A WikiLeaks Family Feud Erupts on Twitter
Posted By Elias Groll, Katelyn Fossett, Foreign Policy
As revelations about the National Security Agency’s intelligence gathering activities continue to trickle out, the ghost of Julian Assange has begun to haunt the activists and journalists fighting back against the all-mighty NSA.
On Thursday, a Twitter spat broke out among a group of former WikiLeaks activists who are now at the forefront of the Snowden revelations, a fight that’s exposing the degree to which Assange continues to loom over a new generation of activist journalism. According to Jacob Appelbaum, a former WikiLeaks associate, the Guardian is sitting on a story about how the NSA handles Tor, the premier application for protecting user anonymity online. On Thursday Appelbaum attacked an editor for the paper and another WikiLeaks alum, James Ball, for refusing to show Appelbaum, a Tor developer, the documents behind that story.
What exactly the Snowden files reveal about the NSA and Tor is, at this point, unclear. But recently-released documents show that the NSA has actively worked to undermine tools for anonymous communication online. Tools like Tor, in other words.
With Tor potentially compromised by the world’s premier intelligence organization, a minor fight in one corner of the Twittersphere is illuminating just how divided Assange’s protégés are about how to carry out investigative journalism in the digital age. Welcome to the front lines of the war between the fourth and fifth estates.
Here’s how that fight played out:
