The Wall Street Journal is trying to make a play for whistleblowers with its very own Wikileaks clone, SafeHouse. But SafeHouse is the opposite of safe, thanks to basic security flaws and fine print that lets the Journal rat on leakers.
SafeHouse, which launched today to much fanfare, promises to let leakers “securely share information with the Wall Street Journal,” by uploading documents directly to its servers, just like Wikileaks! But unlike Wikileaks, SafeHouse includes a doozy of a caveat in its Terms of Use:
“Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement”¦ we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.”
So, go ahead and upload your explosive documents to SafeHouse. But if they publish a scoop based on your material and someone gets mad, they can sell you out to anyone for any reason, including the insanely broad one of safeguarding “the interests of others.” (And Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper, sure has a lot of interests!)
Wall Street Journal launches Wikileaks-type site with laughable protection
