Former Wikileaks Employees Launching OpenLeaks

Julian Assange's former number two, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, has announced plans to start a rival anonymous document-based whistleblowing website called OpenLeaks.

According to this article from The Australian, Domscheit-Berg was upset by the increasingly authoritarian organization at Wikileaks (Assange was Dictator for Life) and the emerging role of Wikileaks as an antagonist of the United States rather than an advocate for global transparency.

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The BBC reports that the new site, OpenLeaks, will leave more editorial decisions to newspapers and other organizations.

Unlike Wikileaks, Openleaks will not publish or verify material; leaving that role to newspapers, "NGOs, labour unions and other interested entities".

"We are trying to build a community of various organisations that need or have use for anonymously submitted information," former Wikileaks member Herbert Snorrason told the BBC.

Mr Domscheit-Berg, said the decision to be a "conduit" rather than publisher was made because of the team's experience at Wikileaks.

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This seems like a much more responsible approach. Newspapers have an institutional history of making difficult decisions that weigh sensitive information against the public interest. Assange, on the other hand, is one guy playing Editor-in-Chief of everything.