Disclosure platform

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term disclosure platform is understood to mean a website or the organization behind it that aims to accept confidential, secret or censored documents and to make them available to the journalistic media while ensuring the anonymity of the whistleblower , the so-called whistleblower to make them accessible to everyone even on the Internet and to archive them. This enables investigative journalism . In order to protect the informants, encryption techniques are used and a more conspiratorial approach is chosen to protect the employees themselves, which does not exclude interviews and individual statements. The term was coined by journalism in order to have a generic term for the novel phenomenon available with increasing popularity of WikiLeaks.

history

The demand for free access to information, combined with a negative attitude towards state authority, was part of the imagination of hackers who began to research national and international computer networks and exploit their security gaps in the mid-1980s . Cryptome and WikiLeaks emerged from this world of thought. The development and increasing spread of the World Wide Web , in which once published information can hardly be withdrawn, but on the contrary is copied en masse and redistributed internationally, contributed to the emergence of disclosure platforms.

Platforms

Cryptome

The pioneer is the American website Cryptome, which has been operated by John Young since 1996. In 2006 Young took over the registration of the domains wikileaks.org , wikileaks.cn and wikileaks.info for the then new WikiLeaks project . After a dispute with Julian Assange about the amount of donations to be collected for WikiLeaks, he got out there and since then has sharply distanced himself from WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks

Founded in 2006, WikiLeaks gained international fame and high media and political attention through spectacular publications , especially since mid-2010. The idea was obvious to modify the concept and to found similar organizations and websites.

OpenLeaks

Announced in December 2010, OpenLeaks went online in a start-up phase at the end of January 2011 and should go into full operation later this year. OpenLeaks emerged from a spin-off from WikiLeaks with the participation of Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Herbert Snorrason , who left WikiLeaks together with other employees in September 2010.

Aljazeera Transparency Unit

With the Aljazeera Transparency Unit , the Arab news channel Al Jazeera has been offering the possibility of uploading documents for evaluation and publication since the beginning of 2011. The data is automatically encrypted. In addition, PGP and Tor are recommended to ensure the greatest possible anonymity and security. Al Jazeera states that it does not store any informant IP addresses .

As early as January 2011, Al Jazeera published secret negotiation documents between Israel and the Palestinian Authority , which became known as the Palestine Papers .

Brussels Leaks

Brussels Leaks , founded in December 2010, consisting of journalists and employees from the communications industry, has the intended focus on lobbying the European Commission based in Brussels . It provides a form for secure contact on its website. Submitted documents should be checked. It is not planned to publish it on its own, but to pass it on to the media.

BalkanLeaks

BalkanLeaks is run by Bulgarians in exile in Paris and aims to focus on organized crime and high-level corruption within the region. For anonymous Canadian server and gateway used. The first documents were published in 2010.

GreenLeaks

The Australian documentary filmmaker Scott Millwood , who lives in Berlin , told Reuters in January 2011 that he had registered the GreenLeaks domain in 36 countries and under the top-level domains .com and .biz . The newly founded platform wants to focus on the issues of environmental and climate protection .

Because of the similar name, which has also been registered as a brand name, it is in a dispute with the Danish operators of the thematically identical and also newly founded website GreenLeaks.org , which also includes the Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir , a former activist of WikiLeaks. Both platforms are still under construction.

WAZ group

The research team from DerWesten.de , the news portal of the WAZ media group , is also mentioned in this context, since in December 2010 a GnuPG- secured option was set up to upload documents anonymously. However, it is not planned to publish them in principle, but primarily to serve as a basis for journalistic work, which, in addition to the commercial background, is a clear difference to other projects of the type described. David Schraven , the head of the research team, had previously been very critical of WikiLeaks. For security reasons, he only considers the publication of leaked documents to be a viable option if it does not endanger informants. After three months he drew a positive interim balance, but admitted that half of the material offered to him was "bullshit" that could not be used.

Wall Street Journal (discontinued)

In May 2011, the Wall Street Journal set up a portal called SafeHouse where documents can be uploaded anonymously. The hacker and WikiLeaks supporter Jacob Appelbaum immediately criticized aspects of technical security. The fact that the Wall Street Journal reserved the right to pass the information on to law enforcement agencies or third parties generated additional criticism. The portal has since been discontinued.

RuLeaks.net

At RuLeaks.net , a website operated in the context of the Russian Pirate Party , materials published by WikiLeaks that have a connection to Russia were initially distributed. In the meantime, however, photos have also been published that are related to the alleged misuse of donations.

Rospil.info

The lawyer and blogger Alexei Navalny , who works against corruption, opened the page rospil.info

AnonLeaks

Emerging from the Internet collective Anonymous , AnonLeaks published thousands of emails from HBGary Federal, which works for the US government , among others ; first via BitTorrent , later also on the Russian website anonleaks.ru . This was said to be a revenge for the company's CEO , Aaron Barr, attempting to expose "leading" (the collective is by definition leaderless ) members of Anonymous. As later also found out, the Bank of America and the US Chamber of Commerce had indirectly commissioned HBGary through the law firm Hunton & Williams to investigate the publications announced by Julian Assange on US banks or to discredit their credibility. However, both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America denied this. Data were there illegally by cracking the server procured infrastructure of HBGary. In a Twitter message, they announced that since Wikileaks was obviously having problems, they would set up their own disclosure platform . As a team, they name five people, but their names are only pseudonyms.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Marcel Rosenbach , Holger Stark : Public enemy WikiLeaks. How a group of net activists challenge the most powerful nations in the world. Pp. 55, 60f . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-421-04518-8 .
  2. a b c Zeit online, blog on January 25, 2011: The wave is rolling - Al Jazeera, GreenLeaks, New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2011 .
  3. ^ Spiegel online on September 25, 2010: Quarrels at the platform for disclosure. German Wikileaks spokesman goes into dispute. Retrieved January 30, 2011 .
  4. Aljazeera Transparency Unit: Is the submission secure? (engl.). (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 3, 2011 ; accessed on January 31, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ajtransparency.com
  5. Time online on January 24, 2011: How Israel gambled away the peace. The publication of the Middle East secret files is explosive - especially in a region in which secrecy is part of everyday diplomatic life. Retrieved January 31, 2011 .
  6. ^ Al Jazeera Transparency Unit: Search the Palestine Papers. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 29, 2011 ; accessed on January 31, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ajtransparency.com
  7. a b Meedia.de on December 16, 2010: Whistleblowing apart from Assange and Co. These are the Wikileaks alternatives. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved January 30, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / meedia.de  
  8. ^ A b Presseurop.eu on December 14, 1010: Brussels Leaks is looking for Europe's secrets. Retrieved January 31, 2011 .
  9. Homepage of BalkanLeaks (English). Archived from the original on December 11, 2010 ; accessed on January 31, 2011 .
  10. a b c d taz.de on March 7, 2011: The WAZ children from WikiLeaks: Half is spam. Retrieved March 9, 2011 .
  11. Financialpost.com on January 28, 2011: The next generation of WikiLeaks. Retrieved January 31, 2011 .
  12. Deutschlandfunk-Magazin on December 23, 2010: Petz-Netz. WAZ wants its own WikiLeaks. Retrieved January 31, 2011 .
  13. Der Westen.de on November 28, 2011: Wikileaks acts lightly - by D. Schraven. Retrieved January 31, 2011 .
  14. The Westen.de on September 29, 2010: David Schraven: The Microsoft lobbyist and WikiLeaks. Retrieved January 31, 2011 .
  15. Cicero Online, May 2011: The Wikileaks Revolution and How Copycats Fail. Retrieved May 15, 2011 .
  16. Golem .de on May 6, 2011: Online mailbox with limited anonymity. Retrieved May 15, 2011 .
  17. taz.de on February 15, 2011: A home for Putin? Retrieved March 9, 2011 .
  18. Russia today, January 24th, 2011: A blogger fights against corruption. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 28, 2011 ; Retrieved March 9, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / russland-heute.de
  19. ^ English Wikipedia on HBGary , accessed on February 12, 2011
  20. anonleaks.ru ( Memento of the original from February 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed February 12, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / anonleaks.ru
  21. Blog article on HBGary's AnonLeaks Hack , accessed on February 12, 2011
  22. ^ A b New York Times article from AnonLeaks Hack by HBGary, February 11, 2011, accessed February 12, 2011
  23. ^ Announcement by AnonymousIRC on Twitter about AnonLeaks , accessed on February 12, 2011
  24. Meet the team from anonleaks.ru ( Memento from February 14, 2011 in the web archive archive.today ), the members' places of residence are fictitious places e.g. B. from computer games , accessed on February 12, 2011