Back in September, we reported that whistleblowing site Wikileaks had hemorrhaged a number of prominent personnel. Now some of those who’ve left have begun assembling an organization designed to directly compete with its parent.
The alleged high-handedness of the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, and the beliefs of some of his co-workers’ belief that he has not properly protected lives by carefully redacting the Iraq documents, has created a rift and the rift has created and opportunity.
Wikileaks is probably best known for releasing 91,000 secret documents from the Afghanistan War and 400,000 field reports from the Iraq War.
Assange and his organization have been criticized, by a spectrum of parties ranging from the U.S. government to Reporters Without Borders, for spending less attention on removing names and identifying information attached to civilians who have helped U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Shortly after that leak, Taliban sources announced they were using the documents to prepare a purge; the same thing happened after the Iraq publication.
One of the most prominent internal critics was Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who, as Daniel Schmitt, served as Wikileaks’s German spokesman. Among his concerns were the level of redaction, as well as Assange’s distracting public activities and neglect in releasing other important, but less attention-grabbing, documents unrelated to the conflicts.
Domscheit-Berg is one of the leaders of the new whistleblower undertaking. The group’s personnel looks to possibly number between half a dozen and a dozen people so far.
The new organization would not be the only alternative to Wikileaks, as The Wall Street Journal points out. The most prominent rival is probably Cryptome, who have leaked documentsconcerningWikileaks.
