OpenLeaks to launch, rivals WikiLeaks

By Melissa Bell

While its founder Julian Assange sits in jail, the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks faces a new rival: OpenLeaks. OpenLeaks' founder is none other than former WikiLeaks employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who has been the most vocal in criticism toward Assange.

Domscheit-Berg, who went under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, told the Associated Press he quit WikiLeaks after falling out with Assange over what he described as the lack of transparency in the group's decision-making process.

Assange has said that Domscheit-Berg was suspended from the group for misbehaving and that the former employee lashed out at the group simply because he was unhappy with the suspension.

Domscheit-Berg told BBC News that his new site, which will be ready to launch within a few months, will not publish any information leaked to it by anonymous sources, but will work with newspapers, nongovernmental organizations and labor unions to verify and publish the material.

The company is more of a "technology provider," rather than a publishing site. One of Domscheit-Berg's complaints with WikiLeaks was that the project had become too self-promoting and did not focus enough on the material it had been given. OpenLeaks would put the focus on the publishing companies, not on itself.

Domscheit-Berg has been working on a book about his time inside WikiLeaks, which will be released in January.

