2011 7
Wikileaks should be more transparent
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I was looking at the financial statements of Wikileaks online and could not find them. Greenpeace, Oxfam, Wikipedia and other NGOs that solicit money are very transparent about their financial situation. To me Wikileaks becomes much less credible if they do not have that level of transparency but yet they claim to bring transparency to the world.
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robin on September 8, 2011 ·
This makes no sense at all. Wikileaks does not contend that the world should be transparent. If they were totally transparent, they’d publish a list of those leaking material to them, and you don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the kitchen to see how that would pan out.
Maybe we have different understandings of logic but how would more transparency in connection with Wikileaks financial statements do anything much except assist Wikileaks’ deep-pocketed and opaque adversaries? They receive funding from an independent foundation to which they have to answer.
Ultimately, if you don’t think the transparency is up to scratch, don’t donate, or support somebody like OpenLeaks (good luck with that).
Cheers
robin on September 8, 2011 ·
@Mike Tommasi
Slow food – what a great movement.
Back to the topic: The Guardian published a book containing a strong password that made decrypting the cables, in circulation in encrypted form, possible. If you can’t understand why Wikileaks then went on to release the cables in their raw form, then I can’t help you.
Bear in mind that the US has stated that the suggestion that release of the cables would endanger people has been significantly over-stated, and in any case, the US has had a full year or so to mitigate any impact that any release would have (they would have had to assume, strategically, a scenario whereby the unredacted cables were released).
Frankly, to suggest that Wikileaks are theoretically placing people in danger while standing by and not comdemning the US/UK war machines over the decades is bizarre.
Do you just watch Fox News all day or something?
Cheers
robin on September 8, 2011 ·
The US execute a whole family and call in air-strikes to destroy the building and therefore the evidence.
Where’s your outrage? Where’s your demand for transparency from the author of these cables??
The UK beat people to death. Brothers, fathers, sons, families. £2.8m in (aggregate) compensation to number of people (mainly family of those murdered), BUT … £17m for the enquiry!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/08/army-suspends-baha-mousa-soldiers
Where’s your outrage? Where’s your demand for transparency from the perpetrators of this violence?
You are very quick to condemn people that place themselves in mortal danger bringing to light the injustices that are undertaken in your name.
I’m not activist, but I do have my eyes open, and I observe what people do rather than what they say. I suspect your life is too comfortable (financially, reputation-wise) within the current econo-political system to want to rock the boat at all, call anybody out, or change anything.
Am I right?
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Mike Tommasi on September 7, 2011 ·
Hi Martin – we met a few years ago in Paris (Slow Food)
credibility of Wikileaks is undermined much more by publishing unredacted cables and thus exposing political activists, whistleblowers and people persecuted by their governments (including Zimbabwe, Belarus and Cuba) who may now all be in great danger.
all the best
Mike