Updates to this story
Germany's Wau Holland Foundation has told newspaper Der Freitag Wikileaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth. Hendrik Fulda, the foundation's second chairman, says around 30.000 euros have been handed out after receiving signed receipts. According to Fulda, most of the money has been mainly used to restore Wikileaks and keep the site up and running. The website had to be taken down last year as donations did not cover costs.
The Wau Holland Foundation is located in Guxhagen, Germany and was founded by friends of German hacker legend and computing visionary Wau Holland, who started the famous Chaos Computer Club (CCC). It is recognised as a charity under German law and has to file an annual report end of each September with the federal state of Hesse.
Fulda added the foundation wanted to include a detailed financial report on its website by end of August in reaction to the donations received for Wikileaks. Before receiving donations for Wikileaks, the foundation only governed 62,000 euro invested in saving bonds and a small lot of land worth 1,500 euro, meaning it only had around 2,500 euro of interest it could hand out each year.
As a charity accountable under German law, donations for Wikileaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in escrow and are given to Wikileaks after the whistleblower website files an application containing a statement with proof of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor give any renumeration to Wikileaks' personnel, corroborating the statement of the site's German representative Daniel Schmitt on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.
In the last few weeks, Wikileaks has come under fire from various sides. Wired's Threat Level blog stated the site had fallen into disrepair, some anonymous writer of emails labelling him- or herself as "an Wikileaks insider) has had emails posted on Cryptome.org.
Wired's Threat Level blog is maintained by Kevin Poulsen, who originally reported that Adrian Lamo, a self-proclaimed hacker and journalist, had turned a whistleblower and Wikileaks source in to the police. Poulsen and Lamo, who happen to be acquaintances, were blasted for their action on Wikileaks's Twitter account.
Cryptome.org founder John Young believes Wikileaks is not a group of activists, but some sort of shady spy outfit maintained by the CIA, or MI6, or phantom menaces from Mars. He has posted emails on his site from said "Wikileaks Insider" stating Wikileaks will be abandoned and that Wikileaks' speaker Julian Assange had funneled off 225,000 euro of donations and similar rants. Neither claim has proven to be true.
Anyone interested can email the Wau Holland Foundation for detailed statements regarding its government of European donations to Wikileaks, instead of following red herrings.
His position on WikiLeaks is subtle and born of deep inside knowledge of his own. You really ought to do your homework before posting such false libelous crap.
O.K. Care to back all that up with data, facts, etc.? What is Young's "deep inside knowledge of his own?"
The burden of proof isn't on Assange, as it is logically not possible for someone to prove a negative. It is however upon Young to give more evidence than emails from an anonymous insider.
Lastly, if the Wikileaks team was truly not on Assange's side, they would find it reasonably easy to remove him from "power". It's a decentralised system, not a hierarchical one.
Just visit Cryptome and read ALL John Young's stuff on WikiLeaks this past couple of months. This NOT a black and white issue.
Young assisted WikiLeaks at the outset by acting as the registrant of its Domain Name. He bowed out over its fund-raising ambitions. He is supportive of its stated aims. He has reservations about its lack of transparency and a few other things that, history illustrates, are classic weaknesses begging for exploitation by the SIS's.
I addition to publishing stuff from 'WikiLeaks Insider' he also publishes stuff that rubbishes him/her.
His operating principle is to publish everything and let readers judge. He sometimes chips in with cryptic comments and analysis of his own which, from someone whose been at it longer than most, are ALWAYS worth reading.
As for Noah's characterisation of Young; Gruff and abrasive - yes. Its one of his primary vitues. As for the rest - unworthy of comment.
you are certainly right about Wikileaks having to foster other ventures like itself. However, I think similar ventures will not need fostering by Wikileaks, but simply come into existence by themselves, due to shared ideals.
Wikileaks is becoming a victim of its own success which could be interpreted as a sign of its success.
It is clearly upsetting some organisations who have a vested interest in keeping information out of the public realm. I believe this is why we are seeing the beginnings of an onslaught against it.
Such veiled onslaughts have the purpose of directing attention away from the job which it is doing, namely leaking, and placing it on dubious claims which have yet to be born out.
Wikileaks is up against the best in the business and so far it is fairing well.
Expect to see more mud slinging in the near future.
Both are crude social and tech attempts at (optionally) anonymous write-once global filesystem into which anyone can toss anything, irrevocably. (Other net archives from fas.org to archive.org to google.com are less resistant to well funded legal and technical attacks. While many folks discover "once its out there, it's there forever" this would not be the case given the means of some entities.)
Libraries burn, particularly if the local state du jour is unhappy with them.
Leaks happen, caveat reader, as always, and especially now, when everyone has a printing press.
A bug or a feature, doesn't matter, it is reality, adapt.
Paying for leaks and stolen information (including forgeries and disinformation) is as venerable as spying itself, both feed and enrich one another. What is also new is transparency about leaks and spying, both of which customarily occur in secret, and in which deception and treachery are commonplace.
The best funding model for Wikileaks is to sell material it is given by contributors, and in some case paying for the leaks. WL has tried to auction material which is reported to have been unsuccessful, but there is no way to know for sure.
The monetization of the State Department cables and other not-yet-disclosed submissions is a powerful stimulus to do what has always been done, do it and keep it secret in order to game the bids and keep submissions coming for free, dressed in noble clothing of high purpose, exactly as spies do.
However, it will take a sophisticated operation to avoid being co-opted, corrupted, criminalized and/or destroyed by very lethal, ruthless and violent competitors.
Assange has hinted at these roilings, and anyone who has operated a freedom of information/journalism site or business or NGO has experienced overtures from vultures with hard to resist enticements.
Assange was reported to have said in a Guardian interview yesterday that he might leave Wikileaks, that it could survive without him though still benefiting from his drive. This could indicate he has had offers to break free of the reputable Wikileaks and to form a new venture along commercial or government models which pay very well, in particular as official spying has become increasingly privatized and lucrative.
Julian is a spectacular showman for the youngsters of the Internet era who are disgusted with the seniors.
Political office or spying for the global industrial spies Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Cisco, thousands of others admitting only to "customer data gathering."
Wikileaks has a decent market for its contributor data protected only at the moment by thinnest of veneers of a few unknown accessors, how thin is unknown due to lack of transparency, i.e., secrecy, a sure sign of treachery in the offing.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/eternity/eternity.html
http://www.cypherspace.org/eternity/phrack.html
which should be understood by those interested in
the technical means of making highly available
("journalistic" or arbitrary other) data despite an intentionally hostile network.
Note that anonymity is an orthogonal option since by-default publishers can always include signatures that they can verify only when they chose.
And, re leaking, quite obviously, its not a secret if you tell someone.