Tag Archives: leaked documents

WSJ: Human rights groups join criticism of WikiLeaks

A coalition of human rights groups including Amnesty International have reportedly put pressure on WikiLeaks to “do a better job” of redacting the names of sources from military documents it has published, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

Amnesty International, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, Open Society Institute, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Kabul office of International Crisis Group are all alleged to have emailed the whistleblowing website with their concerns over the safety of Afghan informers.

According to the report, Wikileaks director Julian Assange asked Amnesty if it would assist redacting the names of Afghan civilians, and threatened to issue a press release highlighting a refusal to do so.

The exchange follows reports last week that the Pentagon demanded WikiLeaks remove all the documents from public access online and desist from publishing any more material.

See the Wall Street Journal report here…

NYT: What would Daniel Ellsberg have done with Pentagon Papers if Wikileaks had existed?

Now that it is relatively simple for anyone in possession of leaked documents to publish them directly to the internet, is there any reason to pass them on to a national newspaper?

With the viral advantages of internet publishing and social networking, can dedicated sites such as Wikileaks – which made a huge impact two weeks ago with the release of a classified military video showing the killing of civilians in Baghdad by a United States Apache Gunship – replace mainstream news organisations as the place to take leaked information?

Noam Cohen of the New York Times casts an eye back at the case of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, and asks how it might unravel differently today.

[I]f someone today had the Pentagon Papers, or the modern equivalent, would he still go to the press, as Daniel Ellsberg did nearly 40 years ago and wait for the documents to be analysed and published? Or would that person simply post them online immediately?

Full story at this link…