Wikileaks contact info?

Bitcoins could be really useful to them. Good idea.
I don't know the answer to your question though, sorry.

Yeah this may be good for wikileaks, but not nocessarily good for Bitcoin. If bitcoin becomes publicly associated with wikileaks before going semi-mainstream, then it will be viewed by the "ruling class" (read: US government) as a tool for doing money laundering and another "gray" buisnesses.

This may make bitcoin be considered by governments as a serious threat, and they will start fighting it too soon, holding back mainstream adoption.

Of course i know that they (governments) will start fighting bitcoin at some point, but the later, the better. If we go mainstream first, then such efforts will be probably futile, and BTC will probably be unstoppable without shutting down whole internet.

By your logic the USA should forbid money.  At least on paper and metal, a lot of currencies, and money transfers to uncontrollable countries like Bermuda and Switzerland.  Perhaps go completely communist.  On a worldwide basis porn and gambling is a lot more controversial than Wikileaks.  Only China and Thailand censor Wikileaks.  A lot more countries censor porn and gambling sites.  I don't think this will make the US government blink.

I hope you're right.


Well, they already claim that something like "exchanging information about whereabouts of data" (BitTorrent sites) is illegal, so why not this ? I see no large difference.

Exchanging information about the whereabouts of data is not illegal anywhere, as long as the data is legally acquired and distributed.  It's very much the same with any goods.

Bitcoin makes it possible to secede from government. They dont like it when the slaves do that.

Actually, if i tell you that "there is money in the safe of bank XXX", that is information about whereabouts too.
The same if I tell you that there is some heroin (which is itself illegal) in the police storage facitilities.

And all that informations are legal, the same as bittorrent should be legal, because it is only information about whereabouts of other information, which logically should be NEVER illegal.
But the governments together with media industry are trying hard to make BitTorrent (and all P2P in gerneral) illegal, in spite of obvious idiocy of such doing.

if they gonna fight it anyway, isn't it better the sooner they do?
or do you want to invest (time/money/effort) into it first and have them fight it later?

The later the better.  The longer that governments wait to act, the stronger the bitcoin network grows, and the harder it becomes to harm it.

I love this idea. Know that Julian Assange (the founder and head of Wikileaks) was a former Free Software programmer and wrote lots of cryptographic tools. He is very knowledgeable in this area himself and will understand Bitcoin technically.

Eh. Wikileaks is almost certainly run by the CIA anyway. I doubt they'll be interested.

They can't shoot bitcoin or bittorrent itself, but they can discourage big buisnesses from accepting bitcoin. And that can easily hold mainstream adoption even for tens of years.
They (governments) are very good in this particularly. Large companies such as Google, Microsoft, Wal-mart etc are very susceptible to government regulations.

There is nothing to be audited as far as an academic cryptographer would be concerned. For that to happen, the specification of Bitcoin would have to be of better quality. That needs to happen first and only when that is done, there is a chance someone will want to take a serious look.

Only the author or a volunteer could publish a specification of sufficient quality. It's not acceptable as a Master thesis subject on a respectable university, because there is no research involved, it's just "work". The "coolness" factor is of no interest there.

Satoshi's paper is a good introduction I'd think.

And another thing, I'm not sure about academic cryptographers, but in the 'real world' security auditing is regularly done on source code, or sometimes even without source code (either by reverse engineering or black box testing).

Currently all intelligence services are working to smash wikileaks. I would not want to suddenly posthumously come into Al-Qaeda.

As the cables were published, the White House released a statement condemning their release. "Such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals."

Apparently someone did a massive ddos against wikileaks today.

In more inspiring news operation payback took down the warner bros website for a few hours and ifpi.org is currently unreachable. 

The cable leak has been turned into a torrent file and is currently being mirrored on thousands of servers all over the world. The pirate bay's entire torrent database is available as a torrent you could fit on a 32gb flash drive.

All in all what has the government accomplished except to tread on an ants nest. 

Gotcha. It's just a difference of emphasis, really.

I believe very strongly that a successful effort to supplant state money is going to be a ground-up effort. The big players in today's pink economy are going to be the last to adapt, kicking and screaming, to the new economic reality. For years before that happens, though, individuals, sole traders and small enterprises are going to be taking more and more of their income away as, simultaneously, a) the new monetary system's benefits impact more and more people, b) the inevitable institutional dumbness of big organizations makes them stumble and lag, and, c) continually eroding confidence in the state, its institutions and the entities that rely upon them drives more and more people into the new economy.

If you're reading this, you're part of the vanguard building the new economy and the new world. Mainstream acceptance will come by weight of numbers and via network effects. Who ever heard of Wikileaks or Twitter four years ago? And today we've got Admiral Chairman-of-the-Joint-Fucking-Chiefs Mullen tweeting his dismay over Wikileaks -- no doubt via the intermediation of an office full of PR analysts and bureaucrats, at extremely low relative impact.

BTW, Shadow, when they shut down the internet, I know how to build a new one. Want to help?

I like that idea of Yours, however what i don't like about it is the amount of time it needs to become reality.
However i guess we don't have any choice, as the "old economy" will never adapt - I concede with you there. Bankers & other people who gain from the current system will never resign of their false fraudulent dream world, unless it totally collapses itself first.


No need for that, they cannot really "shut down the internet". They would have to take all the physical equipment away from people - Linux servers, routers, switches, wires, cables etc. And that is not possible at all without some major disaster (nuclear war or something).

They cannot take our equipment from us, and with the equipment geeks will quickly build a new internet from the scratch. It's just a matter of little rewiring & changing configuration. Not so difficult as one would think.

Come on, kill a few people to save tens or hundreds? Trifling matter, since all countries do.


Again, remember the tortures at Guantanamo? The end justifies the means. Nobody stops reckon with the U.S. due to a couple of dead geeks.

Sad but true.

But the pain in the ass it inflicts with the exponential progression.


File without the key is garbage. State can find out who have the key and find out what conditions it will be published.

Humane russian offer to torture a few people. Angry american are ready to unleash a nuclear war.

Well, who is the devil?

No, I brought the murder as an example. In this case, nobody should be killed.

They need just threat of torture. Then the confiscation of computers, information, check sources, searches and arrests. And it's over.

Maybe somebody should sell robots that record activities of government agents for bitcoins.


We could have...

"YOUR LITTLE BROTHERS ARE WATCHING YOU!"

Plus, camera tend to prevent abuse of authority by policemen.

Surely a lot of people have the key.

Good luck finding them on TOR or freenet.
(FYI: TOR is completely untrackable when connecting from one TOR node, to another TOR node, contrary to connecting to/from "normal internet" from/to TOR).

In Soviet Russia, coin bit you!

(sorry)

They forget that they can be tortured too.

 

Sorry.   Did we ever find any contact information for Wikileaks, other than their postal mailbox....?

I've added Wikileaks to our "target list" on BitcoinPromote.com

Where? Freenode?

They run there own anonymous IRC server.
chat.wikileaks.org port 9999 i think or the secure one.

Can you explain the purpose of going into the streets? A minority will only go into the streets. Even if a majority would go into the streets (which has never happened before, AFAIK), the government will simply state that it was a minority.

Before the government had good riot control weapons demonstrations had the option of escalating and actually overthrowing the government in the worst case. That simply is not the case anymore. People have no weapons and are literally without power.

The same money they pay in taxes will get them killed if they oppose the government too much.

When will all these tuition strikers learn about Wikiversity?

Young man, you seriously overestimate the power of an unpopular government.  The greatest tool of control available to any government is the meme that the government represents the will of the people, followed closely by the meme that the government's collective force exceeds that of those who would oppose it.  Vary rarely has either of those conditions actually been proven true once put to the test.

Mostly, but not quite.  Rallies also help to combat the first meme that I mentioned above by dispelling the belief that those who quietly oppose the ruling class are part of a impotently small minority. 

I already said that there was a time in which demonstrations could have consequences for those in power. That time is over.

Another example: look at the nuclear waste transports through Germany. It took 75 hours to travel a distance which should be more like 10 hours or so. The only thing which was displayed is that there are a lot of people that don't like nuclear waste, but the objective of the government was still achieved.

Well, those are prisoners taken in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It would be different with a citizen of our own country.

I know I'm neither. But if the U.S. went kidnapping people here and then torturing them, we'd be very shocked.

Ok, I agree: torturing of dirty afghans is ok, but australians is savagery.

If you want to die against military trained killers, good luck with that.

What you need to do is:

1. Undermine their credibility.
2. Reduce dependence on the state.
3. Increase your credibility.

Rebellions will likely be crushed. Even if you succeed, a power-hungry demagogue will rise to power and make your life even worser. Don't count on it.

Willingness to die is not the same thing that die.

I feel a disturbance in the force...

Is it a revolution coming ?

Talk to one of the members on the board of directors who has met with Julian he said he likes the idea and will pass it around.

It would be awesome.

Paypal just blocked them, and they're trying to get other US banks do the same. This would be a great moment to open bitcoin donations.

One thing I have learned in this community:

You can't prevent bitcoiners from doing whatever they want. They throw caution to the wind.

Great danger? But wait, isn't bitcoin invincible?! (Well, perhaps if it adopts random ports, protocol obfuscation, DHT bootstrapping...)

+1, I agree completely

We know that private and government forces are actively tracing, and trying to shut down, sources of wikileaks funding through all available means of pressure.

Does it make sense to actively give multiple world governments incentive to shut down bitcoin?

No matter how symathetic wikileaks' cause...  if you care about bitcoin's success, the answer is no.

That is exactly the issue.

I am so worried about the intent behind this wikileaks thread that, if i could, would only want to have "legallysafe" bitcoins in my wallet that are not connected to wikileaks or any other illegal matter.
those who want to play this aggressive game against governments can do it, but i dont want to be connected to that.

There is nothing wrong with revealing the truth (i.e. from Wikileaks. In this respect, I like a lot the concept behind Wikileaks).

All I am saying is that it is suicide for bitcoins to connect with Wikileaks today, where many big powers are against.

The time is not ripe yet.


It's like a runner who wants to run a marathon. He better trains a bit before trying.

In any case, I think this is the happiest opportunity that happens in any very successful project

This is a very good point.

"PayPal Freezes WikiLeaks Account"   http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/paypal-wikileaks/

We must weigh...

---> the potential financial benefit bitcoin would give to wikileaks at This moment

vs.

---> the potential demise of bitcoin itself (or at least the impact of bitcoin being mortally wounded at this very early stage of its existence.)

I think that -- no matter how righteous anyone may feel about the work wikileaks does...

1.  They don't need that much money to do what they do.
2.  What they could potentially get via bitcoin at the moment wouldn't be a drop in the bucket of what they're receiving via other private means.
3.  Nothing wikileaks is doing is WORTH the potential demise of Bitcoin.

We don't need to make Bitcoin, or each of US for that matter, into targets of world governments.   Especially not so early in Bitcoin's life.

Wikileaks is probably being funded, at least partially, by other governments with interests in leaking damaging information.

But in any case, Wikileaks probably has a bankroll larger than the ENTIRE bitcoin economy at this point in time.

Also, when you create a new Iron Man suit in your lab, you don't take on all the militaries of the world on your first trip out on the "test track".   Bitcoin is still in "beta", remember.  

I say, we MUST get Bitcoin accepted at Starbucks and the local grocery store....  BEFORE it gets accepted at Wikileaks.

Then, we'll have a chance.

Starbucks.   Anyone have contact info for them?

Your torment understandable but really nothing does depend from us. For WikiLeaks crew does not cost anything to setup the client, to generate the address and publish it.

So we must just pray to our gods that they may take our point of view.

Yes, there are arguments for not pushing bitcoins as a solution for orgs such as wikileaks.

On the other hand, the same crowd that is attracted to sites such as wikileaks will be attracted to a distributed currency, it would also be a way to gain popularity, coders, crypto people auditing the protocol, and so on. That way, the project can grow.

Everything is a compromise...

Problem is...  It would attract 9 world governments, along with their Intelligence Services (thier CIA's), trying to shut down Bitcoin.... for every one new crypto coder supporter.

Let's achieve this result through POSITIVE publicity....    not NEGATIVE publicity.

Do we want Bitcoin to be known forever in slang as, "Wilileaks Money"?    No.

Let's get Whole Foods, and McDonalds, and Startbucks, and Cocacola vending machines....  to accept Bitcoin.

In fact, the BEST POSITIVE publicity is not even businesses....  It is famous charities!

Red Cross, UNICEF, United Way, etc.    Would you rather Bitcoin be known as "wikileaks money"....   or "the money large charites use for donations"....?

Think of all these ideas from a PR perspective.   Bitcoin needs SUPPORTERS.    It needs to make no enemies....  not yet.   It's too weak to take on enemies right now.

This is not true.  When PayPal shuts down your account, they TAKE and KEEP all of the money in it.   There is no refund.   Never.   Never.    Their email tells you that "there is no process to appeal".   PayPay is owned by eBay.   ....and the "e" in eBay stands for "evil".   Google "PayPay" it if you don't believe me.

Also, leaking military secrets can be considered treason and is a very serious crime in most countries.   Free Speech always has legal limits.

Security is not made by invading foreign nation and inadvertently increasing heroin production in the process, inadvertently killing more Americans through heroin overdose...

Looking on the bright side, if Bitcoin did get known as the Wikileaks currency, attacked by governments all over the world, at least we'd get our Wikipedia page back!

This is so true.  There certainly wouldn't be a shortage of "reliable sources" about Bitcoins at that point.  I think it would likely show up on the front page of most newspapers and be talked about extensively on both radio talk shows and the other broadcast networks too.

For myself, I'm getting to the point to say "bring it on" in regards to Wikileaks.  Note that I'm using my real name here instead of a psuedonym and I'm willing to personally say "bring it on" in terms of being associated with Bitcoins as a project.  I've had police come into my house without my permission already and do all kind of stupid stuff, so for me that line being crossed has already happened.  I am also connected to enough people politically that if something was to happen to me that it would be noted and things would happen too.

It is the morally correct thing to be supporting Wikileaks, and if they'll take a few of my bitcoins, I not only want to donate but to let the world know that they can donate to Wikileaks through Bitcoins as well.

I can't speak for everybody here in the Bitcoins community but I am speaking for myself on this matter, and I'm not afraid of anything that the U.S. government might do to me if I was associated with backing Wikileaks financially.  If anything, it would show that I no longer live under a constitutional government any more.  If the U.S. government wants to tip their hand to expose themselves in that way, so be it.  If the U.S. government kills me or puts me in jail, I'll certainly set a way for this community to find out.  I really don't think it would come to that either, but I don't care if it did.

If I have to "vote" on this matter, I would encourage the Bitcoin community to take up the plate like we did with the EFF and encourage Wikileaks to put up a Bitcoin address on their website for donations.  It would bring in some new blood into the Bitcoin community regardless, and it might be beneficial to Wikileaks as well.  Leave it to Wikileaks to see if they want to use Bitcoins or not.  In terms of governmental review of Bitcoins, we know that is going to happen sooner or later, so why are we fighting that inevitable result?  Anything other than a low-key investigation is only going to make more people interested in Bitcoins, which is only going to help the project even more.  It can't be killed as a project, only slowed down a little bit in its growth at this point and more likely its adoption would be accelerated by any kind of publicity that would happen.

The only possible concern I would have is over how sound the protocol itself is right now.  If anything, a major flux of new people into Bitcoins would help there too, and the worst that could happen is that Bitcoins itself would be broken in some way where a new cryptocurrency would have to be created fixing the problems of Bitcoins.  It is the idea of cryptocurrency that would then persist, and it is incredibly hard to censor an idea.

Basically, bring it on.  Let's encourage Wikileaks to use Bitcoins and I'm willing to face any risk or fallout from that act.

-- Robert S. Horning
Logan, Utah

Amen, RHorning!  As The Voluntaryists argue, Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power.  If the U.S. government wants to tip their hand to expose themselves in that way, so be it.  Without an aura of moral legitimacy, they will be seen as the gang that they truly are.

Thanks for being willing to helpfully impose risk upon others.  For people who are just starting to build businesses on bitcoin, this could be devastating to their new business.

And it could permanently marginalize bitcoin, keeping it out of the mainstream for good.  Is that really the end result the bitcoin community most desires?

Some of us are working hard to build tools and programs that encourage businesses to invest their time, money and energy into bitcoin.  It would be very sad to see all that go down the drain.

What would go down the drain?  Really, I think this is making a mountain out of a molehill and if you want to stay anonymous I'm not necessarily stopping you from doing that either.  Some are willing to stand up and others want to hide in the background.  I choose to stand in front if that is necessary.  Many are participating on this project using a pseudonym, and if they are very paranoid through a Proxy IP address and using https for communications to this forum and perhaps taking other precautions.  I am not, because I'm not afraid.  I'm not necessarily against anonymity and even would encourage it for those who find it necessary for whatever reason they have.

In short, I don't wish to impose this risk upon others but I am willing to take this risk for myself.

I also fail to see how this would marginalize Bitcoin as a software project either.  The best thing, from a political perspective, would be to completely ignore that Bitcoin even exists at all.  If that is marginalizing Bitcion, how is that different from what is going on right now?

I suppose the hope here is that Bitcoin will be used by a bunch of people first (it already is) and that perhaps Bitcoin can be known for doing other things than financing Wikileaks.  I am not encouraging that the main page of bitcoin.org have a huge banner across the top "the official fundraising method for Wikileaks".  We don't have to tie ourselves that closely, and anybody who checks out Bitcoin will discover what it is.... an alternative to PayPal and other on-line financial transaction systems with perhaps some other interesting benefits as well.  Is that necessarily a bad thing?  Is there anything new that hasn't been said repeatedly elsewhere?  If you were trying to stay off people's radar, publicity should be avoided altogether.

This is also about doing what is right, and this is the right thing to do.  I get the arguments advocating caution, but sometimes you also have to take a stand on an issue too.  There is a down side, and talking about concerns over that perhaps is useful.


I agree, success is not guaranteed.  Sometimes you have to take some risks and sometimes do so with imperfect knowledge.  It is a golden opportunity right now for the Bitcoin community, however, to encourage Wikileaks to accept Bitcoin donations and I personally don't think the extra publicity that we may or may not get from having a link on the Wikileaks website would necessarily be a bad thing.  There isn't even any sort of guarantee that Wikileaks will even take Bitcoins if they are being offered.

But seriously, what are the downsides anyway?  Do you really think the "Men in Black" are going to shut down Bitcoin?  Really?  If Bitcoin is that fragile and vulnerable to attack, what are we doing anyway and why is it so consistently being defended?

Exactly.  I feel the same way.  Survival of the fittest.  If bitcoin has some fundamental flaw, it will not be able to survive a government attack.  Then it is better to weed it out now, so we aren't wasting our time promoting something that will not work, and can instead devote our resources and time to other efforts that hopefully will work and to other currencies to build up the alternative economy.  


I have spent many hours reading through the bitcoin forums about its robustness and resiliency to attacks...asking so many questions "What if the government does X?", and I have come to the conclusion that basically, bitcoin can't be shut down absent shutting down the internet.  But the government wouldn't likely not shut down the internet, since they depend on tax revenue for their operations.  If bitcoin has some flaw, then we need to resolve it now.

I approve of this message. If Bitcoin blows up, a new system can be build without this flaw. The probability of Bitcoin _not_ containing some fatal flaw is pretty small (as almost all software has flaws).

All Wikileaks needs to do is say "Following the PayPal incident we have decided to accept a new kind of payment, Bitcoins. You can find more information on donating via Bitcoins on URL <some suitable URL hosted by Wikileaks>.  "

They could post it in their news section or something like that. It is possible that main stream media would pick it up if they would contrast Bitcoin with PayPal like that.

Agreed, i have already spoken about this in some other wikileaks-related topic (or perhaps this one ?).

Engaging in wikileaks before Bitcoin has a chance to unfold its wings may kill it.

We should be doing something to get a full security audit done on bitcoins. Something we can point to that is third party and not connected to bitcoin in any way. Now who do we contact to get this done?

This should be our first priority rather than engaging in political statements.  


Edit: Bradley Manning supposedly leaked the documents NOT Julian Assange.

the US government cant even beat a few  fighters in the afghanistan dessert...

The bigger concern is the international banking mafia.    They are the real scary ones.

I'm glad that you have left the dark side, creighto.  You make an interesting point that a private could not have gotten access to all this (but then again, some of these gubbamint bureacracies are extremely inefficient).  Bradley Manning may simple just be a fall guy, scapegoat, or framed by the real leaker...who may never be caught.  Anyway, it's all speculation. 

It is entirely possible.  Some government agent may have converted to anarchism after climbing up the ranks and then accidentally reading Rothbard or some other anti-statist philosopher or website.  Or maybe just saw the crap going around him and decided he is an anarchist.

Of course.  And yeah, it could have been a voluntary decision.  Also, it could be possible that the secret upper-level anarchist did not intend for Manning to be blamed...but then once Manning got arrested, he realized it would be better if he kept quiet, so that only one person is in jail.

Seems that the main politician this embarrassed was Hillary Clinton.

Either the pentagon or the cia leaked these papers.

*Points finger at Robert Gates .

With paypal down I'm increasing my pressure upon their board of directors to get a bitcoin address up.

Kiba makes some good points here...let's not be too hasty in communicating with WikiLeaks.  Patience is key.  There is no need to repeatedly pressure WikiLeaks in producing a bitcon donate address.  Since you have already communicated with them once, they may either he considering it or more likely have decided that it does nor suit their needs currently.  Don't get me wrong...I am all for wikileaks to use bitcoin, but let's not push this too hard.

bob182 is certainly not acting on my behalf, nor several others, as these threads seem to indicate.

And for Pete's sake, bob182, please don't misrepresent yourself as some sort of official Bitcoin representative.

Wikileaks is the enemy of major world powers right now, with many influential elites feeling that Assange committed an act of war against the United States, or, at a minimum, irrevocably disrupted world affairs.  This is not some mailing list discussion or theoretical exercise; there are very real, very powerful organizations actively targetting wikileaks' network infrastructure, organizational infrastructure, and most importantly, financial infrastructure.

It is extraordinarily unwise to make bitcoin such a highly visible target, at such an early stage in this project.  There could be a lot of "collateral damage" in the bitcoin community while you make your principled stand.

bober182 doesn't need to have anybody's permission to do anything. Even if he were to present himself as being 'official', the Wikileaks people are probably smarter than the average visitor of this forum, so they would be able to figure that out in less than a minute.

Does anyone have an idea of how large the Wikileaks group is? I know one guy who is in it, but two guys don't make a group I suppose the actual members are a secret, but is the number too?

This isn't about a permission issue.

I just want bober182 to be a responsible member of the community. He's going in there, contacting the organization, when it is clear that members of the community don't think it is the best idea. He didn't address any of our concerns. He didn't give us any details what he is planning to do, except putting additional "pressure" which could mean anything from "being pushy" or selling "snake oil".

This is akin to somebody just go in there, with no plans and guns blazing, costing half of his squads and then costing us a war in the long run.

No, don't "bring it on".

The project needs to grow gradually so the software can be strengthened along the way.

I make this appeal to WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin.  Bitcoin is a small beta community in its infancy.  You would not stand to get more than pocket change, and the heat you would bring would likely destroy us at this stage.