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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
News / Biz WikiLeaks rumored to have Bank of America docs
Posted By Rhiannon Fionn-Bowman on Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:04 AM
Of course, a couple of days ago it was a really obscure rumor about some big bank, but not necessarily Charlotte's big bank. Either way, apparently the whistle-blowing website has five gigs of data, which is a lot when you consider it's probably all text, that will implicate a big bank in, um, something. Rumors, you know, aren't always super specific ... but the leaked documents are speculated to contain evidence of "unethical" behavior.
Is that shocking, though? Not really. Still, we're going to have to wait awhile, at least until the beginning of 2011, to find out what documents WikiLeaks — whose site has been under regular hacker attack lately — has in its possession. Until then, just a reminder: All we have is an expensive game of telephone.
By the way, Bank of America's official line on the matter is that they're not concerned. But, are they ever ... about anything?
Of course, the speculation is driving the bank's stock prices down, which means "top" investors are seizing this opportunity to gobble them up. (Notice how the rich assholes rarely lose?)
Meanwhile, the word "terrorist" is being used to describe WikiLeaks, which should be no surprise since the powers that be often use fear to dissuade commoners from paying attention to the important stuff. (Please read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States.")
Here's a snippet from the Forbes magazine interview with WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, that got this gossip game going:
Here's a snippet from that interview:
Forbes: These megaleaks, as you call them, we haven’t seen any of those from the private sector.Assange: No, not at the same scale as for the military.
Forbes: Will we?
Assange: Yes. We have one related to a bank coming up, that’s a megaleak. It’s not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it’s either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it.
Forbes: Is it a U.S. bank?
Assange: Yes, it’s a U.S. bank.
Forbes: One that still exists?
Assange: Yes, a big U.S. bank.
Forbes: The biggest U.S. bank?
Assange: No comment.
Forbes: When will it happen?
Assange: Early next year. I won’t say more.
Forbes: What do you want to be the result of this release?
Assange: [Pauses] I’m not sure.
It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume.
This will be like that. Yes, there will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed, but it will also be all the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos that cames out, and that’s tremendously valuable. Like the Iraq War Logs, yes there were mass casualty incidents that were very newsworthy, but the great value is seeing the full spectrum of the war.
You could call it the ecosystem of corruption. But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest. The way they talk about it.
Read the entire interview here.
Here's more from The Daily Conversation:
Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.
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