Thread:Comments:Interpol orders arrest of Wikileaks founder to face rape charges/Comments from feedback form - "courage julian!"/reply (3)

There was a story on BoingBoing about Assange's philosophy. His idea is to make a "leaky" environment in order to discourage unjust conspiracies - roughly, any group who wishes to work in secret, and against the best interests of society as a whole. (Apparently, Assange is anarchist enough to consider the Democratic and Republican parties conspiracies. Moral of the story: Watergate would have been cool if the robbers had leaked the info to the press instead of Nixon...) In order to prevent leaks, 'conspiracies' will have to control internal dissemination of information in ways that will prevent the conspiracy from acting effectively. So Assange's goal isn't to expose any particular conspiracy, but to expose all secrets that are reported to wikileaks. AFAIK, the only control on what gets leaked is whether some member of a conspiracy is willing to rat the conspiracy out.

The down side is that not all 'conspiracies' are bad. (For example, the conspiracy to allow diplomats to give a honest appraisal to their bosses of the people they have to work constructively with. Boss needs to know the guy is an idiot, but you still have to work with the idiot.) Just because you're trying to work in secret, it doesn't follow that you're acting unjustly, just that you might have enemies who might try to disrupt your organization. What the existence of Wikileaks does is give all trusted members of a conspiracy a veto over the conspiracy - something that might appeal to anarchists.

If the rape thing is a state attack against Assange over wikileaks, then that is a rather shortsighted reaction. (Paypal pulling out might just be the result of legal inertia, the DDoS from freelance idiots.) Making Assange/wikileaks a martyr will just spread the idea. Cracking down on all sites like wikileaks would have to make a mockery of the freedom of speech in order to work. A more effective solution might be to engage in a massive disinformation campaign - flood wikileaks with an overload of plausible bullshit. People would have to sort out what is true in order to find out the stuff you want to keep secret.