Unileaks
Today was a full day. I took in a lot of information and I am quite honestly still processing. I will leave today’s lessons for a larger post. For now I will make my 110 about the newest feed I have encountered: UniLeaks.
In brevity, Unileaks is an organization that accepts material related to universities. They currently have repositories in place for a number of universities in Australia and United Kingdom. The United States appears to be in development while other country-based university repositories are still works to-begin progress.
I like the idea. The ‘Administrators’ address some of the controversy revolving Wikileaks - the organization to which I endorse the title: ‘The 1st of its kind’.
From Unileaks ‘Who are we?’ section:
Purpose Unileaks will accept restricted or censored material of political, ethical, diplomatic or historical significance which is in some way connected to higher education, an agency or government body working in partnership with an institution, e.g., a University.
Unwanted Material We absolutely do not accept rumor, opinion, other kinds of first-hand accounts or material that is publicly available elsewhere.
Journalist-based News Reporting We restrict our accepted material because our journalists write news based on the material, and then provide a link to the supporting documentation to prove our stories are true.
‘We are a news organization’ It’s not news if it has been publicly available elsewhere first, and we are a news organisation.
However, from time to time, the editors may re-publish material that has been made public previously elsewhere if the information is in the public interest but did not have proper news analysis when first released.
Protection of sources and third parties: ‘Harm Minimisation Procedure’ Some documents submitted contain highly sensitive information. UniLeaks has developed a harm minimisation procedure to clean documents which might endanger innocent people from being involved.
Example Provided If the document is a meeting minutes for example we may block participants who are not relevant to the discussion to avoid their names being inadvertently tainted. In other instances, UniLeaks may delay publishing some news stories and their supporting documents until the publication will not cause danger to such people.
Exemptions - of course However in all cases, UniLeaks will only redact the details that are absolutely necessary to this end. Everything else will be published to support the news story exactly as it appeared in the original document.
When their first major leak reaches acclaim, they will be bound by Australian law. Yes? It is where the entity is said to be located:
UL PO Box 150, Brunswick East, VIC, 3057, AUSTRALIA
It might be ‘just a PO Box’ but a direct connection to Australia land nonetheless- thus it appears Australia would be the most likely to hold jurisdiction. Hm.
Only time will tell in a an age of nLeaks (boundary-less / jurisdiction hog’s) Internet Age.