Wikileaks has a “poison pill” ready if the site goes down

World: Wikileaks has a “poison pill” ready if the site goes down

danger Wikileaks is reportedly under constant attack from all sides (from Amazon to Paypal to Congress to Distributed Denials of Service to INTERPOL), and Assange is worried he might be arrested soon. The odds are good, actually.
retaliation If that does happen, though, Wikileaks has an encrypted document called the “insurance” file – reportedly loaded with uncensored state documents. The password will get released if Wikileaks goes down. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

About: EasyDNS and why having a small writing staff sometimes sucks

We’d like to fess up to something. Earlier today, we wrote a blog post about the latest bit of the Wikileaks saga. In the post, we mentioned a site called EasyDNS as being responsible. When we wrote the entry, we weren’t intending to blame them, but just to note that it happened. If Amazon of all sites can’t handle Wikileaks, we’d expect their beleaguered DNS provider to have even more of a claim than Amazon did. (And others weren’t quite so kind.) Here’s the problem, though. It wasn’t EasyDNS. It was EveryDNS. Without intending a pun, it was an easy mistake to make. EasyDNS soon after wrote a blog post about how everyone was making the same mistake as us, including Gawker, and called us out for it. (Deservedly, mind you. Let’s own up to the fact that we’re not perfect.) We’d like to offer up some thoughts on this whole mess:

How we work We’re a small staff, and whenever me (Ernie Smith) or fellow blogger Seth Millstein blog about stuff, we’re usually working alone, with the goal of trying to cover a lot of stuff quickly. We’re looking up interesting links but offering up commentary or interesting quotes, numbers or blurbs in the process.
Our weaknesses Unlike a larger site, like, say, Gawker (who made the same mistake and isn’t owning up to it), we don’t have an army of editors and are often working around other jobs, so sometimes we’re forced to write our posts in a limited amount of time while self-editing. Some days it doesn’t work out for us, but we try.
Owning up to it Look, our friends at EasyDNS have had a rough day, and we made it a little bit rougher on them. There are some weaknesses in how we work, and instead of chalking it up to a two-second mistake, we’re going to work on our self-editing processes to ensure diligence. To EasyDNS, we’re sorry. source

» One other thought: We’d like to think that when we screw up, there’s opportunity to be found in it. Maybe the problem is collective workload. So, let’s try to make some lemonade out of this: We’re always interested in having more voices on ShortFormBlog, so let us know if you might be interested at trying your hand at the short-form storytelling we do.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

World: Thanks Wikileaks! Russian prez Dmitry Medvedev calls U.S. cynical

The Russian president suggests the “telling” leaks from Wikileaks show the “cynicism” of U.S. foreign policy. He suggests they won’t hurt U.S.-Russian relations, though. source