Bijan Sabet writes that he plans to dig into the source material on WikiLeaks. I imagine a lot of people are in the same place. Hearing conflicting news about this and that, and not hearing enough substance to form an opinion. The story isn't actually all that hard to follow. But you have to go just a little below the surface to see what's going on. Following CNN and reading the home pages of the news sites is where the confusion is published. To get the clarity you have to pick your sources more carefully.

I was in the same place last weekend, and decided to do something about it. I created an aggregator that streams WikiLeaks stories from the four major news organizations that have all the cables, and other news organizations who are downstream from them. They are the ones who decide what to write and when to write it and they release the cables if they need to. There's been a lot of misinformation spread by the press about WikiLeaks.

However a few news outlets have been doing outstanding work to clear the fog. By far the most productive and useful reports are coming from the Guardian. Great stuff.

WikiLeaks itself has a feed where they point to other news orgs that have been working on it. And I supplemented all this with a feed I'm managing myself from scattered stories I pick up from other sources, including people on Twitter.

Key point: You don't have to dive into the source material, the reporters are doing that for us.

This is where all those streams come together...

http://wikiriver.org/

Not looking for a plug, or a link -- I just want to help myself and don't mind sharing what I came up with.

PS: While I was writing this piece, a Spiegel interview with the German Interior Minister was published. He says "WikiLeaks Is Annoying, But Not a Threat."

 12/20/2010; 9:23:05 AM.   .

I saw Reporters Without Borders issue a position on WikiLeaks, urging the US govt to not prosecute.

I've been looking for a way to make a similar statement from the point of view of someone rooted in tech, saying that it's important for the future of the net itself that it get the same freedom that offline media gets.

What I came up with...

http://techwithoutborders.org/

You don't have to agree with the exact statement in order to endorse it, in fact it's better if you don't. Copy the text, edit it as you see fit, and post it on your site. That's why it has a Creative Commons license. That's how we can show that we're not standing alone.

Or copy it exactly as you found it, and link to it. Think of it as an open-source letter signing, on the net.

I don't expect tech companies to get on board here (though it would be nice if they did). But I am hopeful that the individuals in tech will stand up for the First Amendment.

It's time to stand up. Find a way to say, no matter where you live, that freedom of speech happens everywhere, including the net.

 12/20/2010; 7:53:31 AM.   .