WikiLeaks is the first global Samizdat movement. The truth will surface even in the face of total annihilation.
Thus spake the Wikileaks twitter, causing a bit of shock in readers who just got here when Julian Assange started wearing a suit and stopped talking about pissing in the corner of dragon caves. There have been many accusations that Wikileaks operates for money, a front for some evil agency that they pretend to be against, a random act of vandalism, or for personal glory. Supporters tend to say it is simply an attempt to modify the current media to trend towards greater transparency. But personal glory it is, not as a means to fame or notoriety, but for the glory of living your life to the fullest and exercising yourself to your greatest capacity.
Wikileaks is an idea, born to people of great talent, acquired skill, and intelligence, who decided to conduct a well thought out and analyzed effort to improve as much of the world as possible in as many ways as possible. A very, very large idea. Sort of an intellectual extreme sport.
Too few people have read what probably will be considered John Young’s greatest historical achievement (besides creating Cryptome, the seed for Wikileaks). When he became annoyed with Wikileaks he published all the emails that went into the original discussions in 2006 and 2007, a fascinating look at characters that must have been so difficult to get together in agreement that it is mind boggling how few public eruptions we have actually seen. The anarchist, the revolutionary, the difficult, the brilliant, and the possibly mad, sometimes all in one person. And frequently, a very familiar voice. All working towards the same goal, to rock your world and make it better.
Since I know most of you really don’t have time to add these giant files to your list of required reading this week, I have gone through it all and pulled what I felt was most illustrative for your reading enjoyment. Wikileaks now is not Wikileaks then. People have wandered in and out, and a lot of much more mainstream professionals have joined. But these are the origins. Not the CIA.
Note: The following quotes are from many different people, not just Assange.
The difficulties that confront a conspirator are infinite many have been the conspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires can not act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he believes malcontent, and as soon as you have opened your mind to a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content himself. –Macchiavelli
We have come to the conclusion that fomenting a world wide movement of mass leaking is the most cost effective political intervention available to us* We believe that injustice is answered by good governance and for there to be good governance there must be open governance. Governance by stealth is governance by conspiracy and fear. Fear, because without it, secrecy does not last for long.Retired generals and diplomats are vociferous, but those in active service hold their tune.
Lord Action said, “Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity”.
This degeneration comes about because when injustice is concealed, including plans for future injustice, it cannot be addressed. When governance is closed, man’s eyes become cataracts. When governance is open, man can see and so act to move the world towards a more just state; for instance see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders which shows a striking correlation between press freedom and countries known for their quality of life.
us*: some attributes may have been swapped to protect selected identities, no particular order.
1) Retired new york architect and notorious intelligence leak facilitator
2) Euro cryptographer/programmer
3) Pacific physicist and illustrator
4) A pacific author and economic policy lecturer
5) Euro, Ex-Cambridge mathematician/cryptographer/programmer
6) Euro businessman and security specialist/activist
7) Author of software than runs 40% of the world’s websites.
8 ) US pure mathematician with criminal law background
9) An infamous US ex-hacker
10) Pacific cryptographer/physicist and activist
11) US/euro cryptographer and activist/programmer
12) Pacific programmer
13) Pacific architect / foreign policy wonk
New technology and cryptographic ideas permit us to not only encourage document leaking, but to facilitate it directly on a mass scale. We intend to place a new star in the political firmament of man.
The more armor we have, particularly in the form of men and women sanctified by age, history and class, the more we can act like brazen young men and get away with it.
John Young: Leaks should be doubted and doubts answered by leakers or those who distribute the leakables. An iron-clad leak is a phony or a lie. It does require more work to perform an exegesis of a leaked document weighing the pros and cons, but that is what it takes to avoid the trap of vainglorious pride in being a leaker and the subsequent lure of leaking crap to remain in the spotlight — the politician’s disease.
John Young: Or the other trap is pretending authority where it is not deserved, indeed, where reputation and reliability are marketed as come-ons, thus the celebrated MSM and its bastard children, the nameish blogs seen as sidebars to other nameish blogs, self-referencing one another into triviality.
My only hesitation vis-a-vis Counterpunch is the readership, which though large, tends to pal up on one pew and sometimes even sings and claps.
When WL is deployed, feedback will be, like Wikipedia, an act of creation and correction; the Aweys document and those like it will eventually face one hundred thousand incensed Somali refugees, blade and keyboard in hand, cutting, cutting, cutting apart its pages until all is dancing confetti and the truth.
Keep up our hopes, our e-spirit de corpuscular; draw forth our anger, our courage — and our fire — to lick at the damp paper of uncivilization until it catches and our hearts are warmed by the conflagration of basement mendacities the world over. Let our smiles be woken by flowers of openness pushing through the ash from below.
We are compelled to act, as we are best able, for a man who witnesses injustice but does not act, becomes a party to a cascade of injustice, via the iterative diminution and pacification of his character.
It is our plan to foment political and financial support for WL. To do that we need a commanding voice. Everywhere we see professional sayers and professional knowers, but the demands of each mean little intersection and the world finds itself with brainless words and wordless brains. By uniting a handful of knowers together in harmony we can project our voice without devoting our minds to the preferments and petty intrigues of moguls.
We have the collective sources, personalities and learning to be, or rather, appear to be, the reclusive ubermench of the 4th estate. We will take the non-linear blessing such a position affords and apply it to our great task of DIY universal open governance.
Our rules follow that of the French Bourbaki who through their allonym set the mathematical world to right in the first half of the 20th C with internal agreement by exhaustion and the purification inherit in non-attribution of ego. Ben likes to quotes Woodruff thus “There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice.
If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find.
If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes.
We expect difficult state lashback unless WikiLeaks can be given a sanctified frame (“center for human rights, democracy, good government and apple pie press freedom project” vs “hackers strike again”).
It’s easy to percieve the connection between publication and the complaints people make about publication. But this generates a perception bias, because it overlooks the vastness of the invisible. It overlooks the unintended consequences of failing to publish and it overlooks all those who are emancipated by being in a climate where bad governance cannot be concealed. Such a climate is a motivating force to behave better in the first place and shifts structures and individuals that generate bad governance away from positions where they generate poor governance.
Injustice concealed cannot be answered. Concealed plans for future injustice cannot be stopped until they are revealed by becoming reality, which is too late. Administrative injustice, by defintion affects many.
Government has ample avenues to abuse revelation, not limited to the full force of intelligence, law enforcement, and complicit media. Moves towards the democratisation of revelation are strongly biased in favor of justice. Where democratised revelations are unjust they tend to affect isolated individuals, but where they are just, they affect systems of policy, planning an governance and through them the lives of all.
You may point to a salicious main stream media, but that is not democratised revelation. We point instead to the internet as a whole, which although not yet a vehicle of universal free revelation, is very close to it. Look at the great bounty of positive political change pooring forth as a result.
WikiLeaks reveals, but it is not primarily a tool of revelation. There are many avenues on the internet for revelation. What does not exist is a social movement that makes acting ethically by leaking a virtue. What does not exist is a comfortable way for everyone to leak safely and easily. What does not exist is a way to turn raw leaks into into politically influential knowledge through the revoutionary mass collaborative analysis of wikipedia.
Sufficient leaking will bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality — including the US administration. Ellsberg calls for it. Everyone knows it. We’re doing it.
The more secretive and unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive “secrecy tax”) and consequent system-wide cognitive decline and hence the ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.
Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what’s actually going on.
We believe fostering a safe, easy, socially sanctified way for uncensorable mass document leaking, publishing and analysis is THE most cost effective generator of good governance. We seek good governance, because good governance does more than run trains on time. Good governance responds to the sufferings of its people. Good governance answers injustice.
1. Ethics. We favour, and uphold, ethical behaviour in all circumstances. We do not believe in unquestioning obedience to authority in all circumstances. Every person is the ultimate arbiter of justice in their own conscience. Where injustice reigns and is enshrined in law, there is a place for principled civil disobedience. Where the simple act of distributing information may embarrass authoritarian power structures or expose oppression or major crimes, we recognise a right, indeed a duty, to perform that act. Such whistleblowing often involves major personal risk. Just like whistleblower protection laws in some jurisdictions, this project provides means and opportunity to minimise such risks.
3. Gauntlet. We are no friends of oppressive regimes, dictators, authoritarian governmental institutions or exploitative corporations. We fully intend to expose injustice and make the world a better place; this is our overarching goal and all policy will be formulated with this goal in mind.
John Young: Aftergood’s report was unexpected, particularly for showing wikileaks.org was active and the first document was available. When did access become public, and was that announced here? Or did Aftergood release private information, say in disagreement with WL purposes. His comments on WL were disdainful, and appear to have been made to buttress his own endeavor as more honorable and respectable — he has a habit of doing that, but so do others who cherish their reputation (and carefully nuture support of those who really have a problem with uncontrolled information as if it is “dangerous to go too far, yadda, yadda.”).
John Young: Reporters, and keep in mind they are competitors with WL as much as any keepers of secrets and peddlers of inside information, (all obsessed with appearing to be “responsible” arbiters of what information gets published) will most certainly dig for unfriendly aspects of WL to gain reader attention and to show they are not complicit in WL unrespectable intentions. Some will promise one thing to get information and do the opposite for publication. Some will fuck you for failing to do what they asked.
John Young: Expect agents of the authorities to pry into WL by way of journalists, supporters, funders, advisory board members; that is customary for those hoping to smoke out opposition. Expect smears, lies, forgeries, betrayal, bribes, and the host of common tools used to suppress dissent. Expect taunts, insults, ridicule, praise, admiration, obsequiousness, arrogance, skepticism, demands for who the fuck are you, I need the information for an urgent deadline. Expect accusations that someone else associated with WL has already told me such and such so why are you being so coy? Expect much flattery and disdain.
John Young: Beware of disclosing private information as a means to recruit. Beware of releasing information about WL founders and supporters, that will be grist for the truth twisters. Keep anonymous as possible or WL is doomed. This discussion list is going to be leaked. Anonymize, anonymize every communication with the press and potential recruits. Somebody is going to come at me as the name on the NSI registry. The less I know about WL people the better. And I know for sure that everyone associated with WL is a bald-faced liar, an agent of the authorities and the worst of the worst.
Regarding a reporter’s question: Misleading leaks — already well placed in the main stream media. WL is of no additional assistance to them.
We can turn this unexpected difficulty into a great blessing by being crafty and exuberant in our attentions over the next few days. The hunger for freedom and truth is clearly so intense that despite having little more than “we’re working on it” and a nice example (that few seem bother to read in their quest for the salacious) off it goes on its own exponential of media read, write and rewrite. Random quotes (not from us) and rephrasing will lead to the most salacious evolving in the galapagos of quote, edit and requote. What this means is that we have to answer questions before they’re asked and we have to answer them with statements that optimize max (journalistic lazynes + quote sexyness).
Analogously, the public sphere is warm milk, into which has leaked our culture. Bacterial growth follows an exponential — left unmolested it would become the congealed yogurt of our desires, but random innocents and malefactors alike are injecting their their own bacterial strain into the mix. The impact of early strains of information release (ours and others) will be fantastically amplified by the exponential process. Consequently we must expend as much energies on this IMMEDIATELY as we have inorder to set path of future perceptions, which will otherwise require far more energies to correct even a day later. Since we can not seal the public sphere from the influence of others, our only recourse is to continually inject our informational strain into the ferment. If we keep our strain (our public positioning ) consistent and quotable we should come to dominate the culture when opposed by relatively random influences of others. And despite JYAs seasoned fears, our opponents thus far are essentially uncoordinated; they do not strike with vigor at the same point.
Here follows our blessing. Because WL has not yet generated ANY specific enemies (at least outside of China and Somalia), attacks are generalized (“pro- censorship”) , unmotivated, limp-wristed and lack precision and common direction. This will not be the case once we release substantial material. That will invoke enemies with specific grievances. Our previous desire to splash forth only with a fully operational system with content would have generated both specific opposition and fears by example. Hence we have a great opportunity — to push our desired perceptions of what WL is into the world, to set the key in which future bars of our song are to be played by the public orchestra, BEFORE it faces any serious opposition.
John Young: Is there a target date for wikileaks.org becoming interactive, hyperactive, flooded with spam and attacks and demands to name names or else? Any advisory board members jumped ship yet?
John — no ship jumps, plank walks or keel hauls. Though some here may want to feed the sniveling holier than thou After Good Comes Bad to the swirling creatures of the deep, we will continue to project puppy dog eye rolls and the greatest generosity, acceptance and respect. Rhetoric is generally overblown, and deliberately so. Feel free to tone down. On the other hand perhaps there are sufficiently sexy statements for the press. 😛
WL may become the most powerful intelligence agency on earth, an intelligence agency of the people. It will be an open source, democratic intelligence agency. But it will be far better, far more principled, and far less parochial than any governmental intelligence agency; consequently, it will be more accurate, and more relevant. It will have no commercial or national interests at heart; its only interests will be truth and freedom of information. Unlike the covert activities of national intelligence agencies, WL will rely upon the power of overt fact to inform citizens about the truths of their world. WL will resonate not to the sound of money or guns or the flow of oil, but to the grievances of oppressed and exploited people around the world. It will be the outlet for every government official, every bureaucrat, every corporate worker, who becomes privy to embarrassing information which the institution wants to hide but the public needs to know. What conscience cannot contain, and institutional secrecy unjustly conceals, WL can broadcast to the world. WL will be a forum for the ethical defection of unaccountable and abusive power to the people. WL will be an anvil at which beats the hammer of the collective conscience of humanity.
WL has no formal relationship to wikipedia. However both employ the same wiki interface and technology. Both share the same radically democratic philosophy that allowing anyone to be an author or editor leads to a vast and accurate collective intelligence and knowledge. Both place their trust in an informed community of citizens. WL, we hope, will be a new star in the political firmament of humanity.
Disarming. FH along with NED are notorious US State/CIA money launderers. The goal is not to get them to accept, although that might be rather interesting, but to make them feel we are on the same “side” by the early approach and enemy of my enemy is my friend.
We must find our own ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ s — blessings and sanctifications that even our most diseased and demonic opponents will find themselves chanting to each other in the night.
John Young: In solidarity to fuck em all.
J. We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly, but not entirely a feint. Invention abounds. Lies, twists and distorts everywhere needed for protection. Hackers monitor chinese and other intel as they burrow into their targets, when they pull, so do we. Inxhaustible supply of material. Near 100,000 documents/emails a day. We’re going to crack the world open and let it flower into something new. If fleecing the CIA will assist us, then fleece we will. We have pullbacks from NED, CFR, Freedomhouse and other CIA teats. We have all of pre 2005 afghanistan. Almost all of india fed. Half a dozen foreign ministries. Dozens of political parties and consulates, worldbank, apec, UN sections, trade groups, tibet and fulan dafa associations and… russian phishing mafia who pull data everywhere. We’re drowing. We don’t even know a tenth of what we have or who it belongs to. We stopped storing it at 1Tb.
This delegation carries some risks (to wl), but we are in a romance with journalists hearts; if our voices sweet are not easily reachable on the phone when their desire and deadlines peek, others voices, less honeyed but always, always available will replace them.
Subject: [WL] We’re all CIA stooges, apparently.
John Young has leaked the content of this list, sans most identifying info to cryptome.org It’s clear from his recent messages that he’s been losing it for some time. We should have checked his current mental state more thoroughly rather than relying on previous experience.
The impact maybe positive. It’s certainly very mysterious and exciting to read. I don’t think there’s much dissonance between our public and private positions.
Why was his final message to this list filtered?
And does anyone understand wtf it means?
No idea what JYA was saying!
It’s clear to me however, that he was not trying to protect people’s identities with his xxxxx’ing, but rather trying to increase the sexiness of the document. Perhaps he feels WL is a threat to the central status mechanism in his life? I think he just likes the controversy.
He may have done us a great favor. There’s a lot of movement in that document. It’s a little anarchist, but I think it generally reads well and sounds like people doing something they care about.
Btw, I suggest we be careful with Wayne Madsen too. He seems to be another case of someone who was fantastic a few years ago, but recently has started to see conspiracies everywhere. Both cases possibly age related.
I am not spending any more thought on it. Next week is going to be busy. The weeks earlier stories will be already done and that’ll set the agenda for the rest of the week, not jya’s attention seeker.
Early logos:
The Jimmy Wales Section:
Any idea what this may mean? Either he wants to support WL and is registering those in order to do so, or he wants to hedge so he’s registering them in order to run his own version, or put his own views on them. I’d ask, if I were you. Or perhaps I will.
Wikia Inc.
200 2nd Ave. S
Suite 306
St. Petersburg, Florida 33701
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: WIKILEAKS.NET
Created on: 03-Jan-07
Expires on: 04-Jan-09
Last Updated on:
Administrative Contact: Wales, Jimmy jasonr[a t]bomis.com,Wikia Inc. 200 2nd Ave. S Suite 306 St. Petersburg, Florida 33701 United States 17273886691
My of most probable guess is he wants to protect them from scalpers, in order to do as ben suggest. Provided Wales, Inc. doesn’t use these domains for content, the rego certainly aids us in projection. It’s interesting they they seem to be directly registered by Wales, NOT by the Wikipedia foundation i.e compare the records to wikipedia. {org,com,net} and mediawiki.{org,com,net} What’s unusual is that he hasn’t notified us.
Read carefully. This doesn’t seem to be related to Wikipedia, but rather to Wikia, Inc. From http://www.aboutus.org/Wikia.com: “Free wiki hosting from Wikia, using the same MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia. ”Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia. Wikia is the rest of the library.” Wikia are wiki communities creating free content with the MediaWiki software. These are hosted for free by Wikia, Inc., the company which runs the project. Anyone is free to start a new Wikia in accordance with the creation policy and terms of use. Wikia was founded by Angela Beesley and Jimmy Wales, originally under the name “Wikicities”, in October 2004. It celebrated its first birthday on November 2, 2005. Wikicities relaunched as “Wikia” in March 2006 (see the press release for details). News about the site can be found at news and press releases. See also the reasons to use Wikia, what Wikia is not, and then explore or browse the site.” Seeing this domain being registered to Wikia seems to indicate that he *IS* willing to help us. We should inquire nonetheless. The email address for the Admin contact looks valid (Jason Richey).
John Young: Cheers, Wales is attempting to protect his investment. He’s businessman before all else, meaning without scruples. Consider his action an attack on WL, perhaps to be followed by others if it threatens his commercial operation of reputation building pretending to be a public service — like giving out free cigarettes.
I think JY maybe right — Wales has scalped it for his commercial Wiki company, perhaps even automatically.
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Heather Marsh 