OpenLeaks founder explains why his site will be less subject to "censorship" and bottlenecks. PLUS: An Assange backlash builds in the otherwise liberal New York Times and Vanity Fair.
RIGHT: Backlash: Vanity Fair has mocked Julian Assange with "separated-at-birth" photos comparing the elfin WikiLeaks founder to Are You Being Served's Mr Humphries (above) and Dougie Howser MD actor Neil Patrick Harris (below; click to zoom).
A new whistleblowing site has gone live, backed founded by several senior WikiLeaks staff.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg - formerly described as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's right-hand-man - fell out with his boss before Christmas.
In online chat sessions, the defector has reportedly accused Mr Assange as behaving like "some kind of emperor or slave trader", making key decisions without any consultation with staff.
Now, Mr Domscheit-Berg, joined by other former WikiLeakers, has launched a rival site: OpenLeaks.
The breakaway group does not yet have any juicy leaked documents in its possession, it seems.
OpenLeaks 101 from openleaks on Vimeo.
But once it does, its leader says they will be processed by a more democratic system that's less prone to bottlenecks (see explanatory video above). WikiLeaks is still in the early stages of analysing more than 175,000 leaked US diplomatic cables.
Once a more open platform and document uploading, analysis and publishing process is established, "trusted" bodies such as human rights groups and unions could given access to OpenLeaks systems, helping to speed the process, Mr Mr Domscheit-Berg said.
Liberal media backlash
The OpenLeaks launch caps a rocky month for Mr Assange, who has fallen into a feud with the New York Times, and been accused by Vanity Fair of having an angry, distrustful relationship with The Guardian. At one point, Mr Assange threatened to sue the UK paper, according to Vanity Fair. The Guardian and the Times, which have had exclusive first access to many WikiLeaks documents, have previously been seen as close to the WikiLeaks founder.
Vanity Fair - singularly failing to see Mr Assange as a saviour of democracy - has also run separated-at-birth parodies comparing the elfin WikiLeaks founder to gay actor Neil Patrick Harris, and Mr Humphries from 70s British sitcom Are You Being Served (see image above).
Mr Assange's feud with the Times developed after the paper published as exert from a forthcoming e-book by executive editor Bill Keller, which described his "generally unpleasant" interactions with the WikiLeaks founder.
“I came to think of Julian Assange as a character from a Stieg Larsson thriller - a man who could figure either as hero or villain in one of the megaselling Swedish novels that mix hacker counterculture, high-level conspiracy and sex as both recreation and violation,” Mr Keller wrote.
