs millions to keep him in business and there’s no transparency about any of the funds he’s raised so far.

This piece in Time (Jan 22, 2007) notes that Wikileaks arrived just after the arrival of the Intellipedia, an internal wiki for members of the 16 spy agencies. That might be coincidental. Or not.

Update 2 (June 27): On Wikileaks funding drive.

WIkileaks Dust Up, by Robert Fadley, who claims Wayne Madsen is also passing on bogus theories. He also fingers someone called Sorcha Faal (who was behind one of the more bizarre theories about the oil spill) and Christopher Bolleyn (a known  disinformation outlet) and Tom Flocco (whom I’ve never heard of)

And here’s the critical Mother Jones piece, Click and Dagger, from June 2, which started a lot of buzz.

One Henk Ruyssenaars of the Foreign Press Foundation (?) who writes about the Bilderbergers seems to agree that Wikileaks is a “honey-pot” to collect IP addresses.

Maybe I will delve a bit more into wikileaks‘ archives….

Update 1 (June 27):

As I’ve posted in the Comments in response to a reader, it’s impossible for me to come to a conclusion about Assange beyond being favorably disposed toward him (mainly on the strength of the climate emails, not on the video, which struck me as overall not really useful). I just don’t know enough and am not willing to commit the amount of time necessary to figure it out, because I think I would be going down a rabbit-hole. I’d never be sure one way or other.

So let me try to play armchair detective here with my trusty Stradivarius, a pinch of snuff, and a shot or two aimed at the mantelpiece.

Here’s the main theoretical reason why one might tend to suspect Wikileaks.

Assange objects to privacy. Wikileaks violates privacy. Kind of like Google, notice? Google thinks it’s heroic too and Google has its China-connection too. Wikileaks makes anonymous sources, hacking, leaking, and ratting out your associates cool. It makes snitches heroes.

Cui bono? Need I ask? Corporate rivals, speculators and short-sellers, blackmailers, rival governments, spy agencies. Does that sound like the company the power-elites keep?

So even if Wikileaks were not a disinformation agent, whose agenda would its work finally help? A totalitarian outfit’s. It certainly doesn’t help individualism.

Ergo, whether Assange himself is a truth-teller,  intel operative, visionary,  grandstander, paranoid kook, hero, naif, villain, or anything else is beside the point. I can avoid wondering about his stuff with a clear conscience and can spend my energy putting posting material from the countless other reporters, bloggers, volunteers, activists, whistle-blowers and thinkers out there.

If he’s a decoy, I’ve saved myself a lot of trouble. And if he’s a hero,  I would still have spent my time usefully. So no harm done. And ‘no harm done’ after all is the first thing we should care about even before we try to figure if blogging can do some good…

Correction:

**It’s not a love-fest after all. Young has expanded on the original criticism at length, in an email interview with an Italian journalist at his site, Cryptome. (Actually, he says nothing in it too different from his original comments).

Young doesn’t actually “prove” that Assange isn’t credible, but he points out the untrustworthiness of the whole “spy versus spy” leak model. That’s something about which I’ve blogged myself. It was the reason I stayed clear of Wikileaks when it began, and why I didn’t jump on the “Collateral Murder” video, though I eventually posted it when it became clear that the manner of its outing was as important as its subject.

I’ve also gone back a bit on what I said about the Madsen-Assange fracas possibly being related to different (left-right) factions of the intelligence community. Now I think that’s too speculative…..

ORIGINAL POST

The New Yorker has a long glowing piece on Assange and Wikileaks.

At Blather,a clarification about the Cryptome criticism of Wikileaks (now it’s a love-fest**)…

“You may have read in the media (the Guardian, for example) that Cryptome.org has claimed WikiLeaks.org is a ‘C.I.A. front’. This comes from a quote by John Young of Cryptome in an email from 2007 and Cryptome says the reporting of this is ‘lacking context’.

Cryptome are also saying this:

‘Characterisitcally, none of the authoritative ignoramouses quoting Young to smear Wikileaks talked to Young to get an update, haven’t studied much Wikileaks material beyond the headlines, and would not stoop to the hard-labor of reading Cryptome. Cryptome attacked the Mother Jones smear on 8 April:

“The smears of Wikileaks are becoming excessive. Wayne Madsen has led the charge, now others are joining the nastiness. Mother Jones, of all muckracking mags which should know better, has published a particularly offensive smear of Julian Assange, cherry-picking remarks from those interviewed who surely said more than the article conveys.”

‘Cryptome spoke with Julian Assange by telephone on 11 April to offer support against the attacks on him and Wikileaks for releasing the Reuters staff murder video. In several recent interviews (one yesterday) Cryptome has stated Wikileaks is an exemplary success at getting banned information to the public and deserves wide emulation, with hundreds of sites needed to do what it does and to help guard against its smear and shutdown as a singular target. Also, that there are dozens if not hundreds of web sites providing information not available through self-anointed “reputable” media. The outrage Wikileaks has provoked indicates it is doing exactly what needs to [be] done to demolish the chokepoints of managed information flow by authoritative sources — government, commerce, educational, religious, individual — who peddle bombastic “context,” “broader views,” “verification,” “authentication,” “reputability,” and the current favorite, “sources not authorized to speak” a comical variation on the spy’s “if I told you what I know I would have to kill you,” then spill gutloads of trivia…’

There is a highly recommended audio interview with John Young, 13 April 2010, which can be downloaded from The Corbett Report – Open Source Intelligence News (it is interview #152): ‘The founder of Cryptome.org and veteran publisher of suppressed documents joins us to discuss what can be learned from the Wikileaks phenomenon, including the ways that information leaks can themselves be manipulated. We also discuss corporate complicity in government surveillance of the internet.'”

See also ‘Wikileaks: Surveillance, Suspicion and a Mysterious Video‘, Blather.net 5 April 2010.