WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks (http://46.59.1.2) screenshot in 2010-12-08 WikiLeaks homepage on 8 December 2010
Type of site	Document archive
Available in	Multilingual
Owner	The Sunshine Press
Created by	Julian Assange
URL	Former: wikileaks.org (offline) IP addresses: 213.251.145.96 46.59.1.2 Top-level domains: wikileaks.at wikileaks.ch wikileaks.de wikileaks.fi wikileaks.is wikileaks.nl wikileaks.no Official mirrors list (1,368 as of 2010-12-09)
Commercial	No

WikiLeaks is an international new media non-profit organization that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous news sources and leaks. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press. Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents. The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. The Guardian newspaper describes Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, as its director.

WikiLeaks has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award. In June 2009, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International's UK Media Award (in the category "New Media") for the 2008 publication of "Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances", a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya. In May 2010, the New York Daily News listed WikiLeaks first in a ranking of "websites that could totally change the news".

In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by U.S. forces, on a website called Collateral Murder. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review. In October, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks was originally launched as a user-editable wiki site, but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model, and no longer accepts either user comments or edits. The site is available on multiple servers and different domain names following a number of denial-of-service attacks and its severance from different Domain Name System (DNS) providers.

History

The WikiLeaks website first appeared on the Internet in December 2006.The site claims to have been "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa".

Julian Assange, the main spokesperson for WikiLeaks

The creators of WikiLeaks have not been formally identified. It has been represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assange and others. Assange describes himself as a member of WikiLeaks' advisory board. News reports in The Australian have called Assange the "founder of WikiLeaks". According to Wired magazine, a volunteer said that Assange described himself in a private conversation as "the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest". As of June 2009, the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange, Phillip Adams, Wang Dan, C. J. Hinke, Ben Laurie, Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, Xiao Qiang, Chico Whitaker and Wang Youcai. Despite appearing on the list, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsang said that while he received an e-mail from WikiLeaks, he had never agreed to be an advisor. Starting in 2010, Kristinn Hrafnsson has also acted as a spokesman for the group.

WikiLeaks states that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations."

In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish. An article in The New Yorker said:

One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that was being used as a node for the Tor network. Millions of secret transmissions passed through it. The activist noticed that hackers from China were using the network to gather foreign governments’ information, and began to record this traffic. Only a small fraction has ever been posted on WikiLeaks, but the initial tranche served as the site’s foundation, and Assange was able to say, "[w]e have received over one million documents from thirteen countries."

Assange responded to the suggestion that eavesdropping on Chinese hackers played a crucial part in the early days of WikiLeaks by saying "the imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 investigation into Chinese espionage one of our contacts were involved in. Somewhere between none and handful of those documents were ever released on WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the Chinese espionage, such as Tibetan associations were informed (by us)". The group has subsequently released a number of other significant documents which have become front-page news items, ranging from documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.

The organization's stated goal is to ensure that whistleblowers and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents, as happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The project has drawn comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. In the United States, the leaking of some documents may be legally protected. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution guarantees anonymity, at least in the area of political discourse. Author and journalist Whitley Strieber has spoken about the benefits of the WikiLeaks project, noting that "Leaking a government document can mean jail, but jail sentences for this can be fairly short. However, there are many places where it means long incarceration or even death, such as China and parts of Africa and the Middle East."

On 24 December 2009, WikiLeaks announced that it was experiencing a shortage of funds and suspended all access to its website except for a form to submit new material. Material that was previously published was no longer available, although some could still be accessed on unofficial mirrors. WikiLeaks stated on its website that it would resume full operation once the operational costs were covered. WikiLeaks saw this as a kind of strike "to ensure that everyone who is involved stops normal work and actually spends time raising revenue". While the organisation initially planned for funds to be secured by 6 January 2010, it was not until 3 February 2010 that WikiLeaks announced that its minimum fundraising goal had been achieved.

On 22 January 2010, PayPal suspended WikiLeaks' donation account and froze its assets. WikiLeaks said that this had happened before, and was done for "no obvious reason". The account was restored on 25 January 2010. On 18 May 2010, WikiLeaks announced that its website and archive were back up.

As of June 2010, WikiLeaks was a finalist for a grant of more than half a million dollars from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, but did not make the cut. WikiLeaks commented, "WikiLeaks was highest rated project in the Knight challenge, strongly recommended to the board but gets no funding. Go figure”. WikiLeaks said that the Knight foundation announced the award to "'12 Grantees who will impact future of news' – but not WikiLeaks" and questioned whether Knight foundation was "really looking for impact". A spokesman of the Knight Foundation disputed parts of WikiLeaks' statement, saying "WikiLeaks was not recommended by Knight staff to the board." However, he declined to say whether WikiLeaks was the project rated highest by the Knight advisory panel, which consists of non-staffers, among them journalist Jennifer 8. Lee, who has done PR work for WikiLeaks with the press and on social networking sites.

On 17 July Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City, replacing Assange because of the presence of federal agents at the conference. He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended. Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again.

Upon returning to the U.S. from the Netherlands, on 29 July, Appelbaum was detained for three hours at the airport by U.S. agents, according to anonymous sources. The sources told Cnet that Appelbaum's bag was searched, receipts from his bag were photocopied, his laptop was inspected, although in what manner was unclear. Appelbaum reportedly refused to answer questions without a lawyer present, and was not allowed to make a phone call. His three mobile phones were reportedly taken and not returned. On 31 July, he spoke at a Defcon conference and mentioned his phone being "seized". After speaking, he was approached by two FBI agents and questioned.

Administration

According to a January 2010 interview, the WikiLeaks team then consisted of five people working full-time and about 800 people who worked occasionally, none of whom were compensated. WikiLeaks has no official headquarters. The expenses per year are about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but would reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for. WikiLeaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Its only revenue stream is donations, but WikiLeaks is planning to add an auction model to sell early access to documents. According to the Wau Holland Foundation, WikiLeaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth. An article in TechEYE.net wrote

As a charity accountable under German law, donations for WikiLeaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in escrow and are given to WikiLeaks after the whistleblower website files an application containing a statement with proof of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor give any renumeration [sic] to WikiLeaks' personnel, corroborating the statement of the site's former German representative Daniel Schmitt (real name Daniel Domscheit-Berg) on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.

Site management issues

Within WikiLeaks, there has been public disagreement between founder and spokesperson Julian Assange and Domscheit-Berg, the site's former German representative who was suspended by Assange. Domscheit-Berg announced on 28 September 2010 that he was leaving the organization due to internal conflicts over management of the site.

Hosting

WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". WikiLeaks is hosted by PRQ, a Sweden-based company providing "highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services". PRQ is said to have "almost no information about its clientele and maintains few if any of its own logs". The servers are spread around the world with the central server located in Sweden. Julian Assange has said that the servers are located in Sweden (and the other countries) "specifically because those nations offer legal protection to the disclosures made on the site". He talks about the Swedish constitution, which gives the information providers total legal protection. It is forbidden according to Swedish law for any administrative authority to make inquiries about the sources of any type of newspaper. These laws, and the hosting by PRQ, make it difficult to take WikiLeaks offline. Furthermore, "Wikileaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption to protect sources and other confidential information." Such arrangements have been called "bulletproof hosting."

On 17 August 2010, it was announced that the Swedish Pirate Party will be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks' new servers. The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge. Technicians of the party will make sure that the servers are maintained and working.

Some servers are hosted in an underground nuclear bunker in Stockholm.

After the site became the target of a denial-of-service attack from a hacker on its old servers, WikiLeaks moved its site to Amazon's servers. Later, however, the website was "ousted" from the Amazon servers, without a public statement from the company. WikiLeaks then decided to install itself on the servers of OVH in France. After criticism from the French government, the company sought two court ruling about the legality of hosting WikiLeaks. While the court in Lille immediately declined to force OVH to shut down the WikiLeaks site, the court in Paris stated it would need more time to examine the highly technical issue.

WikiLeaks is based on several software packages, including MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP. WikiLeaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor because of the strong privacy needs of its users.

On 4 November 2010, Julian Assange told Swiss public television TSR that he is seriously considering seeking political asylum in neutral Switzerland and setting up a WikiLeaks foundation in the country to move the operation there. According to Assange, Switzerland and Iceland are the only countries where WikiLeaks would feel safe to operate.

Name and policies

Despite using the name "WikiLeaks", the website is no longer wiki-based as of December 2010. Also, despite some popular confusion due to both having the term "wiki" in their names, WikiLeaks and Wikipedia have no affiliation with each other; i.e. "wiki" is not a brand name.

The "about" page originally read:

To the user, WikiLeaks will look very much like Wikipedia. Anybody can post to it, anybody can edit it. No technical knowledge is required. Leakers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity. Users can discuss interpretations and context and collaboratively formulate collective publications. Users can read and write explanatory articles on leaks along with background material and context. The political relevance of documents and their verisimilitude will be revealed by a cast of thousands.

However, WikiLeaks established an editorial policy that accepted only documents that were "of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical interest" (and excluded "material that is already publicly available"). This coincided with early criticism that having no editorial policy would drive out good material with spam and promote "automated or indiscriminate publication of confidential records." It is no longer possible for anybody to post to it or edit it, as the original FAQ promised. Instead, submissions are regulated by an internal review process and some are published, while documents not fitting the editorial criteria are rejected by anonymous WikiLeaks reviewers. By 2008, the revised FAQ stated that "Anybody can post comments to it. [...] Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity." After the 2010 relaunch, posting new comments to leaks was no longer possible.

Verification of submissions

WikiLeaks states that it has never released a misattributed document. Documents are assessed before release. In response to concerns about the possibility of misleading or fraudulent leaks, WikiLeaks has stated that misleading leaks "are already well-placed in the mainstream media. WikiLeaks is of no additional assistance." The FAQ states that: "The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents."

According to statements by Assange in 2010, submitted documents are vetted by a group of five reviewers, with expertise in different fields such as language or programming, who also investigate the background of the leaker if his or her identity is known. In that group, Assange has the final decision about the assessment of a document.

Legal status

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been denied bail by a judge after surrendering to British authorities over a Swedish arrest warrant on Thursday 12/2/10.Assange was arrested at 9:30 a.m local time Tuesday and appeared before Westminster Magistrate's Court. He surrendered Tuesday under an agreement reached between his own lawyers and the police. Also The Justice Department is considering a criminal case against WikiLeaks. Mr Assange is quoted as acknowledging that his practice of posting largely unfiltered classified information online could one day lead the Web site to have "blood on our hands."

Legal background

The legal status of WikiLeaks is complex. Its servers are located throughout Europe and are accessible from any uncensored web connection. The files it leaks are from countries around the world in which they may have various legal statuses. WikiLeaks headquarters is in Sweden because of its strong shield laws to protect confidential journalistic sources. WikiLeaks has stated it does not request classified or confidential materials. However, on previous occasions WikiLeaks has requested recommendations and has published lists of "Most Wanted" documents from the public.

Potential criminal prosecution

The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal probe of Wikileaks and founder Julian Assange shortly after the leak of diplomatic cables began. Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed the probe was "not saber-rattling", but was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation.". The The Washington Post reported that the department was considering charges under the Espionage Act, a move which former prosecutors characterized as "difficult" because of First Amendment protections for the press. Several Supreme Court cases have previously established that the American constitution protects the re-publication of illegally gained information provided the publishers did not themselves break any laws in acquiring it. Federal prosecutors have also considered prosecuting Assange for trafficking in stolen government property, but since the diplomatic cables are intellectual rather than physical property, that approach also faces hurdles.

In Australia, the government and the Australian Federal Police have not stated which Australian law may have been broken by WikiLeaks, but Julia Gillard has stated that the foundation of Wikileaks and the stealing of classified documents from the US administration, is illegal in foreign countries. Spencer Zifcak, President of Liberty Victoria, an Australian civil liberties group, notes that with no charge, and no trial completed, it is inappropriate to state that WikiLeaks is guilty of illegality.

On threats by various governments toward Assange, legal expert Ben Saul argues that founder Julian Assange is the target of a global smear campaign to demonise him as a criminal or as a terrorist, without any legal basis.

Insurance file

On 29 July 2010 WikiLeaks added a 1.4 GB "Insurance File" to the Afghan War Diary page. The file is AES encrypted and has been speculated to serve as insurance in case the WikiLeaks website or its spokesman Julian Assange are incapacitated, upon which the passphrase could be published, similar to the concept of a dead man's switch. Following the first few days' release of the United States diplomatic cables starting 28 November 2010, the US television broadcaster CBS predicted that "If anything happens to Assange or the website, a key will go out to unlock the files. There would then be no way to stop the information from spreading like wildfire because so many people already have copies." CBS correspondent Declan McCullagh stated, "What most folks are speculating is that the insurance file contains unreleased information that would be especially embarrassing to the US government if it were released."

Investigations, censorship, harassment, and surveillance

According to The Times, WikiLeaks and its members have complained about continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organizations, including extended detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, “covert following and hidden photography.” Two lawyers for Julian Assange in the United Kingdom told The Guardian that they believed they were being watched by the security services after the US cables leak.

By governments

Police raid on German WikiLeaks domain holder's home

The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the German WikiLeaks domain name, wikileaks.de, was raided on 24 March 2009 after WikiLeaks released the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist. The site was not affected.

China

Wikileaks's website claims that the government of the People's Republic of China has attempted to block all traffic to web sites with "wikileaks" in the URL since 2007, but that this can be bypassed through encrypted connections or by using one of Wikileaks's many covert URLs.

Potential future Australian censorship

On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added WikiLeaks to their proposed blacklist of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme is implemented as planned. The blacklisting was removed 30 November 2010.

Thai censorship

The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) is currently censoring the website WikiLeaks in Thailand and more than 40,000 other webpages because of the emergency decree in Thailand imposed as a result of political instabilities (Emergency decree declared beginning of April 2010).

United States

Access to WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the United States Library of Congress. On 3 December 2010 the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a memo forbidding all unauthorized federal government employees and contractors from accessing classified documents publicly available on WikiLeaks and other websites. The Justice Department is also considering criminally prosecuting WikiLeaks and Assange, although former prosecutors say doing so would be difficult.

Iceland

After the release of the 2007 airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai airstrike, Julian Assange has said that his group of volunteers came under intense surveillance. In an interview and Twitter posts he said that a restaurant in Reykjavík where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; there was "covert following and hidden photography" by police and foreign intelligence services; that an apparent British intelligence agent made thinly veiled threats in a Luxembourg car park; and that one of the volunteers was detained by police for 21 hours. Another volunteer posted that computers were seized, saying "If anything happens to us, you know why ... and you know who is responsible." According to the Columbia Journalism Review, "the Icelandic press took a look at Assange’s charges of being surveilled in Iceland [...] and, at best, have found nothing to substantiate them."

In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank, succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked by a whistleblower to WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks site; faced with an injunction minutes before broadcast the channel ran with a screen grab of the WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the bank. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance. Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers. Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former volunteer for WikiLeaks and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.

By organizations and companies

Facebook Inc.

WikiLeaks claimed in April 2010 that Facebook deleted their fan page, which had 30,000 fans. However, as of 7 December 2010 the group's Facebook fan page was available and had grown by 100.000 fans daily since December 1, to more than 1,000,000 fans. It is also the largest growth of the week. Regarding the presence of WikiLeaks on Facebook, Andrew Noyes, the company's D.C. based Manager of Public Policy Communications has stated "the Wikileaks Facebook Page does not violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies."

Moneybookers Ltd

In October 2010, it was reported that Moneybookers, which collected donations for WikiLeaks, had ended its relationship with the site. Moneybookers stated that its decision had been made "to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities, agencies or commissions."

After the US diplomatic cables leak

Following the US diplomatic cables leak, which started on 28 November 2010, several companies severed ties with WikiLeaks. After providing 24-hour notification, American owned EveryDNS dropped WikiLeaks from its entries on 2 December 2010, citing DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure". The site's 'info' DNS lookup remained operational at alternative addresses for direct access respectively to the Wikileaks and Cablegate websites. On the same day, Amazon.com severed its ties with WikiLeaks, to which it was providing infrastructure services, after an intervention by an aide of US Senator Joe Lieberman. Amazon denied acting under political pressure citing a violation of its terms of service. Two days later, PayPal, the payment processor owned by eBay, permanently cut off the account of the Wau Holland Foundation that had been redirecting donations to WikiLeaks. PayPal alleged that the account violated its "Acceptable Use Policy", specifically that it was used for "activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity." The Vice President of PayPal later stated that they stopped accepting payments after the “State Dept told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward.”, later the same day he said that his previous statement was incorrect, and that it was in fact based on a letter from the State Department to WikiLeaks. In the days following, hundreds of mirrors of the WikiLeaks site appeared and the Anonymous group of internet activists, called on supporters to attack the websites of companies who do not support WikiLeaks, under the banner of Operation Payback, previously aimed at anti-piracy organisations. The Associated Free Press reported that attempts to shut down the wikileaks.org address had lead to the site surviving via the so-called Streisand effect, whereby attempts to censor information online leads to it being replicated in many places. On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange that it holds, totalling 31,000 euros. In a statement on their website, they stated that this was because Assange "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account. Wikileaks released a statement saying this was due to that Assange, "as a homeless refugee attempting to gain residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's address in Geneva for the bank's correspondence". On the same day, MasterCard announced that it "is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products", adding "MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal." The next day, Visa Inc. announced it was suspending payments to WikiLeaks, pending "further investigations". In a move of support for WikiLeaks, XIPWIRE established a way to donate to WikiLeaks, and waived their fees.

On 8 December 2010 the Wau Holland Foundation released a press statement, saying it has filed a legal action against PayPal for blocking its account used for WikiLeaks payments and for libel due to PayPal's alegations of "illegal activity." Datacell, the Swiss-based IT company that enabled Wikileaks to accept credit card donations announced that it will take legal action against Visa Europe and Mastercard, in order to resume allowing payments to the website.

Reception

Support

Daniel Ellsberg (2006) has made numerous media interviews supporting WikiLeaks.

In July 2010 Veterans for Peace president Mike Ferner editorialized on the group's website "neither Wikileaks nor the soldier or soldiers who divulged the documents should be prosecuted for revealing this information. We should give them a medal."

Documentary filmmaker John Pilger wrote an August 2010 editorial in the Australian publication Green Left titled "Wikileaks Must Be Defended." In it, Pilger said WikiLeaks represented the interests of "public accountability" and a new form of journalism at odds with "the dominant section ... devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it."

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, has been a frequent defender of WikiLeaks. Following the November 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables, Ellsberg rejected criticism that the site was endangering the lives of U.S. military personnel and intelligence assets stating "not one single soldier or informant has been in danger from any of the WikiLeaks releases. That risk has been largely overblown." Ellsberg went on to note that government claims to the contrary were "a script that they roll out every time there's a leak of any sort."

On 3 December 2010 Republican Congressman of Texas, Ron Paul, spoke out publicly during a Fox Business interview in support of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange; "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble." Paul went on to state, "Why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?" Fellow Republican congressman Connie Mack IV of Florida also praised WikiLeaks, stating that Americans have a right to know the contents of the leaks, “no matter how we acquire that knowledge.”

Following the November 2010 leak of United States diplomatic cables The Atlantic, in a staff editorial, opined "Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press." Calling legal and physical threats against WikiLeaks volunteers "shameful" the magazine went on to state, "Not since President Richard Nixon directed his minions to go after Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan ... has a working journalist and his source been subjected to the kind of official intimidation and threats that have been directed at Assange and Manning by high-ranking members of the Obama Administration."

On 4 December 2010 Reporters Without Borders condemned the "blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure" being directed at WikiLeaks. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

In an article titled "Only WikiLeaks Can Save US Policy" published on the online foreign affairs magazine The Diplomat, former long-time CIA counter-terrorism expert Michael Scheuer said the source of interest in WikiLeaks revelations was in the inherent dishonesty of recent U.S. administrations. "In recent years, the US public has had to hear its leaders repeatedly tell Americans that black was white," Scheuer wrote, referencing the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Evan Hughes, editor-in-chief of wired.com published his support for WikiLeaks in an online editorial titled "Why WikiLeaks is Good for America." Despite an often contentious relationship between Wired and WikiLeaks, with the former having being accused by the latter of complicity in the identification and arrest of Bradley Manning, Hughes argued that "WikiLeaks stands to improve our democracy, not weaken it." He went on to note that "The greatest threat we face right now from WikiLeaks is not the information it has spilled and may spill in the future, but the reactionary response to it that’s building in the United States that promises to repudiate the rule of law and our free speech traditions, if left unchecked."

The New York Times reported that over 200 WikiLeaks mirror sites sprang up after some hosting companies cut their services to the company. On December 5, a group of activists and hackers known as "Anonymous" called upon supporters to attack sites of companies that oppose WikiLeaks as part of Operation Avenge Assange. Paypal has been targeted following their decision to stop processing donations for Wikileaks. Gregg Housh, who previously worked on other projects with Anonymous, said that he had noticed an organized attempt taking place to attack companies that have not supported WikiLeaks. In reference to the support being shown for Wikileaks, Mr. Housh said; "The reason is amazingly simple, we all believe that information should be free, and the Internet should be free." On 8 December 2010 Paypal website was victim of a Denial-of-service attack by Anonymous. Later that day, Paypal announced in their blog that they will release all remaining funds in the account to the foundation that was raising funds for WikiLeaks. On the same day, the websites of Visa and Mastercard were attacked by WikiLeaks supporters. By then over 1,200 mirror sites had been set up for hosting content no longer accessible at WikiLeaks.com. Anonymous also issued a fresh statement; "While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons. We want transparency, and we counter censorship .…This is why we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against, and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy."

On 8 December 2010 the international civic organization Avaaz launched a petition in support of WikiLeaks.

Awards received

In 2008, Index on Censorship presented WikiLeaks with their inaugural Economist New Media Award.

In 2009, Amnesty International awarded WikiLeaks their Media Award for exposing "extra judicial killings and disappearances" in Kenya.

Praise by governments

Ecuador In late November 2010 a representative of the government of Ecuador made what was, apparently, an unsolicited public offer to Julian Assange to establish residency in Ecuador. Deputy Foreign Minister Kinto Lucas stated "we are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just on the Internet, but in various public forums." Lucas went on to state his praise for WikiLeaks and Assange calling them "[people] who are constantly investigating and trying to get light out of the dark corners of [state] information." The following day, however, president Rafael Correa distanced his administration from the offer stating that Lucas had been speaking for himself and not on the government's behalf. Correa then criticized Assange for "breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information."

Venezuela Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, stated his support for WikiLeaks following the release of U.S. diplomatic cables in November 2010 that showed the United States had tried to rally support from regional governments to isolate Venezuela. "I have to congratulate the people of WikiLeaks for their bravery and courage," Chávez commented in televised remarks.

United Nations In December 2010 United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank LaRue stated he agreed with the idea that Julian Assange was a "martyr for free speech." LaRue went on to say Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face legal accountability for any information they disseminated, noting that, "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."

Criticism

WikiLeaks has attracted criticism from a variety of sources.

In 2007 John Young, operator of Cryptome, left his position on the WikiLeaks Board of Directors accusing the group of being a "CIA conduit." Young subsequently retreated from his assertion but has continued to be critical of the site. In a 2010 interview with CNET.com Young accused the group of a lack of transparency regarding their fundraising and financial management. He went on to state his belief that WikiLeaks could not guarantee whistleblowers the anonymity or confidentiality they claimed and that he "would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about at risk."

Citing the leaking of the sorority rituals of Alpha Sigma Tau, Steven Aftergood has opined that WikiLeaks "does not respect the rule of law nor does it honor the rights of individuals." Aftergood went on to state that WikiLeaks engages in unrestrained disclosure of non-governmental secrets without compelling public policy reasons and that many anti-corruption activists were opposed to the site's activities.

In 2010, Amnesty International joined several other human rights groups criticizing WikiLeaks for not adequately redacting the names of Afghan civilians working as U.S. military informants from files they had released. Julian Assange responded by offering Amnesty International staff the opportunity to assist in the document vetting process. When Amnesty International appeared to express reservations in accepting the offer, Assange dismissed the group as "people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses." Other groups that joined Amnesty International in criticizing WikiLeaks subsequently noted that, despite their displeasure over the issue of civilian name redaction, they generally appreciated WikiLeaks work.

In an August 2010 open letter, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders praised WikiLeaks' past usefulness in exposing "serious violations of human rights and civil liberties" but criticized the group over a perceived absence of editorial control, stating "indiscriminately publishing 92,000 classified reports reflects a real problem of methodology and, therefore, of credibility. Journalistic work involves the selection of information. The argument with which you defend yourself, namely that WikiLeaks is not made up of journalists, is not convincing." The group subsequently clarified their statement as a criticism of WikiLeaks release procedure and not the organization itself, stating "we reaffirm our support for Wikileaks, its work and its founding principles."

On 30 November 2010, former Canadian government adviser Tom Flanagan, while appearing on the CBC television program "Power & Politics", called for Julian Assange to be killed. "I think Assange should be assassinated," Flanagan stated, before noting to host Evan Solomon, "I'm feeling pretty manly today." Flanagan subsequently retracted his call for the death of Assange while reiterating his opposition to WikiLeaks. Dimitri Soudas, spokesman to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, decried Flanagan's comments and said the former Tory strategist's remarks are "simply not acceptable." Ralph Goodale, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, called Flanagan's remarks "clearly contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

Russian investigative reporter Andrei Soldatov has criticized WikiLeaks for disclosing documents "without checking of the facts, without putting them in context, and without analyzing them.” Soldatov believes WikiLeaks is "filling the gap" left by the decline of investigative journalism with a sensationalist alternative while journalistic support of WikiLeaks is motivated by anger over declining funding and resources for investigative reporting.

Criticism by governments

Most of the governments and organizations whose files have been leaked by WikiLeaks have been critical of the organization.

• Australia On 2 December 2010 Prime Minister Julia Gillard made a statement that she 'absolutely condemns' Wikileaks' actions and that the release of information on the site was 'grossly irresponsible' and 'illegal.' Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is Australian and he responded two days later by accusing his prime minister of betraying him as an Australian citizen. However, on 8 December 2010 - after WikiLeaks published U.S. diplomatic cables in which United States diplomats labeled him a "control freak", former Australian Prime Minister and current foreign minister Kevin Rudd said the leak of the US secret cables raised questions about US security. Rudd said, "The core responsibility, and therefore legal liability, goes to those individuals responsible for that initial unauthorised release." In an article in The Australian, Assange claimed, "The Australian attorney-general is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US."

• France The French Industry Minister Éric Besson said in a letter to the CGIET technology agency, WikiLeaks "violates the secret of diplomatic relations and puts people protected by diplomatic secret in danger." Therefore it would be 'unacceptable' that the site was hosted on servers based in France. The minister asked for measures to bar WikiLeaks from France.

• Iran The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, joined in criticism of WikiLeaks following the November 2010 release of United States diplomatic cables. Ahmadinejad claimed that the release of cables purporting to show concern with Iran by Arab states was a planned leak by the United States to discredit his government, though he did not indicate whether he believed WikiLeaks was in collusion with the United States or was simply an unwitting facilitator.

• United States Following the November 2010 release of United States diplomatic cables, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the group saying, "this disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community." Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the United States House of Representatives has stated his support for listing Wikileaks as a "foreign terrorist organization" explaining that "WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States." In a contrary statement, secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said that concerns about the disclosures were "over-wrought" in terms of their likely adverse impact on ordinary diplomatic activities. Philip J. Crowley, United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, has stated in December 2010 that the US State Department does not regard WikiLeaks as a legitimate media organization. A few days later Crowley announced the United States is pleased it will host Unesco's World Press Freedom Day event in 2011 in Washington, DC. The press release states: "New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals' right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age."
  US Senator Joe Lieberman, who first called on Amazon to shut down WikiLeaks and then praised the company after doing so called for other companies to follow suit. He also proposed new legislation targeting similar cases — Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act, also known as the SHIELD Act. Lieberman later said that also the New York Times and other news organizations publishing the US embassy cables being released by WikiLeaks could be investigated for breaking US espionage laws.

Leaks

Main article: Information leaked by WikiLeaks

2007-2008

WikiLeaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys." In August 2007, The Guardian a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi based on information provided via WikiLeaks. In November 2007, a March 2003 copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta detailing the protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was released. The document revealed that some prisoners were off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied. In February 2008, WikiLeaks released allegations of illegal activities at the Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss Bank Julius Baer which led to the bank suing WikiLeaks and obtaining an injuction which temporarily shut down wikileaks.org. The site was instantly mirrored by supporters and later that month the judge overturned his previous decision citing First Amendment concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.In March 2008, WikiLeaks published what they referred to as "the collected secret 'bibles' of Scientology," and three days later recieved letters threatening to sue them for breach of copyright. In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaigns, the contents of a Yahoo account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on WikiLeaks after being hacked into by members of Anonymous. In November 2008, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks, after briefly appearing on a blog. A year later, on October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked.

2009

In January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the "Petrogate" oil scandal. In February, WikiLeaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports follwed in March, by a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian. In July, they released a report relating to a serious nuclear accident that had occurred at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in 2009. Later media reports have suggested that the accident was related to the Stuxnet computer worm. In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008–2010 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off. In October, Joint Services Protocol 440, a British document advising the security services on how to avoid documents being leaked was published by WikiLeaks. Later that month, they announced that a super-injunction was being used by the commodities company, Trafigura to gag The Guardian newspaper from reporting on a leaked internal document regarding a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast. In November, they hosted copies of e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, although they were not originally leaked to WikiLeaks. They also released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages sent on the day of the September 11 attacks. During 2008 and 2009, WikiLeaks published the alleged lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for Australia, Denmark and Thailand. These were originally created to prevent access to child pornography and terrorism, but the leaks revealed that other sites that are unrelated to these.

2010

In March 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report written in March 2008 discussing the leaking of material by WikiLeaks and how it could be deterred. In April, a classified video of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two Reuters employees being fired at, after the pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras. In the week following the release, "Wikileaks" was the search term with the most significant growth worldwide in the last seven days as measured by Google Insights. In June 2010, A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley Manning, was arrested after alleged chat logs were turned in to the authorities by former hacker Adrian Lamo, in whom he had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo he had leaked the "Collateral Murder" video, in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks. In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including friendly fire and civilian casualties. At the end of July, a 1.4 GB "insurance file" was added to the Afghan War Diary page, whose decryption details would be released if WikiLeaks or Assange were harmed. About 15,000 of the 92,000 documents have not yet been released on WikiLeaks, as the group is currently reviewing the documents to remove some of the sources of the information. WikiLeaks asked the Pentagon and human-rights groups to help remove names from the documents to reduce the potential harm caused by their release, but did not recieve assistance. According to a report on the Daily Beast website, the Obama administration asked Britain, Germany and Australia among others to consider bringing criminal charges against Assange for the Afghan war leaks and to help limit Assange's travels across international borders. In the United States, a joint investigation by the Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation may try to prosecute "Mr. Assange and others involved on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property". Following the Love Parade stampede in Duisburg, Germany on 24 July 2010, a local published internal documents of the city administration regarding the planning of Love Parade. The city government reacted by acquiring a court order on 16 August forcing the blog to remove the documents from its blog. On 20 August WikiLeaks released a publication titled Loveparade 2010 Duisburg planning documents, 2007–2010, which comprised 43 internal documents regarding the Love Parade 2010. Following on from the leak of information from the Afghan War, in October 2010, around 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War where released in October. The BBC quoted The Pentagon referring to the Iraq War Logs as "the largest leak of classified documents in its history." Media coverage of the leaked documents focused on claims that the U.S. government had ignored reports of torture by the Iraqi authorities during the period after the 2003 war.

Diplomatic cables release

Main article: United States diplomatic cables leak

Template:Wikinewshas On 22 November 2010 an announcement was made by the WikiLeaks twitter feed that the next release would be "7x the size of the Iraq War Logs." U.S. authorities and the media have speculated that they may contain diplomatic cables. Prior to the expected leak, the government of the United Kingdom (UK) sent a DA-Notice to UK newspapers, which requests advance notice from the newspapers regarding the expected publication. On 26 November, via his lawyer Jennifer Robinson, Assange sent a letter to the US Department of State, asking for information regarding people who could be placed at "significant risk of harm" by the diplomatic cables release. Harold Koh, Legal Adviser of the Department of State, refused the proposal, stating, "We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials."

On 28 November, WikiLeaks announced it was undergoing a massive Distributed Denial-of-service attack, but vowed to still leak the cables and documents via prominent media outlets including El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times. The announcement was shortly thereafter followed by the online publication, by The Guardian, of some of the purported diplomatic cables including one in which United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently orders diplomats to obtain credit card and frequent flier numbers of the French, British, Russian and Chinese delegations to the United Nations Security Council.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to the leaks saying, "This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy; it is an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity." Julian Assange is quoted as saying, "Of course, abusive, Titanic organizations, when exposed, grasp at all sorts of ridiculous straws to try and distract the public from the true nature of the abuse." John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote a tweet saying: "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

Announcements on upcoming leaks

In May 2010, WikiLeaks said they had video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the U.S. military which they were preparing to release.

In an interview with Chris Anderson on 19 July 2010, Assange showed a document WikiLeaks had on an Albanian oil well blowout, and said they also had material from inside BP, and that they were "getting enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of a very high caliber" but added that they have not been able to verify and release the material because they do not have enough volunteer journalists.

In October 2010, Assange told a leading Moscow newspaper that "The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia." Assange later clarified: "we have material on many businesses and governments, including in Russia. It’s not right to say there’s going to be a particular focus on Russia".

In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from Bank of America", and in 2010 told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another "megaleak" for early in 2011, which this time would be from inside the private sector and involve "a big U.S. bank". Bank of America's stock price fell by three percent as a result of this announcement. Assange commented on the possible impact of the release that ”it could take down a bank or two.”

In December 2010, Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, that WikiLeaks had information that it considers to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it would release if the organisation needs to defend itself.

See also

• Chilling Effects (group)
• Digital rights
• Classified information in the United States
• Freedom of information
• Freedom of the press
• Information security
• News leak
• New York Times Co. v. United States

External links

• WikiLeaks on X
• WikiLeaks on Facebook
• List of mirror web sites hosting WikiLeaks (As of 2010-12-08 14:25 GMT there are 1241 mirrors)
• "Wikileaks Fails “Due Diligence” Review", Steven Aftergood, June 2010
• Wikileaks Keynote Address at The Next Hope (64kbs)
• Wikileaks and Freedom of the Press by Guillermo Fernandez Ampie, Havana Times, 20 Oct 2010
• WikiLeaks' new home is in a former bomb shelter Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2010
• "December 2, 2010 - 10:00pm." EveryDNS. Announcement of termination of wikileaks.org.
• WikiLeaks Prepares Largest Intel Leak in US History with Release of 400,000 Iraq War Docs – video report by Democracy Now!, October 2010
• Video of Julian Assange on a panel at the 2010 Logan Symposium in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley (18 April 2010)
• Wikileaks vs. the World. Presentation by WikiLeaks representatives Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin, December 2008. online Flash video and download in higher resolution formats
• Leak Proof Interview with Julian Assange. 2009/03/13
• Video Interview with Julian Assange on The Colbert Report hosted by Stephen Colbert. 2010/04/12
• Animated Heatmap of WikiLeaks Report Intensity in Afghanistan