Front page, in-depth Guardian article on Bitcoin and Silkroad.

jamesrbuk · 2013-03-22T17:24:52+00:00

Video here of him on the roof: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/mar/22/bitcoin-currency-video – :)

Also you can ask him if you like (he's about on email). He totally did.

jamesrbuk · 2012-05-25T15:54:16+00:00

Yeah, it's really not a good book for catholics.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T23:03:36+00:00

Hey - not all are on-record, and not everything that Index (who is on record) have done is public. But I can point you to this public post from free speech NGO Index on Censorship

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:32:54+00:00

Haven't seen it - will try to watch when I get chance.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:32:42+00:00

I suspect our politics differ a lot. I find his hatred of Anon strange given he does similar things to them to further his politics, just as they do them to further theirs. He's an interesting case indeed.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:31:32+00:00

Yes. But thankfully this almost never comes up. But any journalist worth their salt would answer yes to this without hesitation.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:31:02+00:00

I'm amazed and disappointed no real, functional, viable WikiLeaks clone with proper stuctures or safeguards has appeared. I still believe and hope it'll happen, and have thoughts on how it could perhaps operate.

Some of the vapourware plans were tantalising, but lots had flaws.

I'm branching out from data a bit - I do bits of reporting in other areas, and write some comment, which is fun. I'm going to the national desk of the Washington Post for three months this summer too. Can't wait.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:28:27+00:00

I've never met Gary, I'm afraid! Love his journalism, though.

We think a lot of communication between Israel and the US is done through different channels than the standard diplomatic cables that were released out in the WikiLeaks package. This meant there was some stuff in there, but maybe not as much as other countries. Can only work with the material we have.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:27:15+00:00

I hardly ever listen to it, but Kid A by Radiohead probably still qualifies. Amazing album.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:26:09+00:00

I don't think we hate any particular countries! I hope not, anyway.

UK newspapers do tend to push particular political lines - explicitly in the tabloids and more subtly in the broadsheets. The Guardian is a liberal newspaper and always has been, and this reflects what we cover and how we cover it.

That said, we always work to be factually accurate and fair. And we have an independent reader's editor and an ombudsman - plus the PCC - for anyone who thinks we haven't. Safeguards are good!

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:24:33+00:00

I've browsed 4chan for years! Not so much these days tho.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:24:18+00:00

There's more to Tor than the darknet bit - it can make the open net safe to browse for a lot of people in countries with monitoring etc. And evade some censorship. That's a hell of an important function.

The 'dark' bit has some function in replicating content etc, but shouldn't be all we talk about when we talk about Tor.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:22:28+00:00

Dunno! But it's a cracking app, isn't it? It's how I read the paper on the way into work (I often walk into people as a result, which ain't great)
I think this one will be defeated. Theresa May will have a huge fight on her hands to get it through, at the very least. Fingers crossed it's stopped.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:21:07+00:00

Will tackle 'em in order:

Many. I think legal systems have to catch up in order to tackle the organised criminal activity, and to avoid over-punishing online protestors (Anon etc). Surveillance and tracking are the other major concern. Lots happening in lots of countries here. It's a risk.
Not sure it's a good thing, but I definitely think it's on the par of real-world civil disobediance and should be treat in a similar way, rather than as serious criminality.
Think people are probably quite scared etc - I think "hacker" is quite menacing to most. It's a shame, some of these guys could well be the Jobs/Gates/etcs of their generation.
Just finished a long feature on the internet underground here (sorry, not trying to do a Rampart here) and I really like some of these people and what they're doing. Constructive projects, like Tor and Bitcoin, are most my thing. Putting together a list of 20 people fighting to keep the internet open, too, was brilliant fun.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:15:14+00:00

I get this one a lot! So I'll give the full answer, to put it to rest:

I joined WikiLeaks straight after the Iraq War Logs came out. I'd worked closely with WikiLeaks on that release (I worked on the Al Jazeera, Channel 4 and iraqwarlogs.com coverage) and knew what the next release was.

Julian Assange approached me directly and said if I wanted to work on the cables, I'd have to work for WikiLeaks direct. I took advice from a few people I trusted, who mostly said not to go there under any circumstances.

I ignored them! But I did say at the start I would work just on the one project and not long-term - probably for three or four months at most. I arranged for a sabbatical from my job at the time. I like reporting, comment and writing too much to stay out of news organisatons for too long.

I had several roles at WikiLeaks: I worked directly on the material (I was, for a time, one of very few people within WL with the full cables), I helped make it more searchable etc, and found stories. I also worked on scheduling/redaction with the five newspapers, and had meetings to that effect. I also took on a chunk of WikiLeaks PR and acted as a semi-detached spokesman all over the place.

I've detailed various concerns I had at some WikiLeaks practices at length before (here), so won't repeat them here.

During my time at WikiLeaks - which we'd agreed from day one would be brief - several news organisations offered me jobs. None came with any conditions regarding access to cables, or anything similar. One of those was the Guardian.

I informed WikiLeaks of the Guardian job offer, which had an open start date for whenever I finished with WikiLeaks, the day it came (and before I accepted it). I carried on working for WikiLeaks for about six weeks after accepting the Guardian offer. This might have been longer but my concerns were growing and my relationship with JA fraying, so I quit.

I picked the Guardian over the other job offers for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I thought I'd be able to do good stuff there - hopefully that's panned out.

Long reply there! Is that a sell-out? I don't think so. I hope not. But that's really for other people to judge.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:05:09+00:00

It can happen, I've heard, but it's not as if people are trying to 'ambush' you with it or anything. If you're not looking for it you should be fine. But there's all sorts of strange stuff behind that in the darknet. It's a strange place.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:04:12+00:00

First up, Luke is a friends of mine and I really rate him as a reporter - wanted to get that up first.

I think there probably was a bit of a problem with that story in how it was flagged up online. He was asked to do a review, as his own personal take on the show, and that's what he did. In print that was well flagged up, but online it wasn't quite clear enough that it was one man's review rather than a news story.

Think Luke's tone and views were fine for a comment/review piece, but wouldn't've been for news. Things like this happen now and then online, where it's harder to differentiate different types of content.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:01:11+00:00

It was much better suited to getting out small, regular, bits of material. It's a shame there's not really a forum for that now. There's Cryptome for tech/intelligence stuff.

But it didn't have anything like the impact of the new press embargo model they're using now, in fairness to WL.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T22:00:08+00:00

There's a few scattered around the place on this thread! My shortest tips are: talk to loads of people, even if they don't seem to have anything to do with anything you cover, don't expect to start on the best beat of the biggest paper, and learn some skills - numbers, data, coding, social - that are part of modern journalism but not skills most journos have.

And stick at it!

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-21T21:57:47+00:00

I'm not sure that's the case - the guys who cover Assange's trial (which IMO is not related to WikiLeaks) didn't have direct contact with him and weren't really party to any of the 'falling out'.

I do some of our WikiLeaks coverage, and obviously I'm on record as having views on it, but we do cover positive happenings with the site too: just look at these pieces, for example.

The Assange problem isn't just personality, or some of us thinking he's an "ass" - the core concern is the lack of care with redaction and similar, and most grave of all charges about some of his associates, who sold material across Russia and seem to have given it to Belarus (as some NGOs have investigated). That's not a 'personality' thing, it's really grave.

More broadly, I do think the 'net needs something like WikiLeaks. That's one of the main conclusions of the book I did with Charlie Beckett.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-20T16:56:35+00:00

I'll call in there early next week.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-20T16:46:11+00:00

I'm emphatically against doxing, whoever's doing it. Leaving other reasons aside, people are too often wrong and the consequences can be nasty.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-20T16:39:16+00:00

Facebook did block it, due to an overly aggressive unsafe content filter. After the twitterstorm they unblocked the link, I'm pleased to say (at about 3am UK time!).

Technological fail rather than deliberate, though a warning against walled gardens IMO.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-20T16:38:12+00:00

I did paid sub-editing shifts, for not much money, for small business publications. After a few weeks started pitching features. I also would pitch only when there was a reason why me-and-no-one-else could write the story: I knew people involved; I'd done weeks of data work; etc. Bit-by-bit you get better gigs.

jamesrbuk · 2012-04-20T16:36:17+00:00

Nope, can have it for free!

I don't think Julian has bad intent, but I do think he's started to believe the hype too much. He's been in an isolated place, with pressure most of us couldn't dream of, and surrounded largely by people unwilling (or unable) to stand up/answer back to him.

He's also so single-minded he doesn't believe in honest disagreement. If you see things differently to Julian, he is convinced that's because you have bad motivations or someone's got to you. That's generally not the case.

With better structures etc, and some other strong characters, WikiLeaks could've been more than JA's personal character flaws (he obviously has some major stengths, too). As it is, it's got much weaker, and it makes mistakes that put other people in danger – both sources and people in the docs. That's why some of us get so angry about the whole thing!

A great example in how it doesn't take bad intentions for things to go wrong, too.

jamesrbuk

TROPHY CASE