WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal in Early 2011

While I agree with you that the content of the last few releases have been fascinating but mostly inconsequential. The reason given for staggering the releases is a good one: if you released it all at the same time, each individual issue would not get as much attention. Assange also states that Wikileaks makes a promise (among other promises such as to protect their identity) to its informants to try to achieve the maximum possible impact on the world due to their leak.

Wikileaks is now creating a channel and noise surrounding the release of sensitive information. This can now start planting the meme of disclosing information. It once was a abstract thought, now it can hold onto the possibility of action.

Wikileaks takes some time to assess stuff before releasing it. That's probably not a bad thing, despite the boredom of anticipation. The general reason for the delay is dealt with in the first question in the interview (to which the article links).

Forbes: To start, is it true you’re sitting on [a] trove of unpublished documents?

Julian Assange: Sure. That’s usually the case. As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.

This looks like a political move to me.

By the time the US responds to the current leak, the bank leak will be ready or nearly ready. The public will see it as a response to the bank leak and ask who is really in charge.

The Wikileaks mission is not just to release information but to release it in such a way as to maximize political impact. The hype machine is not going away anytime soon.

> prosaic

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Apparently detailed reports of the US spying on its allies, or reports that the US deliberately concealed the civilian death count in Iraq to make the war look better, is prosaic? Because I find shit like that very interesting.

And how many of them will read the dump ? Will it create the impact as it is doing now ? Doesn't this fails the purpose of existance of wikileaks or say any whistleblower site.

OK, you're running a small non-profit organisation. You get a subset of the records of anglo irish bank, say a truck load's worth. (this is a example, not the current thing they are generating spin about). While most of these documents are in the public interest in Ireland and Europe (Anglo Irish bank have been on life support in Ireland for 2 years now, the money needed to keep it afloat has forced the IMF to bail out the Irish government) some aren't, for example records for customers. At this point, you need to get someone to read though millions of words and decide what to release. If you have money, you ring up the local temp agency and get a load of people to do it for you for minimum wage. However, wikileaks doesn't have money. They have to pick what piles of documents are worth reading though.

I agree that its sucky, and would much prefer a system in which wikileaks had the resources to leak more stuff and were not picking and choosing what to release. However, I understand why wikileaks does what it does.

> Wikileaks alone gets to choose the conversations we have based solely on what they decide to publish.

There's an entire ecosystem of media (ranging from MSM to bloggers) that sets the conversations. Picking out one small element and giving it this massive importance really isn't accurate. It's true that they editorialize by choosing what to cover and what not to. So do all news media. Don't you remember the NY times sitting on the warrantless wiretapping story for over a year?

If you don't like the messages being pushed you have one option -- start using your own printing press. Create another site dedicated to publishing leaks,with your own editorial policy, such as "publish everything as soon as you get it".

The mass communication theory here is known as "Agenda Setting Theory" - Google Scholar results for Agenda Setting: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=agenda+setting+theory...

which one?

Anything less vague.

Actual black-on-white proof that they are aware of doing just that and want to do just that?

This is your little editorialization, some people agree, some don’t.

They've been redacting information in every leak so far.

I'm not sure who could get killed if some bank information is public, but if they have a lot of documents, this could take some time.

Maximizing publicity is important, if you actually want to enact positive change as a result of what is being revealed. If everything was released at once there wouldn't be any focused attention and easier for those effected to try and deflect attention.

It's also an interesting way to put all banks on notice for their behaviors, as unless they know more than us they would all consider it's possible that their documents have been leaked.

I would assume those behind Wikileaks have a system in place such that information they already have will be released one way or another even if something happened to them.

Not all of the quarter million cables have been leaked, if I recall correctly.

Yeah - except the cable thing has Wikileaks in the news on my rock music radio station. They've really gone mainstream with this one, and the next one will be heard.

Assange is a grandstander, true, but this is really starting to get interesting.

From the goverments point of view, he is a terrorist at worse and a thief and criminal at best.

He's already been given the "sexual scandal" treatment the elites gave to Eliot Spitzer.