{"id":93274,"date":"2011-05-12T13:37:37","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T13:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=5304"},"modified":"2017-07-21T17:09:36","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T16:09:36","slug":"wikileaks-not-so-simple-to-replicate-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93274","title":{"rendered":"WikiLeaks not so simple to replicate after all"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal last Thursday announced with great fanfare a WikiLeaks clone of its own, an ostensibly secure online drop box for anonymously leaked documents called SafeHouse<\/a>. The unveiling offered confirmation that US mainstream media outlets \u2013\u00a0although they have often publicly scorned WikiLeaks<\/a> \u2013\u00a0must surely be wishing they had thought of the idea on their own.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, though, imitating the whistle-blowing site may prove even harder than working with it<\/a>. The Journal’s announcement had barely made the rounds of Twitter before online security experts were poking holes in its pledges of security and anonymity.<\/p>\n

The site is “rife with amateur security flaws<\/a>,” tweeted journalist Barton Gellman.<\/p>\n

“Here’s a blatant lie by WSJ<\/a>: ‘You can be anonymous by not providing your name and contact information on this page,'” appraised web developer (and former WikiLeaks volunteer) Jacob Appelbaum.<\/p>\n

Popular culture blog Gawker offered this curt advice in a headline: “Don\u2019t Leak to the Wall Street Journal\u2019s New Wikileaks Knockoff<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Gawker was among many critics to point not only to the technical flaws in SafeHouse’s construction, but also the fishy legal language in its fine print<\/a>. There is, for instance, this bit:<\/p>\n

“Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement\u2026 we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and\/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, immediately responded with non-legally-binding promises that it values its sources<\/a> above all else, and with pledges to clean up the encryption problems <\/a>immediately. None of that, though, could give much confidence to would-be leakers who’ve seen how the US government now handles whistle-blowers who’ve lost control of their anonymity.<\/p>\n

\u201cSafeHouse’s only real similarity to Wikileaks,” summed up Gawker, “is that both benefit megalomaniacal Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Badger<\/strong>: WikiLeaks not so simple to replicate after all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":530,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883,1],"tags":[14209,455,273],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/530"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94564,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93274\/revisions\/94564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}