Dec 10, 2010 13:56 GMT  ·  By

Former WikiLeaks members who left the organization because they unapproved of Assange’s behavior, are preparing to launch a rival whistle-blowing site next Monday.

Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old Icelandic programmer who created key software currently used by WikiLeaks, is one of the people spearheading the new project dubbed Openleaks.

Snorranson left WikiLeaks in September, after he objected to Assange suspending former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, aka Daniel Schmitt.

"We broke from WikiLeaks because a few ex-WikiLeaks members have been very unhappy with the way Assange was conducting things. They realised that ideas they wanted to come across would never be received," Snorranson told AFP.

The new group has since worked on a secure whistleblower-friendly platform that is conceptually based on the same ideas as WikiLeaks, but takes a relatively different approach.

The project will lack Assange’s authoritarian ways of rulling and decisions will be taken democratically. Safe-guards have even been put in place to ensure that no one can obtain control over the others.

"We aim for the organisational structure of the project to be as open as possible. We want this to be transparent," said Snorranson.

He also went on to explain that the group doesn’t consider itslef to be in competition with WikiLeaks and doesn’t want to face the same political pressure as the controversial organization.

Because of this, the new site will not directly publish any leaked information. According to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the platform will offer a secure and anonymous way for whistleblowers to upload data that will only be shared with verified news organizations who will assume editorial responsibility.

As a result of our intention not to publish any document directly and in our own name, we do not expect to experience the kind of political pressure which WikiLeaks is under at this time,” an anonymous source told Dagens Nyheter.

When asked if Daniel Domscheit-Berg is part of the new project, Snorranson denied, but admitted that there are discussions to get him involved. Domscheit-Berg is currently writing a book about the three years he spent at WikiLeaks.