The Wikileaks leaks

A handful anyway - not quite getting the media coverage they would if the Trump tape hadn't emerged.

- WikiLeaks hack reveals cozy relationship between Clinton campaign, super PAC.

A top attorney for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign sent a memo to campaign aides teaching them how to legally communicate with a pro-Clinton super PAC, emails released Monday by WikiLeaks show.

While Clinton has claimed her campaign has nothing to do with the super PAC Priorities USA, a leaked email from the personal account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, suggests differently.

In the email, Clinton attorney Marc Elias outlined what is basically a strategy for steering large campaign donors to the super PAC without breaking the law.

- Hillary Clinton transcripts: WikiLeaks posts apparent excerpts from private Wall Street speeches.

Wikileaks has dumped thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, which includes apparent excerpts from Ms Clinton’s paid, closed-door speeches to Wall Street executives after leaving her position as Secretary of State.

In the excerpts, flagged in a 25 January email, Ms Clinton apparently suggested that Wall Street insiders were best qualified to regulate the banking industry and also included her apparent admission of the need for money from banking executives for political fundraising.

The group posted more than 2,000 emails on Friday evening, claiming they came from an email account belonging to Mr Podesta. Wikileaks promised to continue publishing emails from a trove of more than 50,000 emails obtained from a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) this year.

- Search the emails yourself here.

The "Wikipedia Revolution" in Tunisia

Democracy may or may not be breaking out in Tunisia, a north African Arab nation judged across the board to be among the world's most repressive, but riots have forced the existing president to resign and flee the country. The president had been in power for over twenty years and was re-elected regularly by very high nargins -- never a sign of a truly competitive system (in 1994 and 1999 he received 99% of the vote). One source has dubbed this the "wikileaks revolution" because:

US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks described Tunisia as a "police state" riddled with corruption, and claimed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had lost touch with his people.

It described the president and his siblings as "The Family" - comparing them to a Mafia crime organisation.
Wikileaks also revealed that Ben Ali's wife, Leila, had made huge profits out of building an exclusive school.

One cable was banned in Tunisia, although its contents became widely known.

In it, US ambassador Robert Godec wrote: "Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, first lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her."

Social network websites such as Facebook helped spread the comments, to the delight of Tunisians.

For general information about measurements of freedom in countries across the world check these out:

- Freedom House: Freedom in the World 2011.
- Democracy Index.
- Press Freedom Index.

Whether the revolution leads to the establishment of a legitimate democracy or simply another authoritarian regime, or whether it causes other leaders in the region to topple is an open question at this point.

House Judiciary Committee Hearings on Wikileaks

C-Span video here. Is legislation adjusting the Espionage Act necessary to deal with the ease at which secrets can be made public?

- ReadWriteWeb.

The World Post-Wikileaks

A discussion in the NYT:

In the tempest that has followed the release of a trove of secret government files by WikiLeaks, officials and security experts are trying to figure out how to stop such a large-scale breach from happening again.

While Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, defended publication of the documents as a victory for openness, national security officials see a dangerous precedent.

Even if WikiLeaks itself can be controlled, have the gates opened to a flood of similar enterprises and even more damaging disclosures?
Perhaps it was inevitable that once the web was developed it would be impossible to keep secrets anymore.

- Wikileak's War on Secrecy.

The Latest From Wikileaks and the Frontier of the New Media

Wikileaks, which already released confidential files relating to ther Iraq War, released more.

- Commentary from the NYT.