Journalists may not advertise the fact, but leaked information and documents from anonymous and not-so-anonymous sources come in useful in the news business.
Regular readers of FT Alphaville will be familiar with the bandits, those well-informed individuals who are themselves familiar with all kinds of interesting matters. But cultivating these sources of intel has become increasingly difficult – and sometimes dangerous – in an age of digital surveillance, rigorous corporate email tracking and recorded telephone calls.
Enter Wikileaks, an online repository of more than 1m ‘sensitive’ documents. The founders of the site are working on a plan that will allow would-be whistler-blowers to anonymously leak information to organisations and journalists. As IDG News reported on Friday:
Wikileaks.org, the online clearinghouse for leaked documents, is working on a plan to make the Web leakier by enabling newspapers, human rights organizations, criminal investigators and others to embed an “upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks” form onto their Web sites.
The upload system will give potential whistleblowers around the world the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organization or journalist they trust over a secure connection, while giving the receiver legal protection they might not otherwise enjoy.
“We will take the burden of protecting the source and the legal risks associated with publishing the document,” said Julien Assange, an advisory board member at Wikileaks, in an interview at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Once Wikileaks confirms the uploaded material is real, it will be handed over to the Web site that encouraged the submission for a period of time. This embargo period gives the journalist or rights group time to write a news story or report based on the material.
The embargo period is a key part of the plan, Assange said. When Wikileaks releases material without writing its own story or finding people who will, it gains little attention.
In 2007, Time magazine said:
if Wikileaks is used with a healthy dose of skepticism, it could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.
With this latest development, we might actually be getting there. But in the meantime feel free to use our existing secure channel, via stacy-marie.ishmael@ft.com
Related links:
MoD ‘how to stop leaks’ document is leaked – Telegraph
Wikileaks Forced to Leak Its Own Secret Info – Wired
Wikileaks founder: People won’t tolerate restrictive laws much longer – The Malaysian Insider