Anonymous and Wikileaks were the best of buds for the last few years. Members of the hacker collective even risked arrest to obtain emails from Stratfor that were leaked in the GIFiles. That’s why Anonymous wasn’t happy when Wikileaks began to implement aggressive fundraising tactics, including a paywall. In response, Anonymous is creating their own Wikileaks-style site.
Speaking to The Voice of Russia, a member of Anonymous talks about the future of Wiklleaks and their own approach to the leaking game -TYLER. The representative says that Anonymous has serious concerns in regards to Wikileaks and will publish a paper on what they see as “ethical violations and lack of transparency problems” within the organization.
Interestingly enough, they see the fate of Wikileaks intrinsically tied to that of Julian Assange. The representative even goes so far as to say that Assange is Wikileaks. Without him, the whole organization would falter. To that end, they are planning TYLER to be there when and if Wikileaks fails.
So what is TYLER exactly? Anonymous wouldn’t go into much detail, but the representative did say that it won’t be “deployed on a static server.” Instead, TYLER will be “P2P encrypted software, in which every function of a disclosure platform will be handled and shared by everyone who downloads and deploys the software.” It’s their hopes that this system prevents it from ever being shut down.
The hacker collective plans to launch TYLER on December 21, 2012. Anonymous says they chose the date for the publicity, not because they believe in any end of the world predictions. The launch of TYLER will also coincide with Project Mayhem, a movement that Anonymous hopes will inspire wide spread street protests and the publishing of embarrassing state secrets.
For now, Wikileaks continues to operate as Julian Assange battles for his right to political asylum. The site would most likely continue to operate even if he were to be extradited to Sweden as well. It will be interesting to see who publishes the better information as Wikileaks is notorious for taking a long time between receiving and publishing information. Anonymous would most likely throw caution to the wind and publish any information that’s seemingly legitimate.