Leaks | 15.09.2011 07:00 | Steffen Kraft Source: http://www.freitag.

de/politik/1137-steuermann-unter-deck

Coxswain below deck

Daniel Domscheit-Berg guides his whistleblower project OpenLeaks through difficult waters by nonorthodox methods
Julian Assange calls him a CIA snitch. In the eyes of the followers of the Australian chiefleaker he is a thief and traitor. Over Daniel Domscheit-Berg comes right now that, what you call in the online world a shit storm. The 33-years-old computer scientist decided to build up a rival platform beside WikiLeaks. As a result a dispute between nerds without nerves came up which by now endangers the leaking idea as such. This couldnt have worked out in any better way for the opponents, based in intelligences and politics, of transparency in the net.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Picture: Dirk Hger) Domscheit-Berg probably underestimated the severity of the reactions by Assange, who was his boss at WikiLeaks, on the discovery of the biggest security breach in the history of the platform. Three weeks ago Freitag reported for the first time about a file circulating in the internet containing unredacted US embassy cables. Ever since then Assange doesnt miss any opportunity to call Domscheit-Berg intelligence- or police snitch and to impute perfidy or acquisitiveness to him. OpenLeaks, which Freitag accompanies during the test phase, too is a very dark matter, as Assange whispers during a video interview at the electronics trade fair Ifa in Berlin. Although these accusations might seem ever so outrageous to the team of Domscheit-Berg potential whistleblowers will now consider thrice before entrusting their documents to the Openleaks mailbox. What if the accusations would be right? So now a new problem emerges on the list of difficulties of OpenLeaks, a trust issue. To illustrate it one could name it Guido Strack. Strack is chairman of the German whistleblower network and advises the activists to not trust Assange with documents since the WikiLeaks data loss. However he at the same time says that Openleaks too doesnt work transparently: We always tried to be in contact with Openleaks and there was a certain exchange but that ran dry. Instead of using a leaking portal whistleblowers should rather turn directly to journalists who are experienced in keeping their sources secure. Domscheit-Berg decided to not firmly react neither on the accusations by Assange nor the critics by Strack. His behavior follows a pattern he often used in the past: When obstacles pile up he makes himself scarce, withdraws from public and hopes that everything will turn out

well after some time, or at least become clearer. After all the people of OpenLeaks are neither hackers nor babblers but engineers who want to be judged by the results of their work. Doubts of well-meaning people Its a strategy which worked out for Domscheit-Berg in the past. But now even well-meaning companions associated to him question this reaction. Reason for that: in their perception Openleaks now has a problem from which Domscheit-Berg cant escape by ducking away: He himself is it. Because whatever Domscheit-Berg does, his past always catches up on him. In the eyes of some WikiLeaks supporters the break with Assange already proved that Domscheit-Berg became unfaithful to the pure leaking theory. But now he declared the deletion of Data he took with him when he exited to protect the sources as he stated. This act of deletion which he wants to notarize in the next days was supposed to mark an end to the conflict between him and Assange. But he raised new questions for the future of Openleaks as a platform depending on partners. Who guarantees for example that such an act wont be repeated in case Openleaks thinks that a media partner supposingly acts irresponsibly with submitted documents? And how could activists stop an aggrieved chief-nerd in a dispute with another one from withdrawing accesses to documents or even taking away the submitting system? The dispute about the security breach at WikiLeaks showed at least one thing: even sophisticated technique doesnt prevent abuse if data protection isnt secured legally and organizationally against scatty or egoistic acts. After their exit dropouts sworn: There should be no personality cult at Openleaks. Nevertheless Domscheit-Berg and the programmer of the electronical mailbox called the Architect are the two neuralgic points of the organization: its public image and its technical heart. Both up till now didnt leave a very good impression paradoxically because Domscheit-Berg absolutely wants to prevent to make himself and Openleaks vulnerable at some points. Except for a delayed test run and a workshop postponed at short notice at the summer hackermeeting of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) the public didnt get any closer look into the security architecture of the project. Even to the question if Openleaks ever will publish the source code of their software for controlling matters Domscheit-Berg avoided the only convincing yet egoistically sounding answer. He said: We dont want to hand a tool to the hands of criminals. What he didnt say: If every media company could use the software for free Openleaks as an organization could become redundant.