WikiLeaks splits as volunteers quit to set up rival website
by Jerome Taylor Saturday, 11 December 2010
Former WikiLeaks volunteers are planning to launch a rival
whistle-blowing website next week amid growing indications that the US
government is on the verge of filing its own charges against Julian
Assange.
Supporters of Julian Assange protest at the US consulate general
in Hong Kong (AP) |
Lawyers for the 39-year-old Australian said yesterday that they
believed American prosecutors are planning to charge the WikiLeaks
founder using either espionage or computer misuse legislation.
Any US charges would create the prospect of Mr Assange having to
fight two extradition battles, one to stop an attempted prosecution in
Sweden over alleged sex offences, and a second to halt his extradition
across the Atlantic.
The Vatican was the centre of last night’s WikiLeaks revelations,
which claimed that the Pope intervened to help secure the release of the
15 British sailors seized by the Iranians in 2007. Julieta Noyes, the US
deputy chief of mission to the Vatican, told President Obama last year
of the Vatican’s role in the affair. The cables also show the British
ambassador to the Vatican believed the Pope’s call for Anglican
opponents of women priests to convert to Catholicism brought relations
between the UK and the pontiff to a 150-year low and could spark
violence.
Yesterday WikiLeaks members who fell out with Mr Assange over his
leadership style and personal politics said they were days away from
launching OpenLeaks, an alternative whistle-blowing site which will
forgo having a strong editorial figurehead deciding what to publish.
Herbert Snorrason, a former WikiLeaks volunteer from Iceland who
defected to OpenLeaks, said: “The major difference between us and Wiki-Leaks
is that we do not intend to publish documents directly. We will function
as a conduit between a source and the media. If a source leaks direct to
the media there is always the risk that the publication will be forced
to identify the whistleblower. With OpenLeaks it will be impossible even
for us to know where a source is.”
The new website will use an encrypted submissions system to allow
whistleblowers to leak material in confidence, and will allow the source
to chose which media organisations it wants to leak to.
The intention is to protect both the source and OpenLeaks from any
political fallout.
The founder of OpenLeaks, Dominic Domscheit-Berg, used to be the
WikiLeaks chief spokesperson until he defected in the summer after
disagreements with Mr Assange. The German transparency campaigner
accused the WikiLeaks founder of acting like “some kind of emperor or
slave trader”, and expressed concerns that the large-scale leaks of US
government data distracted the whistle-blowing platform from publishing
leaks from other sources. In an interview with the Swedish broadcaster
SVT, to be aired tomorrow, Mr Domscheit-Berg will criticise the secrecy
surrounding the website. “If you preach transparency to everyone else
you have to be transparent yourself,” he says.
Assange’s prison regime
*Julian Assange’s home for the foreseeable future is a simple cell on
a seclusion wing at Wandsworth prison. He is allowed one hour’s exercise
a day and has been kept apart from other inmates for his own safety.
*As a former computer hacker, Mr Assange is not allowed to have a
laptop computer in his cell, but his lawyers have requested one.
“Obviously, we are trying to prepare a legal appeal and he has
difficulty writing, so it would be much easier in order to assist us in
the preparation if he had a laptop,” his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told
AFP.
*The Australian-born transparency campaigner is to appear in court
again next Tuesday, when his case will be argued by the human rights
lawyer Geoffrey Robertson.
Courtesy: The Independent
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