Almost exactly a year ago I spoke via email with ex-WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg. He and the four or five others who'd defected from WikiLeaks in September of 2010 were already at work on OpenLeaks, a successor organization with the same basic goal: to maintain a secure platform where sensitive documents of interest to the public can be uploaded by whistleblowers and anonymously distributed to the press.

Now OpenLeaks is just about ready to launch. Domscheit-Berg gave a presentation on the project some days ago at the Share 2 conference in Belgrade, and I just had to get over there to hear it. (I don't know! All [...]

With all the hoopla that seems eternally to surround WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, one might easily have formed the impression that WikiLeaks is a thriving concern, and that Assange himself is still the world's most powerful and effective champion of press freedom. While it's true that WikiLeaks has accomplished great things, initiating a powerful worldwide movement toward transparency and free speech, a closer look reveals that recent defections have badly crippled the WikiLeaks organization and that the increasingly erratic, mercurial Assange may have shot his bolt. The defectors have moved on and are developing a successor site, OpenLeaks, which seems likely to take up where WikiLeaks left off.

To coincide with fashion week, Wikileaks has released a series of encrypted cables and classified internal memos from the fashion industry. This is an exclusive advance excerpt of their forthcoming massive data dump—sure to shake the community to its core.

SUMMARY: Our asset [codename: WESKIT] in XXXXXX’s atelier reports that the regime continues to crumble. The rumor we planted on Twitter that the next collection will be a “Jersey Chic” tribute to Snooki [...]

As anybody who has read a John le Carré novel knows, the spooks, many of whom work with or as diplomats, are in the habit of putting false information about in order to achieve this or that noble or nefarious end. Which raises a number of subtle questions regarding the recent WikiLeaks cable disclosures: how much of this stuff is exaggerated or untrue? Is it even possible to untangle the web of deceit and counter-deceit (and incompetence and foolishness) woven by our diplomats and their masters? Exactly what methods are El Pais, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, the New York Times and the Guardian—the newspapers called on to vet [...]

We did not much talk about the latest WikiLeaks document dump yesterday, mainly because I am not really sure what to say. As Tom Scocca puts it, "Which side is one supposed to be on? It is wrong for Wikileaks to have disclosed this, because the intelligence-gathering program was sensitive and secret government information. The Wikileaks disclosure is newsworthy because it is wrong for the government to have a program gathering people's sensitive and secret information. Either way, somebody's data gets mined, though, doesn't it?" But there are plenty of other voices in the debate, including (I'm guessing) Sarah Palin's. It's tough to sort out. Still, apart from [...]

“It will be difficult to keep anger out of this account, owing to the sheer level of malice and opportunism that have driven the case against me, but I want to make this argument as much as possible in a spirit of understanding.” —Huge drama queen Julian Assange dramatically loses fight to suppress dramatic memoir, which arrives tomorrow. He apparently writes like a really gay Charles Dickens. ("I wasn’t a reliable boyfriend, or even a very courteous sleeping partner, and this began to figure.") Sounds sort of like a half-assed Trollope, right?

The shameful tale of Pfc. Bradley Manning recently took a new and horrible turn. Owing to the caprices of Quantico Chief Warrant Officer Denise Barnes, Manning is now being made to sleep naked and, in the morning, to stand naked for morning roll call. This, according to Marine Corps spokesperson Brian Villiard, is for Manning's own protection.

Why are the Marine Corps authorities at Quantico prison, not content with keeping Manning in conditions of near-solitary confinement and POI ("prevention of injury"), now suddenly demanding the naked thing, as well? You are not going to believe why.

According to the blog of Manning's defense attorney, David E. Coombs, Manning [...]

Julian Assange appeared last night on 60 Minutes to defend himself and his organization, WikiLeaks. He was interviewed by Steve Kroft, who made some amazingly dopey remarks for a press honcho.

Kroft: Do you want me to give you my characterization of what I think people think?

[No! we yelled at the television.]

Assange: Sure.

Kroft: Mysterious. Little weird. A cult-like figure. Little paranoid.

Kroft's heavy-handed, old-white-guy shtick created something of an unsympathetic or "hard-hitting" impression, but it's clear from the resulting program that the show's producers were very sympathetic to Assange and his cause.

Right now, people are demonstrating outside a British court, where Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange will most likely receive bail and a court date, according to the American papers, or, according to the English papers, he will enter the European fast-tracked extradition system. Assange turned himself in early this morning local time on Swedish charges, described by the (British) police as "one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010." One interesting thing to note, according to the Guardian: "If extradited to Sweden under the European Arrest Warrant—a process which could [...]

If you're going to spend the day digging in on the just-released 75,000+ reports from the U.S. military provided by Wikileaks, and why shouldn't you, you should start with their mirror site, as their main site has gone down due to massive, crushing fascination. But first! It's time to learn the Afghan base acronym list and figure out who's all fighting whom. Here are a few other ways to dip your toe in: what the data reveals about reconnaissance drones; how they show that "the Pakistani military has acted as both ally and enemy"; and, that old chestnut, where in the world is Osama [...]

"I can confidently say that, while visiting Mr. Domscheit-Berg in Wiesbaden, I was able to meet and observe his cat."

No, this isn't dialogue from a newly discovered Firbank novel. Rather, it's a salvo in the escalating battle between Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his erstwhile colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg, whose new site OpenLeaks is on the verge of launching. In fact, the imminent arrival of OpenLeaks may well explain why the Assange camp suddenly seems to be turning on the heat—the last week has seen an escalation in attacks against Domscheit-Berg on hacker blogs, Twitter and elsewhere, and a corresponding uptick in pro-Assange messaging, including appeals for the exoneration [...]

The Army has charged Bradley Manning with 22 counts, among them theft, fraud and most importantly, "aiding and giving intelligence to the enemy," by way of providing military information to Wikileaks. Manning is suspected, or said to be, the source not only for the leaked diplomatic cables but also for footage of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been held at Quantico since July of last year. (His mental health evaluation will supposedly be complete sometime in the next month, with a pre-trial hearing perhaps in May, and a trial mid-July, at his defense's request.)

One charge is "wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet [...]

There is so much gold still to be had in the WikiLeaks cables. Such as this, found today: "Embassy officers do not reach out to [Allen] Stanford because of the allegations of bribery and money laundering"—from May, 2006. Stanford, you'll recall, is allegedly the ringleader of the world's largest Ponzi scheme (largest, to be fair, only after a number of religions and several "personal training and development" forums). Stanford, by the way, is getting screened by a state shrink today, as his attorney claims Stanford is "too heavily medicated to assist in his own defense." Well, hmm, tough one, maybe… someone should cut back on his medication?

This is something we all should probably read to be more informed world citizens? It is on the state of Russia's operations against Georgia since 2004. It's remarkable how far everyone in power is willing to go to claim that oh gosh no, Russia has never had anything but super-warm feelings and a total lack of pipeline bombings towards its Georgian friends. Ta da! Wikileaks! Definitely good for something! (Also here is a primer on where and what Abkhazia is, for those of us who can never tell Khujand from Bishkek.)

The riveting Bradley Manning affair has been flawlessly covered by Glenn Greenwald-but Greenwald appears to have missed the most glaring point regarding the man known as Adrian Lamo. Namely, his real identity. (To play along, here's the background in three easy sentences: Bradley Manning, an Army analyst, was charged this month with distributing classified data to Wikileaks, including video that showed the killing of civilians in Baghdad and, allegedly, a bombing that killed "scores of children" in Afghanistan. Manning allegedly told this to journalist Adrian Lamo, who promptly handed over his IM chat logs with Manning to the feds, believing that "lives were in danger." Meanwhile, [...]