Wikileaks as a wikipedia-style website for whistleblowers

Whistleblowers go all Wikipedia and the day the internet almost broke
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Whistleblowers go all Wilipedia and the day the internet almost broke
by Mark Sweney
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday February 7, 2007



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A Wikipedia-style website set up to encourage anonymous whistleblowers to air secrets has itself been exposed before launch.
The website, called Wikileaks, has high goals and aims to be, according to a mission statement on its website, to be "an uncensorable Wikipedia".
"Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their own governments and corporations," the statement continues.
The grand aim is for Wikileaks to be an "anonymous global avenue" for disseminating documents the public should see.
Once upon a time this was perhaps the sole preserve of newspapers and TV.
Now, however, Wikileaks aims to "open leaked documents to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide".
The internet almost crashed yesterday, well sort of.
Hackers, identified as possibly residing in South Korea, briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic.
Associated Press seems to have jumped on this first labeling it one of the most significant attacks against the internet since 2002.
AP spoke to a range of boffins about this with the impressive sounding Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputing Centre saying that it was perhaps done to "show off or be disruptive".
The servers involved were each operated by a separate body - the US Defense Department, the net's oversight body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and UltraDNS, which manages traffic for websites ending in ".org" and some other suffixes.
While significant, the "unusually powerful attacks", which lasted as long as 12 hours, passed "largely unnoticed" because the internet is pretty resilient these days.
The hunt is still on for the perpertrators.
Gmail to be opened and go mobile in the UK
Google is to open its email service Googlemail to all users globally and is launching a mobile version for the UK.
Google's Gmail service - called Googlemail in the UK and Germany due to a trademark dispute - has previously only been invite-only.
This has dramatically hampered the potential growth of the email service, which isn't too bad at all, and its user base is miniscule compared to user numbers on Yahoo! and Microsoft email.
After search, email is the second most popular activity on the internet, says Google, and they want to have more of a presence.
Google is also launching a new downloadable Gmail for mobile application for UK users.
It is synchronised with the web-based email service and will allow similar functionality such as archiving, reading, replying and searching through emails.
Google/MySpace ad deal hampered by eBay involvement
The final rubber stamping of Google's $900m deal with MySpace has run into one final speed bump - eBay, says WSJ.
MySpace has been talking to eBay about "peer commerce" allowing users to sell to each other using eBay's PayPal technology.
Google isn't likely to be a fan of such a deal as it has spent the last 18 months launching all sorts of eBay-competitive products such as Google Checkout (versus PayPal) and Base (an auction platform).
Remember last year eBay replaced Google with Yahoo! as its search and advertising partner in the US with analysts citing the search engine's competitive products as a probable cause. http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/comment/0,,1862412,00.html
Still, Google and eBay subsequently made up with a renewal of its non-US international ads and search deal.
The Google/MySpace deal is unlikely to be seriously affected by the latest fracas.
A Yellow Submarine iPod?
Now that Apple and the Beatles are best friends speculation is running rife over where the partnership might go.
The latest, speculated in Wired, is that a Yellow Submarine-branded iPod will be unveiled around Valentine's day complete with pre-loaded tracks.
Last.fm strikes deal with Warner Music, its first major media partnership
Warner Music has signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played over the music fan social networking music service Last.fm.
The music will be made available via Last.fm's free, advertising-supported radio streaming service and its soon-to-be released premium, subscription-based interactive radio.
Last.fm links fans with new and old music with a recommendation service that tracks a listener's music-playing habits and automatically linking them to fans with similar tastes.
Conde Nast gets into teen social networking
Magazine publisher Conde Nast has furthered its reach into the social networking space with the launch of teen girl-targeted Flip, says TechCrunch
The tech website speculates why Flip has opted, in the age of fears over online security, to be freely searchable and browsable.
The security conscious invite-only model of young teen targeted Piczo seemed a more obvious security conscious choice.

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