Inside Story - The Wikileaks copycats - What do you think?
Crowdsigliere: Plouffe Asks for a Little Public Guidance. BrusselsLeaks. BalkanLeaks. OpenNuNL. Twitterleaks. ScienceLeaks. Rospil. Tunileaks. TradeLeak. Transparency Unit. The New York Times May Start Its Own Version of WikiLeaks. One Per Cent: WikiLeaks business model gains traction with big media. Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent (Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features) Back in December, New Scientist predicted that the impact of the US embassy cable releases by WikiLeaks would likely inspire a legion of leak-publishing imitators to spring up - and this is indeed coming to pass.
But it's far from clear how the newbies in this fast-emerging leaky landscape are going to behave. Will they exercise some kind of editorial restraint, or will they publish everything the get their hands on? And how will they protect their sources? Localeaks: A Drop-Box for Anonymous Tips to 1400 U.S. Newspapers. Although the mission of WikiLeaks is to "open governments," it's done quite a lot to make us think about how to open journalism as well.
We've seen a number of new whistleblower sites crop up - OpenLeaks and Rospil, for example - as well as major news organizations - Al Jazeera, and perhaps even The New York Times - investigate ways to facilitate more whistle-blowing and leaking. But why wait for local newspapers to roll out their own anonymous tips pipeline when a project from CUNY Graduate School's Entrepreneurial Journalism program has designed just that thing.
Using Localeaks, you can send an anonymous tip, including a file, to over 1400 newspapers in the U.S. through one online form. FrenchLeaks. HBGary Emails.