Julian Assange Hurts Wikileaks Crediblity Again
A while back, I wrote a piece about Wikileaks and how just being able to do something didn’t make it right. There are so many things that have happened around Wikileaks in the last little while that raise all sorts of red flags about the true intent of the organization, and it’s true goals.
The latest piece of stupidity is a report on Wired that says that Wikileaks leader Julian Assange is making employees sign non-disclosure agreements, effectively trying to stop leaks from an organization that is about leaks. Yeah, I know, it’s a head shaker for sure. However, when you think about it, it is just another piece of the puzzle that reveals the true intentions of Wikileaks.
This sort of move shows that Wikileaks isn’t about putting information out there, but rather about putting information out there if and when it is useful for the Wikileaks organization or the causes / political parties / political concepts they support. Right now, Wikileaks continues to sit on massive amounts of information from the Manning leaks, which they have not released. Instead, those documents are in an AES256 Password encrypted file, not viewable by the general public until Assange feels the need. Why would an organization about leaks not make the information public?
You have to look at the connections that exist between the Pirate Party, The Pirate Bay, Wikileaks, and various “rogue” politicians that support the cause. Releases of information appear to be done not so much to inform the public, as much as to embarrass officials or to cause the most harm possible. More than once, Julian Assange has threatened companies or governments with disclosure of information, more often then not with an indirect reference to stopping some action or allowing something to happen as a key to stopping the release of information. That seems to be getting very close to blackmail, at least on the surface.
The latest stop the leaks at Wikileaks document shows that Assange isn’t about getting the information to the public, but rather to getting control of information and being able to use it to further his agenda. For supporters of transparency and information flow, it seems that Assange has hijacked the entire process to his own ends. The question now is how long Wikileaks remains relevant before people start working around this blockage.
