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Has WikiLeaks run dry?

In the Sydney Morning Herald, reporter Philip Dorling, who has been following the WikiLeaks story for months, wonders whether Assange and co. may be a spent force now that all 251,287 embassy cables have been released and international media interest in what they contain seems to be waning: But more seriously, nearly a year after ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.
BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images
BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images
BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images

In the Sydney Morning Herald, reporter Philip Dorling, who has been following the WikiLeaks story for months, wonders whether Assange and co. may be a spent force now that all 251,287 embassy cables have been released and international media interest in what they contain seems to be waning:

In the Sydney Morning Herald, reporter Philip Dorling, who has been following the WikiLeaks story for months, wonders whether Assange and co. may be a spent force now that all 251,287 embassy cables have been released and international media interest in what they contain seems to be waning:

But more seriously, nearly a year after critical software was removed by Domscheit-Berg and another WikiLeaks defector, WikiLeaks’ confidential submission mechanism remains out of action.

Assange says the facility will be up and running soon and that WikiLeaks has more startling information in its secure servers, but this remains to be seen.

His trajectory may prove to be like that of a skyrocket, emitting ever larger explosions and showers of sparks before inevitably falling to earth. There will probably be some more bangs, but whether they will be anything as dramatic as those of the past year is unclear.

Assange has talked in the past of turning WikiLeaks on authoritarian government like China and Russia, and even suggested that he has secret Kremlin documents to share. But there hasn’t been much talk of this lately, and Dorling is right to wonder whether Assange really has anything else up his sleeve now that he seems to have run through the Bradley Manning haul. 

As for Domscheit-Berg’s OpenLeaks, it’s been almost exactly a year now since its creation was announced and the kinder, gentler whistleblower site still hasn’t gone live. 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

Tag: Cyber Security & Hacking

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