Conceptualizing and Reconceptualizing the Reporter’s Privilege in the Age of Wikileaks

The examination of the reporter’s privilege in light of WikiLeaks gives rise to several imperative questions. Could WikiLeaks claim a federal reporter’s privilege if the U.S. government were to ask it to disclose the sources of its documents? Does the current federal law on reporter’s privilege adequately address new media, such as WikiLeaks? And if not, how should the law evolve to sufficiently accommodate organizations like WikiLeaks? This Note seeks to answer these questions. First, this Note advocates that WikiLeaks would be able to claim the privilege under current federal law. Second, this Note concludes that the current law on the reporter’s privilege has not sufficiently evolved to account for entities like WikiLeaks. Third, this Note discusses policy proposals to address the current shortcomings and ultimately advocates for a qualified privilege, the scope of which is determined by the source’s expectations, where the reporter presents the source’s expectations in court on behalf of the source

The Struggle For Judicial Independence in Antebellum North Carolina: The Story of Two Judges

On January 17, 2007, the Wayback Machine’s software crawler captured wikileaks.org for the first time. The crawler’s act of harvesting and documenting the Web meta-stored a developing site for “untraceable mass document leaking”—all in the form of an “anonymous global avenue for disseminating documents,” to quote the archived representational image of the site (Wayback Machine, 2007, para. 6). The initial WikiLeaks captures, and there were additional sweeps stored during the following months, vividly illustrate how WikiLeaks gradually developed into a site of global attention. The WikiLeaks logo, with its blue-green hourglass, was, for example, graphically present from the start, and later headings at the right were “news,” “FAQ,” “support,” “press,” and “links”—the latter directing users to various network services for anonymous data publication as i2P.net or Tor. Interestingly, links to the initial press coverage on Wikileaks are kept—which is not always the case at Wayback Machine—and can still be accessed. Apparently, one of the first online articles to mention what the site was about stated: “a new internet initiative called WikiLeaks seeks to promote good government and democratization by enabling anonymous disclosure and publication of confidential government records”

Attacks by “Anonymous” WikiLeaks Proponents not Anonymous

On November 28, 2010, the world started watching the whistle blower website WikiLeaks to begin publishing part of the 250,000 US Embassy Diplomatic cables. These confidential cables provide an insight on U.S. international affairs from 274 different embassies, covering topics such as analysis of host countries and leaders and even requests for spying out United Nations leaders.\ud The release of these cables has caused reactions not only in the real world, but also on the Internet. In fact, a cyberwar started just before the initial release. Wikileaks has reported that their servers were experiencing distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). A DDoS attack consists of many computers trying to overload a server by firing a high number of requests, leading ultimately to service disruption. In this case, the goal was to avoid the release of the embassy cables.\ud After the initial cable release, several companies started severed ties with WikiLeaks. One of the first was Amazon.com, that removed the WikiLeaks web- site from their servers. Next, EveryDNS, a company in which the domain wikileaks.org was registered, dropped the domain entries from its servers. On December 4th, PayPal cancelled the account that WikiLeaks was using to receive on-line donations. On the 6th, Swiss bank PostFinance froze the WikiLeaks assets and Mastercard stopped receiving payments to the WikiLeaks account. Visa followed Mastercard on December 7th.\ud These reactions caused a group of Internet activists (or “hacktivists”) named Anonymous to start a retaliation against PostFinance, PayPay, MasterCard, Visa, Moneybrookers.com and Amazon.com, named “Operation Payback”. The retaliation was performed as DDoS attacks to the websites of those companies, disrupting their activities (except for the case of Amazon.com) for different periods of time.\ud The Anonymous group consists of volunteers that use a stress testing tool to perform the attacks. This tool, named LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon), can be found both as a desktop application and as a Web page.\ud Even though the group behind the attacks claims to be anonymous, the tools they provide do not offer any security services, such as anonymization. As a consequence, a hacktivist that volunteers to take part in such attacks, can be traced back easily. This is the case for both current versions of the LOIC tool. Therefore, the goal of this report is to present an analysis of privacy issues in the context of these attacks, and raise awareness on the risks of taking part in them

Hugo Claude Horack, 1877-1958

Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka ifall och om så även hur Wikileaks och Julian Assange porträtteras före och efter de våldtäktsanklagelser mot Assange som offentliggjordes i augusti 2010. I den diskursanalys som genomförs granskas sex nyhetsartiklar som valts ut efter bestämda tidsaspekter men i övrigt slumpmässigt. Artiklarna har publicerats i Dagens Nyheter och släppts från TT. Analysen bygger delvis på en ram lagd av teoretikerna Ernesto Laclau och Chantal Mouffe, och på teori och metodik beskriven av Norman Fairclough, och som handlar om att sätta diskursiva praktiker i samband med social och kulturell utveckling. Analysen är komparativ och fokuserar på det retoriskt diskursiva. Undersökningen visar att det finns en diskrepans mellan språkbruket i de artiklar som publicerats innan 2010 och de som publicerats efter tidpunkten. Det visar sig också vara så att Julian Assange och Wikileaks kopplas samman i större utsträckning före och efter 2010. Den största förändringen i språkvalet är ett större ifrågasättande av trovärdighet och motiv för materialsläpp vad gäller Wikileaks, som går parallellt med en beskrivning av Assange som blir allt mer opersonlig efter 2010. Organisationen fortsätter att vara en källa för DN och TT men i synnerhet deras motiv och trovärdighet ifrågasätts

Wikileaks and the limits of protocol

In this chapter, I reflect on Wikileaks and its use of technology to achieve freedom in capitalist society. Wikileaks represents an avant-garde form of media (i.e. networked, cryptographic), with traditional democratic values: opposing power and seeking the truth. At times, http://wikileaks.org appears broken and half abandoned and at other times, it is clearly operating beyond the level of government efficiency and military intelligence. It has received both high acclaim and severe criticism from human rights organisations, the mainstream media and governments. It is a really existing threat to traditional forms of power and control yet, I suggest, it is fundamentally restrained by liberal ideology of freedom and democracy and the protocological limits of cybernetic capitalism

Vigilados. WikiLeaks o las nuevas fronteras de la información

Vigilados. WikiLeaks o las nuevas fronteras de la información, es fruto del proyecto de Investigación I+D «El fenómeno WikiLeaks en España: un análisis semiótico y mediológico», con Jorge Lozano Hernández como investigador principal del grupo. No obstante, esta obra ha recogido la participación de múltiples autores que investigan sobre el fenómeno de WikiLeaks, sin pertenecer necesariamente al proyecto, que consiguen configurar una perspectiva holística del fenómeno. Además, también incorpora un anexo con la versión completa de Asesinato Colateral1, el primer video publicado en 2010 por WikiLeaks que saltó a los medios de comunicación tradicionales.

Wikileaks: A paradigm shift?

Este artículo realiza un análisis mediológico de Wikileaks a partir de algunos conceptos clásicos de la Comunicación: transparencia, visibilidad, secreto, rumor, sospecha, líder de opinión, público y privado, sobreinformación. Del mismo modo, se describe qué se suponía que cambiaba inicialmente con Wikileaks, qué ha cambiado con Wikileaks y qué puede cambiar con Wikileaks.This article provides a mediological analysis ofWikileaks from some classical concepts of the Theory of Communication: transparency, visibility, secrecy, whisper, suspicion, opinion leaders, public and private, over-information. Similarly, it describes what was initially supposed to change with Wikileaks, what has changed with Wikileaks and what may change with Wikileaks

Wikileaks: A paradigm shift?

Este artículo realiza un análisis mediológico de Wikileaks a partir de algunos conceptos clásicos de la Comunicación: transparencia, visibilidad, secreto, rumor, sospecha, líder de opinión, público y privado, sobreinformación. Del mismo modo, se describe qué se suponía que cambiaba inicialmente con Wikileaks, qué ha cambiado con Wikileaks y qué puede cambiar con Wikileaks.This article provides a mediological analysis ofWikileaks from some classical concepts of the Theory of Communication: transparency, visibility, secrecy, whisper, suspicion, opinion leaders, public and private, over-information. Similarly, it describes what was initially supposed to change with Wikileaks, what has changed with Wikileaks and what may change with Wikileaks.Este trabajo se presenta dentro del proyecto de investigación I+D El fenómeno wikileaks en España: un analisis semiotico y mediologico, dirigido por Jorge Lozano Hernández (referencia CSO2011-23315)Publicad

The Rhetorical Algorithm: WikiLeaks and the Elliptical Secrets of Donald J. Trump

Algorithms were a generative force behind many of the leaks and secrets that dominated the 2016 election season. Taking the form of the identity-anonymizing Tor software that protected the identity of leakers, mathematical protocols occupied a prominent place in the secrets generated during the presidential campaign. This essay suggests that the rhetorical trope of ellipsis offers an equally crucial, algorithmic formula for explaining the public production of these secrets and leaks. It then describes the 2016 DNC leak and Donald Trump’s “I love Wikileaks” moment using the trope of ellipsis, which marks a discursive omission or gap in official executive discourse