Following last week’s high profile spat between Anonymous and WikiLeaks, reports from Russia say that the hacktivist collective is set to go it alone and launch its own “secure, no cost, decentralized” whistleblowing platform to rival the one started by Julian Assange.

Details of the TYLER Project were revealed in an exclusive interview between one of Anonymous’ leading members and the Voice of Russia.

The hacker, who true to style chose to remain ‘anonymous’, explained how Anonymous members have become disillusioned with WikiLeaks, which they accuse of a lack of transparency and of using so-called ‘coercive’ techniques to raise money.

Last week’s war of words and consequent split between Anonymous and WikiLeaks caused headlines around the world – given that the hacktivist collective has been one of Assange’s most steadfast allies in its mission to share classified information and secret data with the general public.

Anonymous later accused WikiLeaks of dishonoring and insulting its members and all information activists by its insistence on asking people for a donation or ‘like’ in order to view the documents hosted on its site. Previously, all of the material published on WikiLeaks was free to view.

But there’s a problem with Anonymous’ recent attacks on WikiLeaks – the loosely structured collective lacks any defined leaders, meaning many have been left to wonder if the opinions expressed represent the majority view of the group – or just the view a handful of members.

However, the representative interviewed by the Voice of Russia claimed that the views expressed recently represent the vast majority of the collective – he claims Anonymous sees WikiLeak’s new move as a violation of ethics, and threatened to begin publishing details about WikiLeaks itself in response:

“What we would like to see released – either legitimately or leaked to Anonymous by a WikiLeaks insider – is the WikiLeaks financial records. We do not possess these, but should they be delivered to us we would certainly disclose them. An organization that preaches transparency to the world should provide it for themselves.”

The representative then went on to discuss WikiLeaks’ financial problems in more detail, and the organization’s reasons for installing a paywall:

“Julian has threatened on at least one previous occasion to pull the plug on the project because the fundraising was not meeting his expectations. It was at that time that Anonymous began planning to field our own alternative disclosure platforms. Julian desperately needs WikiLeaks, and he is the only one that can pull the plug on the project. I rather think that so long as he is in dire straits, he will not do so – despite any threats from him to the contrary.”

For its part, WikiLeaks claims that the paywall is regretful, but necessary for it to stay online:

“WikiLeaks faces unprecedented costs due to involvement in over 12 concurrent legal matters around the world, including our litigation of the US military in the Bradley Manning case. Our FBI file as of the start of the year had grown to 42,135 pages.”

WikiLeaks has become a ‘one man show’ say Anonymous

But many in Anonymous disagree with that claim, and say that the paywall is just a fundraising scam for Assange himself, hence the split last week.

Another statement posted by Anonymous says that the collective cannot continue to support Julian Assange’s ‘one man show’. It said that the collective still supports WikiLeaks’ stated goals, but claims that the website itself has lost track of them.

Anonymous now plans to wash its hands of the whole WikiLeaks saga, and for the first time, the group’s representative outlined its future plans to the Voice of Russia.

He says that the collective is now focused on its upcoming TYLER Project, which he claimed will go live on December 21, 2012 – the same date that the Mayans predicted to be the “end of the world”.  The project has been in the works for some time already, and the collective believes that it will be a definite improvement on WikiLeak’s as it will have several unique features:

“It will not be deployed on a static server. 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. In theory, this makes it sort of like BitCoin or other P2P platforms in that there is virtually no way to attack it or shut it down. It would also obviously be thoroughly decentralized.”

Since the interview, a video has appeared on YouTube giving more details of Project TYLER, describing it as a kind of protest against the US government and its 2012 Cybersecurity act

“We now call upon the top hacktivists, coders, crypto anarchists, cypher punks, Non-violent Civil Rights activists, Internet Censorship and Freedom of Speech activists everywhere to collaborate to jointly BRAINSTORM IDEAS to develop TYLER.”

“TYLER is a massively distributed and decentralized Wikipedia-style P2P cipherspace structure impregnable to censorship. TYLER will improve where Wikileaks could not. In other words TYLER will be a Wikileaks on steroids.”

Before Project TYLER goes live, the video calls for anyone who supports the collective to contribute as much evidence on fraud, illegality and corruption as they can, and upload it to the new platform.

Ominously, Anonymous ends the video with the warning that Project TYLER is but a small part of its larger protest effort, Project Mayhem.