WikiLeaks rival Openleaks "coming soon": website

LONDON (Reuters) - The former deputy to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is vowing to launch a rival site soon that he says will be more transparent than the original.

Dubbed "Openleaks" (www.openleaks.org) and run by Assange's former number two at WikiLeaks Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the site has no content on it at the moment apart from a logo and the message "Coming soon!"

In an interview with the OWNI technology website, Domscheit-Berg declined to go into the details of his dispute with Wikileaks but suggested it had strayed from its mission.

"In these last months, the organization has not been open any more, it lost its open-source promise," he said, adding that Openleaks plans to provide the means for leaked information to be published, without itself being a publisher.

U.S. and other authorities have cracked down on WikiLeaks and Assange since the site started publishing thousands of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that have embarrassed the United States and other parties around the world.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, is in policy custody in Britain after a European arrest warrant was issued by Sweden, which wants to question him about allegations of sexual crimes. He denies the allegations.

Domscheit-Berg, who was previously involved with German hacker group the Chaos Computer Club, said Openleaks would begin trials in early 2011 and turn to bigger media later. It currently has 10 members.

"We are already drowning in applications," he said.

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; editing by Noah Barkin)