Daniel Domscheit-Berg: Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World’s Most Dangerous Website (2011)

What has been made public so far about WikiLeaks is only a small fraction of the truth. With his insider knowledge, Daniel Domscheit-Berg is uniquely able to tell the full story.

Since its launch in 2006, WikiLeaks has rapidly grown into the most powerful and influential whistleblowing organisation ever. Its status as a repository and publisher of leaked sensitive and confidential documents — while preserving the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors — as well as the statements and behaviour of its leader, Julian Assange, have made WikiLeaks daily front-page news and a topic of enormous controversy.

In this eye-opening account, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who joined WikiLeaks in its early days and became its spokesman, reveals never-disclosed details about the inner workings of the organisation that has struck fear into governments and businesses worldwide. He also provides a remarkably up-close portrait of Julian Assange himself.

Under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, Domscheit-Berg was effectively No. 2 at WikiLeaks and the organisation’s most public face after Julian Assange. In this book, he tells the backstories of major leaks, and reveals the evolution, finances, and inner tensions of the whistleblower organisation, beginning with his first meeting with Assange in December 2007. He also describes what led to his September 2010 withdrawal from WikiLeaks, including his disenchantment with the organisation’s lack of transparency, its abandonment of political neutrality, and Assange’s increasing concentration of power.

Publisher Scribe Publications, 2011
ISBN 1921844051, 9781921844058
305 pages

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Yochai Benkler: A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate (draft, 2011)

A study of the events surrounding the Wikileaks document releases in 2010 provides a rich set of insights about the weaknesses and sources of resilience of the emerging networked fourth estate. It marks the emergence of a new model of watchdog function, one that is neither purely networked nor purely traditional, but is rather a mutualistic interaction between the two. It identifies the peculiar risks to, and sources of resilience of, the networked fourth estate in a multidimensional system of expression and restraint, and suggests the need to resolve a major potential vulnerability—the extralegal cooperation between the government and private infrastructure companies to restrict speech without being bound by the constraints of legality. Finally, it offers a richly detailed event study of the complexity of the emerging networked fourth estate, and the interaction, both constructive and destructive, between the surviving elements of the traditional model and the emerging elements of the new. It teaches us that the traditional, managerial-professional sources of responsibility in a free press function imperfectly under present market conditions, while the distributed models of mutual criticism and universal skeptical reading, so typical of the Net, are far from powerless to deliver effective criticism and self-correction where necessary. The future likely is, as the Guardian described its own experience with Wikileaks, “a new model of co-operation,” between surviving elements of the traditional, mass-mediated fourth estate, and its emerging networked models. The transition to this new model will likely be anything but smooth.

Working Paper of article forthcoming in the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review.
8 February 2011 version.
66 pages

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Daniel Domscheit-Berg: Inside WikiLeaks. Meine Zeit bei der gefährlichsten Website der Welt (2011) [German]

Die Enthüllungen von WikiLeaks halten die Welt in Atem. Doch wer steckt hinter der Organisation, die die Mächtigen fürchten macht und das Pentagon eine 120 Mann starke Task Force einberufen ließ? Wie sieht es aus in der Schaltzentrale von WikiLeaks und welche brisanten Papiere schlummern dort noch?

Daniel Domscheit-Berg nimmt uns mit ins Herz von WikiLeaks. Er hat die Enthüllungsplattform seit 2007 Seite an Seite mit Julian Assange aufgebaut. Der junge Deutsche ist weltweit der Mann, der neben dem schillernden und zunehmend umstrittenen Gründer den besten Einblick in das Whistleblower-Projekt hat. Seit Domscheit-Berg und andere Mitstreiter sich im Herbst 2010 aus dem Projekt zurückzogen, ist Julian Assange alleiniger Herrscher über dieses machtvolle Instrument.

Inside WikiLeaks ist ein packend geschriebener Enthüllungsreport voller unbekannter Fakten. Er erzählt die Geschichte von WikiLeaks, wie sie noch keiner gehört hat.

Written by Tina Klopp
Publisher: Econ Verlag, Ullstein Buchverlage, Berlin, 2011
ISBN 978-3-8437-0062-7
304 pages

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