18 August 2009. Updated.
17 August 2009. Updated.
14 August 2009

Subject: SV: SV: SV: Wikileaks/Norwegian Business Daily
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:31:39 +0200
From: "Erlend Ofte Arntsen" <erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no>
To: "John Young" <jya[at]pipeline.com>

Hello again,

If it is possible, I would kindly ask you remove my name, contactinfo,
as well as my employers name and contactinfo in the e-mails you have
published on Cryptome.org.

Many thanks,

Erlend.

Subject: SV: SV: SV: Wikileaks/Norwegian Business Daily
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:44:50 +0200
From: "Erlend Ofte Arntsen" <erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no>
To: "John Young" <jya[at]pipeline.com>

I can't see how this is an answer to what I asked?

Subject: SV: SV: Wikileaks/Norwegian Business Daily
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:38:08 +0200
From: "Erlend Ofte Arntsen" <erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no>
To: "John Young" <jya[at]pipeline.com>

Thank you very much for this, John.

Two follow-up-questions:

Can you tell me what separates you from Wikileaks with regard to transparency? Why do you not resemble the ones you try to expose?

And why are you not naïve about the dynamics of leaking as you claim WL to be?

Cryptome:

Based on your simplistic questions you are highly ignorant of Cryptome and Wikileaks. You seem to know only the most superficial of gossip about both. That causes suspicions of you and the shallow entertainment means and methods being used, casual, gossipy, trivial.

So far you have behaved like another lazy, unprepared, unscrupulous agent of a "reputable" news outlet, sweet-talking, sharpening editorial knives in the background to diminish information for the sake of advertising space.

I think you are out to screw Cryptome and Wikileaks under guise of providing news. Not the first who has manufactured that trash to sell ads.

Do your homework for ten years and come again ready for exchange of information.

You are also a sucker for believing my previous emails. Hear this, don't trust the Internet.

Subject: Wikileaks/Norwegian Business Daily
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:16:53 +0200
From: "Erlend Ofte Arntsen" <erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no>
To: <cryptome[at]earthlink.net>

Hello Mr. Young,

I am writing you on behalf of Norwegian Business Daily's (Dagens Næringsliv) Saturday magazine. NBD is Norways leading financial newspaper with approx. 300.000 readers every day. Our Saturday magazine is well known for its dirt-digging documentaries and revealing journalism, supplemented by broader features on culture, trends and society.

I am doing a feature on Wikileaks.org.

What is your view on Wikileaks? Strengths and weaknesses?

All the best,

Erlend Ofte Arntsen

Journalist Norwegian Business Daily

__________________________

Dagens Næringsliv
Mobile: +47 98 07 08 24
E-mail: erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no

Visiting address: Christian Krohgsgt 16, Oslo

Postal address: P.O. Box 1182 Sentrum, N-0109 Oslo
Web site: www.dn.no
About: www.nhst.no/dn

Cryptome:

Erlend,

You might wish to know that Cryptome publishes inquiries about
Wikileaks.

Wikileaks strength is its capaciousness for publishing a wide range
of information unnecessarily withheld from the public, in the process
strengthening democracies, weakening authoritarians and helping
diminish the power of self-selected judges of what the public
should know.

Wikileaks weaknesses are about the same as its strengths due to
its lack of transparency about its operation.

Wikileaks suffers the disease of righteousness of privileged journalism
and privileged government, obsessed with keeping to itself its sources,
means and methods while touting them as indicators of value.

Both journalism and government prattle and brag way too much about
obligations to the public while being determined to maintain power,
influence and concomitant benefits of funding, prestige and condescension
to consumers. And, to be sure, whining like spoiled children when
challenged, disrespected, neglected or asked to justify the perks of
privilieged access to information and exploitation of sources "oh no,
we never pay for information" -- a manifest dissimulation to conceal
that notoriety is the fee paid.

No way to double-check the validity of information provided by those
who themselves cannot be double-checked at the very moment the
information is provided. Hoary claims for protecting sources have
become discredited by the failure of the claims-makers to subtantiate
their own credibility by abuse of source-protection claims to vaunt
the significance of information -- a practice long used by spies, a
holdover from the days of believing only torture provided truth.

Dispensers of public information would benefit from sustained investigation
by outside parties as with any other closed and secretive public interest
organization. Regulated oversight and self-investigation is fruitless,
as evidenced by the advanced practices of exculpation by media and
government, both learning from and leaning on the other in complicity
of assuring one another's continued success.

Wikileaks too much resembles those whom it seeks to expose. And that
should not be the case, as it should not be for journalism or its kissing
cousin secret government.

I would hope Wikileaks matures into a publicly accountable operation,
subjecting itself to the means and methods it has adopted from
those who believe information asymmetry is just great. It could show
professional journalism, and maybe some distant day government, how
to do that. And give up the obnoxious addictive vainglory.

Subject: SV: Wikileaks/Norwegian Business Daily
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:33:04 +0200
From: "Erlend Ofte Arntsen" <erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no>
To: "John Young" <jya[at]pipeline.com>

Thanks! This is very good stuff.

And, yes, I do know you have published inquires about Wikileaks. I was
interested in your view on WL because you're in the same "business" of
exposing gov secrecy, but not involved in WL.

What would be an accurate description of your background?

Where are you located? Would you be willing to be visited/meet up
of/with a photographer?

Erlend.

Cryptome:

This should not be about me, thanks very much, so I decline to
answer your questions along that line without an attorney. No
photos, please, not photos.

Still this under-duress confession is coerced by your implied
threats of exposure:

That I run the Cryptome web site with my partner Deborah Natsios
is sufficiently mysterious candor. There is a brief description of its
purpose and a link to our superb architectural business on the main
page and its geophysical location. The date of Cryptome's founding
and number of files on our multiple sites are condensed in a pitch
at the top of the page. That babel is who we are and what we do,
I swear, omitting the usual secret vices and unspeakably civilized
transgressions. Those you can see via Google as well as witty
twisted-underdrawers hearsay -- all of it most welcome and
above board, soon, we fear, waterboard.

Subject: SV: Wikileaks/Norwegian Business Daily
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:36:38 +0200
From: "Erlend Ofte Arntsen" <erlend.arntsen[at]dn.no>
To: "John Young" <jya[at]pipeline.com>

And what do you know about the people behind Wikileaks? Julian Assange?
Daniel Schmitt?

Erlend.

Cryptome:

I don't know Schmitt, and know Julian through his vainglorious
missives about the media not jumping to give Wikileaks the
coverage he thinks it deserves.

The business of leaks has become a racket of journalism in
cahoots with governments, maybe it always was, but it got a
big boost in the 1960s and 70s. Leaks of secrets are now
standard operating procedure of official and unofficial secret
keepers to boost their budgets and privileges and to garner
public belief and best of all, coins.

Secret keepers supply leaks to media to lure eyeballs for
advertising hypnosis. Whether Wikileaks is witting or unwitting
in boosting the leaks cartel of remunerative disclosure is not
yet as clear as it is for commercial journalism where it is seen
as an exclusive right, even patriotic duty, of "reputable journalism."

"Never go too far," is the creed, or the leaks spigot will be closed.

How WL's million-bucks fund-raising has gone is not transparent,
nor how much is fudged, nor how the take has been distributed,
nada, aping the master secret keepers: that's classified.

Hmmm, quacks like duck, likely a duck.