Cav's Place

Though some find innovative ways to shine a light on what’s going on, mainstream media is starting to look away from WikiLeaks. That’s certainly no surprise, because they basically never focus on a single story for so long, but it’s still very troubling. That’s because this media attention kept people informed of what was going on, drawing some towards the cause and helping those who already were involved actually do something about it, while the lack of it causes many people to focus on other things, a good example of that being the Avaaz petition, which didn’t even gather 700000 signatures in two weeks since it was launched, despite gathering about half that number in the first day alone, when everyone was linking to it. That only serves the powers that be, who fear the public’s attention and will therefore see this as a sign that they finally can step up their efforts. But events are still unfolding and battles are still being fought in this war, so I’ll do my best to update you on what happened since I wrote the last post.

I’ll start with the negative developments, since these first need to be known by as many as possible in order to be efficiently countered. More specifically, I’ll start with Joe Biden calling Julian Assange a high-tech terrorist, which reveals just how the United States is seeing this situation and what they intend to do about it. Not that we didn’t already know what they think of it and what they plan to do about it, but it’s another little piece of the puzzle and it should be on the table.
But political pressure and scaremongering tactics keep having very visible effects on corporations, who continue to distance themselves from WikiLeaks. The latest example would be Bank of America no longer handling payments for WikiLeaks, joining a pretty long list of financial institutions that have already done the same thing despite the lack of any good explanation.
However, this retaliation is no longer just against WikiLeaks. Despite not being developed by WikiLeaks, Apple has removed the WikiLeaks application from iTunes. Sure, said application apparently wasn’t even useful in any way, but the reason given for the removal is what’s worrying, along with the fact that the developer claims that half of the earnings went to WikiLeaks, which means that yet another method of donating was taken away. In addition, a WikiLeaks mirror was taken down, the explanation given being absolutely ludicrous: The host had received a complaint from an upstream provider, which was apparently worried that such a site may, at some point in the future, be the target of attacks! Now I’d sure like to know which site couldn’t possibly be the target of an attack at some point in the future, especially in light of what’s been going on lately…

Next come a couple of developments that may go either way. The first is that the CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of WikiLeaks. Probably because they haven’t really been affected by the leaks, their approach seems to be somewhat different, a fact also outlined by the acronym for this task force: WTF. This is something to keep an eye on, so we wait and see how it’ll develop. And the same goes for the fact that, despite not being one of the publications that WikiLeaks works with, major Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has obtained the cables through their own means and will start publishing those they see fit, as they stress that they’re under no agreement with WikiLeaks. This may help if they’ll release more things that need to be released sooner, but could certainly also harm, mainly by reducing potential whistleblowers’ confidence in WikiLeaks’ handling of what they send them.

But enough about that… There have been good developments as well, and those will be the ones outlined in the next part of this post, starting with a list of new whistleblowing sites that have recently been or will soon be launched. Too many options may confuse whistleblowers and even mainstream media, but each of them, assuming they’re legitimate, acts as one more hand pulling at the veil of secrecy governments, corporations and perhaps even more obscure powers that be like to shroud themselves in. Yes, some of them may actually be attempts by just those powers that be to catch potential whistleblowers and others may be completely unwise in what they’ll eventually publish, even releasing those very few things that governments do need to keep secret in order to be able to undertake risky, but fully justifiable and desirable, operations, but I’m quite convinced that the overall result of these sites, assuming they’ll get off the ground and actually become more than so many promises, will be a positive one.
Moving on to a more, shall we say, diplomatic front, the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have released a joint statement in support of WikiLeaks, while human rights organizations worldwide also keep appealing for the attacks against freedom of expression in general and WikiLeaks in particular to stop. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also launched a campaign against on-line censorship in light of these attacks. You can see on the right side of the page that I obviously also joined this campaign and urge you to do the same.
And, as an interesting side note, Reporters Without Borders is now hosting a WikiLeaks mirror site, to show their support for investigative journalism in general and WikiLeaks’ actions up to this point in particular, though they mention that “this partnership will be constantly reassessed in the light of WikiLeaks’ activities and the content it offers in the future”.

As for Assange himself, he is now a member in good standing of the Australian journalists’ union and even his union fees have been waived, since his accounts have been frozen. He has also been picked as Person of the Year by the readers of Crikey, as well as Man of the Year by the readers of Le Monde.