http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/05

baroug @baroug 6/02/2011

How pioneering #WikiLeaks collaboration ended in distrust and legal threats | Ian Katz | Media | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/05/wikileaks-collaboration-distrust-legal-threats
Communication with Julian Assange himself was an even more cloak and dagger affair. After Swedish prosecutors sought an arrest warrant for him, he was reachable only via encrypted chat – and typically only late at night or in the small hours of the morning. These exchanges took on a Jason Bourne-ish quality: once he upbraided the Guardian for releasing too much data about the cables because he had been acquiring “good intel” as American diplomats went around the world, apologising for every slight they feared might be in the cache. (He was right: it turns out the US warned Downing Street about several infelicitous cables that WikiLeaks never had.)
Another time Assange announced, apropos of nothing in particular, that his lawyers were “being constantly surveilled (human)”. When a number of cables popped up on a Lebanese newspaper website, he had several theories involving foreign intelligence agencies, although the newspaper partners thought it more likely that WikiLeaks had sprung a leak.
Despite the slight air of paranoia, Assange came across as ferociously intelligent, with a control freak’s mastery of detail and an infectious enthusiasm for his information insurgency. Sometimes he would interrupt a conversation to rhapsodise about a particular cable. At times he had the detached air of a chess grandmaster playing a dozen games at once – later I found out that’s because he was usually conducting numerous different chats simultaneously.
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baroug @baroug 5/02/2011

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The #WikiLeaks cables reveal much less than the Pentagon Papers | Michael Burleigh | Media | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/05/wikileaks-cables-pentagon-papers
Moreover, the WikiLeaks documents merely provide a small window into US foreign policy at a certain, necessarily gossipy, level. They are interesting, but about as reliable as hearsay evidence in court about a stabbing in a packed nightclub.
baroug @baroug
- Nidal @nidal CC BY 6/02/2011
  
  Arg c’est archi-mauvais. Je ne sais pas ce que c’est que cette campagne que lance le Guardian contre Wikileaks, m’enfin c’est mauvais.
  Le type nous ressort le poncif : y’a rien dedans qu’on ne savait déjà, et en plus y’a rien dedans qu’on ne savait déjà. (En précisant que, vraiment, ça ne nous apprend rien qu’on ne savait déjà, hein.)
  Ah si, un argument (débilissime) supplémentaire :
  Other scholars lament the effect WikiLeaks will have on future generations of historians. Most obviously, anything of a sensitive nature – such as the Saudis saying they will switch off their radars if Israel bombs Iran – will be passed on by word of mouth or on the telephone. Unless Julian Assange stations lip-readers in Washington’s Mall or St James’s Park, and hires people capable of intercepting encrypted satellite phone calls, historians will be bereft of that type of information for all time, for it will not be written down.
  Donc y’a rien dans les cablegate, mais désormais, à cause d’eux, les diplomates vont cesser d’écrire des choses inintéressantes par écrit, de peur que ce qu’ils écrivent d’inintéressant et de non compromettant ne sorte dans la presse.
  Mine de rien, c’est un historien qui décide aujourd’hui des documents qui seront utiles ou non les historiens de demain.
  
  Nidal @nidal CC BY
- baroug @baroug 6/02/2011
  
  Je parlerais pas de campagne — ils publient différents points de vue ►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/05/traditional-papers-wikileaks-arianna-huffington — mais eux mêmes évoquent une « froideur » :
  “The froideur between Assange and the Guardian is disappointing because, in so many ways, the collaboration over the leaked war logs and embassy cables was a model of what traditional media and the new breed of digital subversive can achieve together. Assange brought a trove of raw data and a considerable degree of savviness about how to work with vast, complex databases – and, not insignificantly, the ability to publish outside the reach of any individual jurisdiction. The Guardian and other media partners brought the old-fashioned journalistic skills and deep expertise required to figure out what mattered – and the resources (some 40 Guardian reporters worked on the cables alone) and commitment to deal with highly sensitive material responsibly.”
  ►http://seenthis.net/messages/8314
  
  baroug @baroug
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