Wikileaks’ estranged co-founder becomes a critic
By Declan McCullagh
CNET | July 20, 2010
NEW YORK — John Young was one of Wikileaks’ early founders. Now he’s one of the organization’s more prominent critics. Young, a 74-year-old architect who lives in Manhattan, publishes a document-leaking Web site called Cryptome.org that predates Wikileaks by over a decade. He’s drawn fire from Microsoft after posting leaked internal documents about police requests, irked the U.K. government for disclosing the names of possible spies, and annoyed Homeland Security by disclosing a review of Democratic National Convention security measures. Cryptome’s history of publicizing leaks–while not yielding to pressure to remove them–is what led Young to be invited to join Wikileaks before its launch over three years ago. He also agreed to be the public face of the organization by listing his name on the domain name registration. Operating a Web site to post leaked documents isn’t very expensive (Young estimates he spends a little over $100 a month for Cryptome’s server space). So when other Wikileaks founders started to talk about the need to raise $5 million and complained that an initial round of publicity had affected “our delicate negotiations with the Open Society Institute and other funding bodies,” Young says, he resigned from the effort.
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