Wiki-Developments
By 1. Pakistani newspapers have been caught fabricating news stories based on alleged Wikileaks data. Joshua Keating expresses surprise this didn’t happen sooner.
2. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has weighed in on the Wikileaks issue, criticizing the US for putting pressure on banks and corporations to withdraw their connections with the site. In other words, to paraphrase Micah Silfy (h/t Johoblog) the current UN human rights position is not necessarily pro-Wikileaks, but certainly “anti-anti-Wikileaks.”
3. Does the recent rash of direct-actions against Paypal, Amazon, and Mastercard constitute a “cyberwar”? Or just a form of cyber-contenious-politics? Or something else? One view from Wikileak.org (a Wikileaks-watching-site): whatever else they are, the DDOS attacks by Anonymous are probably illegal – as are counterattacks against Anonymous. Meanwhile, alternative sites for channeling donations to Wikileaks have sprung up for interested readers.
4. A competitor to Wikileaks is preparing to launch Monday. (Wikileaks itself is apparently no longer accepting submissions.) The new entity “OpenLeaks” appears to be planning to address some of the ethical concerns surrounding Wikileaks (though by no means all). In particular the organization will limit its activities to receiving leaks but rely on third party organizations to filter and publish them. More here. But watch the NYTimes for Evgeny Morozov’s predictions about how Wikileaks might retain its market share.
5. Lawrence Lessig weighed in this week in a discussion at the Berkman Center. This site includes the podcast and transcript, plus a variety of other useful resources.