Are they serious?
".....all such donations have bank records and confirmations that travel over plain email."
I wonder what they mean by "bank records"? Especially as "plain email" would imply plain text or HTML, unencrypted.......
Whistleblower website Wikileaks faced a dilemma this week when a list of email addresses for the site's donors was submitted as a leaked document. The issue arose after a fund raising email on Saturday went out with all 58 addresses in the To field (instead of the bcc field). The all too common schoolboy error meant that all …
All donations have bank records. Wikileaks does not accept suitcases full of cash behind the dumpster. Or maybe they do, but I suspect most donators find that a tad inconvenient.
All donations have e-mail confirmations. Yes, e-mail is generally plain text or vomit inducing HTML. Yes, e-mail is unsecure. How would you encrypt it? Wouldn't the sending of an encrypted email from Wikileaks be enough- Do you really need to see the rest to know they have some sort of contact with Wikileaks?
If yer gonna be paranoid, might as well think it out. Encryption wouldn't protect you from the lizard men finding out you leaked their copy of "How to serve man" to Wikileaks.
"'A prankster, apparently connected to one of the donors, then submitted this list to Wikileaks, possibly to test the project's principles of complete impartiality when dealing with whistleblowers,' it said."
I'm curious as to why the site's operator immediately jumps to the conclusion that it's a "prankster" that submitted the document. Surely it's just as possible (if not likely) that it's a donor who decided to publish the list. One possible motive would be that they were upset that their address was exposed as such, and decided to publish the document to bring light to the issue so that it doesn't happen again. Another motive could be that the donor recognized another name or address in the list, and wanted the public to know that person is a donor. There could be a number of legitimate reasons for someone to "leak" the document.
I also find it amusing that people who leak documents from other companies are considered "whistleblowers" while people who leak documents from WikiLeaks itself are considered "pranksters".
That's a genius theory you have there. A donor, annoyed that 57 people now know that he donates to Wikileaks, decides to exact his revenge by informing the entire fucking internet that he donates to Wikileaks. Yup, I bet that's just how it happened - thanks for clearing that up for us.
Please remove your head from your anal cavity and learn how to read. I didn't say it was a theory, I said it was one possible motive. I also never mentioned "revenge"; that angle was apparently created in your own imagination. I also mentioned another possible motive, but I guess in typical knee-jerk reaction, you simply stopped reading at the point where you disagreed.