Leaking the Leakers’ Leakees

One of the worst parts of participating in a conspiracy is mankind’s deep-seated love of the trappings of conspiracies. The planning, the conspiring, the sneakiness all appeal greatly to many people, some of whom are to enamored of the stage-dressing they neglect to actually perform the play.

Then, too, there is the ages-old problem of ‘honour among thieves’; once you begin to “trust no-one”, it’s quite an easy thing indeed to start doubting your co-conspirators. Can you afford to take people at face value? Are motives best judged by actions, or words? Is the goal of the conspiracy all-important, or are the means to the end relevant?

These are all questions that prey on the minds of the cabalist, the cypherpunk, the activist. Like most questions in life, their answers are not simple, nor consistent, and rarely come pre-packaged for easy consumption. Some find enlightenment. Others find disillusion.

John Young at Cryptome has published the messages of the “restricted internal development mailinglist” of the people behind the WikiLeaks website, which has had some share of media attention in recent days. It’s interesting reading, particularly the bits about “fleecing” the CIA out of millions of dollars. Are they a “fraud”, as John states? Or just well-meaning activists with big dreams, quicksilver ethics, and a weakness for the trappings of black tradecraft? The DNS is mostly anonymous, and the site appears - for now - to be hosted with Google, via one of their “Google Apps” services. Whether they’ll eventually make good on any of their promises remains to be seen.

The general idea of the initiative seems like a good and noble one; it’s the motivations - and execution - that seem suspect. People-powered sites are fine and dandy, but a wiki format seems a poor choice for this undertaking, for too many reasons to list here.

Too, for a “first leak”, the supposed documents from Somalia seem a curious, and poor, choice. Why those papers? Aside from the back-page sort of topical interest, Somalia just isn’t a terribly fascinating subject, and the idea that these papers cast doubt on U.S. assertions about the actions of the Court would be far more believable had they originated - or purported to originate - outside Somalia. I don’t deny that our assertions are suspect - but you’d expect documents “leaked” from Somalia to suggest that, wouldn’t you? Were they Ethiopian, or Kenyan, or South African documents, they might be more believable; as-is they smell strongly of carefully-crafted disinformation crafted with a fairly clear agenda.

Supposedly, Wikileaks will show us more of their hand of cards in a month or three; until then, I’m eyeing them with a healthy dose of skepticism.

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