WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks

Type of site	Document archive & disclosure
Owner	The Sunshine Press
Created by	Julian Assange
URL	wikileaks.ch wikileaks.org (originally)[Note] Official mirrors list
Commercial	No

Julian Assange, the main spokesperson and editor-in-chief for WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources and news leaks. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch. WikiLeaks describes its founders as a mix of Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its director. The site was originally launched as a user-editable wiki, but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by US 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 2010, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations. This allowed every death in Iraq, and across the border in Iran, to be mapped. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organisation has won a number of awards, including The Economist's New Media Award in 2008 and Amnesty International's UK Media Award in 2009. In 2010, the New York City Daily News listed WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news", and Julian Assange was named the Readers' Choice for TIME's Person of the Year in 2010. The UK Information Commissioner has stated that "WikiLeaks is part of the phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen". In its first days, an internet petition calling for the cessation of extra-judicial intimidation of WikiLeaks attracted over six hundred thousand signatures. Supporters of WikiLeaks in the media and academia have commended it for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, supporting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions.

At the same time, several U.S. government officials have criticised WikiLeaks for exposing classified information, harming national security, and compromising international diplomacy. Several human rights organisations requested with respect to earlier document releases that WikiLeaks adequately redact the names of civilians working with international forces, in order to prevent repercussions. Some journalists have likewise criticised a perceived lack of editorial discretion when releasing thousands of documents at once and without sufficient analysis. In response to some of the negative reaction, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed her concern over the "cyber war" against WikiLeaks, and in a joint statement with the Organization of American States the UN Special Rapporteur has called on states and other actors to keep international legal principles in mind.

History

Founding

The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006. The website was unveiled, and published its first document 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".

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 organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financier, and all the rest". As of June 2009, the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange and eight other people.

Purpose

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 behaviour 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 was 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 organisation'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.

In an interview on The Colbert Report, Assange explained about the limit to the freedom of speech, saying, "[it is] not an ultimate freedom, however free speech is what regulates government and regulates law. That is why in the US constitution the bill of rights says that congress is to make no such law abridging the freedom of the press. It is to take the rights of the press outside the rights of the law because those rights are superior to the law because in fact they create the law. Every constitution, every bit of legislation is derived from the flow of information. Similarly every government is elected as a result of people understanding things".

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."

Funding

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 via Twitter, "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.

Operational challenges

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 the site had begun accepting submissions again.

Upon returning to the US from the Netherlands, on 29 July, Appelbaum was detained for three hours at the airport by US 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.

Assange has acknowledged that the practice of posting largely unfiltered classified information online could one day lead the Web site to have "blood on our hands." He expressed the view that the potential to save lives, however, outweighs the danger to innocents. Furthermore, WikiLeaks has highlighted independent investigations which have failed to find any evidence of civilians harmed as a result of WikiLeaks' activities.

In 2010, at least a dozen key supporters of WikiLeaks left the website, most notably, Daniel Domscheit-Berg who left to form OpenLeaks.com, a new leak organisation and website with a different management and distribution philosophy.

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 has planned to add an auction model to sell early access to documents. The Wau Holland Foundation helps to process donations to WikiLeaks. In July 2010, the Foundation stated that WikiLeaks was receiving no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth. An article in TechEye 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.

However, in December 2010 the Wau Holland Foundation stated that 4 permanent employees, including Julian Assange, had begun to receive salaries.

Site management issues

Within WikiLeaks, there has been public disagreement between founder and spokesperson Julian Assange and Daniel 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 organisation due to internal conflicts over management of the site.

Hosting

WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". 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.

Until August 2010, WikiLeaks was 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". Currently, WikiLeaks is mainly hosted by Bahnhof in a facility that used to be a nuclear bunker. Other 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; such laws place an onus of proof upon any complainant whose suit would circumscribe WikiLeaks’ liberty, e.g., its rights, of exercising free speech online. 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. In a public statement, Amazon said that WikiLeaks was not following its terms of service. The company further explained, "There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that 'you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content... that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.' It's clear that WikiLeaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content." WikiLeaks then decided to install itself on the servers of OVH in France. After criticism from the French government, the company sought two court rulings 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.

Financing

WikiLeaks is a non-profit organisation, and it is dependent on public donations. Its main financing methods include conventional bank transfers and online payment systems. Wau Holland Foundation, one of the WikiLeaks' main funding channels, stated that they received more than €900,000 (US$1.2 million) in public donations between October 2009 and December 2010, out of which €370,000 has been passed on to WikiLeaks. Hendrik Fulda, vice president of the Wau Holland Foundation, mentioned that the Foundation had been receiving twice as many donations through PayPal as through normal banks, before PayPal's decision to suspend WikiLeaks' account. He also noted that every new WikiLeaks publication brought "a wave of support", and that donations were strongest in the weeks after WikiLeaks started publishing leaked diplomatic cables.

Name servers

WikiLeaks had been using EveryDNS's services, which led to DDoS attacks on the host. The attacks affected the quality of service at EveryDNS, so the company withdrew their service from WikiLeaks. Pro-WikiLeaks supporters retaliated by launching a DDoS attack against EveryDNS. Due to mistakes in the blogosphere, some supporters accidentally mistook EasyDNS for EveryDNS and attacked it. The attacks caused both EveryDNS and EasyDNS to experience outages. Afterwards EasyDNS decided to provide WikiLeaks its name server service.

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. Wikia, a for-profit corporation loosely affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, did however purchase several WikiLeaks-related domain names (including wikileaks.com and wikileaks.net) as a "protective brand measure" in 2007.

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 analyse 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 scrutinise 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

Legal background

The legal status of WikiLeaks is complex. Assange considers WikiLeaks a whistleblower protection intermediary. Rather than leaking directly to the press, and fearing exposure and retribution, whistleblowers can leak to WikiLeaks, which then leaks to the press for them. Its servers are located throughout Europe and are accessible from any uncensored web connection. The group located its headquarters in Sweden because it has one of the world’s strongest shield laws to protect confidential source-journalist relationships. WikiLeaks has stated that they "do not solicit any information". However, Assange used his speech during the Hack In The Box conference in Malaysia to ask the crowd of hackers and security researchers to help find documents on its "Most Wanted Leaks of 2009" list.

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 (QNOT SABRE-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 characterised 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. Any prosecution of Assange would require extraditing him to the United States, a step made more complicated and potentially delayed by any preceding extradition to Sweden. One of Assange's lawyers, however, says they are fighting extradition to Sweden because it might lead to his extradition to the United States. Assange's attorney, Mark Stephens, has "heard from Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria [Virginia]" meeting to consider criminal charges in the WikiLeaks case.

In Australia, the government and the Australian Federal Police have not stated what Australian laws 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. Gillard later clarified her statement as referring to "the original theft of the material by a junior US serviceman rather than any action by Mr Assange." 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 illegal activities.

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. The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued a statement highlighting its alarm at the "multiple examples of legal overreach and irregularities" in his arrest.

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 US 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."

Leaks

Main article: Information published by WikiLeaks

2006–08

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 published 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 injunction 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 received 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 2008 Peru oil scandal. In February, WikiLeaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports followed 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 11 September 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 covering unrelated subjects were also listed.

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 12 July 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 receive assistance. 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 removal of the documents from the site on which it was hosted. 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 were 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 articles: United States diplomatic cables leak, contents, and reactions

On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País), France (Le Monde), Germany (Der Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The Guardian), and the United States (The New York Times) started to simultaneously publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential—but not top secret—diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies around the world, dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. WikiLeaks plans to release the entirety of the cables in phases over several months.

The contents of the diplomatic cables include numerous unguarded comments and revelations regarding: critiques and praises about the host countries of various US embassies; political manoeuvring regarding climate change; discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East; efforts and resistance towards nuclear disarmament; actions in the War on Terror; assessments of other threats around the world; dealings between various countries; US intelligence and counterintelligence efforts; and other diplomatic actions. Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak include stark criticism, anticipation, commendation, and quiescence. Consequent reactions to the US government include sympathy, bewilderment and dismay. On 14 December 2010 the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks. Twitter decided to notify its users. The overthrow of the presidency in Tunisia has been attributed in part to reaction against the corruption revealed by leaked cables.

Upcoming leaks

In May 2010, WikiLeaks said they had video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US 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 calibre" 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". In 2010 he told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another "megaleak" early in 2011, from inside the private sector, involving "a big U.S. bank" and revealing an "ecosystem of corruption". Bank of America's stock price fell by 3% 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 it considers to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it would release if the organisation needs to defend itself.

In January 2011, Rudolf Elmer, a former Swiss banker, passed on data containing account details of 2,000 prominent people to Assange, who stated that the information will be vetted before being made publicly available at a later date.

Backlash and pressure

Governments

Germany

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.

People's Republic of China

The WikiLeaks 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' many covert URLs.

Australia

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.

Thailand

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 unauthorised federal government employees and contractors from accessing classified documents publicly available on WikiLeaks and other websites. The U.S. Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department are considering criminally prosecuting WikiLeaks and Assange "on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property", although former prosecutors say doing so would be difficult. According to a report on the Daily Beast website, the Obama administration asked Britain, Germany and Australia among others to also consider bringing criminal charges against Assange for the Afghan war leaks and to help limit Assange's travels across international borders. Columbia University students have been warned by their Office of Career Services that the U.S. State Department had contacted the office in an email saying that the diplomatic cables which were released by WikiLeaks were "still considered classified." and that "online discourse about the documents 'would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information.'"

All U.S. federal government staff have been blocked from viewing WikiLeaks. Some Department of Homeland Security staff say the ban on accessing WikiLeaks on government computers and other government devices is hampering their work; "More damage will be done by keeping the federal workforce largely in the dark about what other interested parties worldwide are going to be reading and analysing." One official says that the ban apparently covers personal computers also.

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.

Organisations and companies

Facebook

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 1 December, to more than 1.5 million 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

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."

U.S. diplomatic cables leak responses

According to The Times, WikiLeaks and its members have complained about continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organisations, 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 U.S. cables leak, which started on 28 November 2010.

Furthermore, 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 U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. Amazon denied acting under political pressure citing a violation of its terms of service. Citing indirect pressure from the U.S. Government, Tableau Software also dropped WikiLeaks' data from its site for people to use for data visualisation.

In the days following, hundreds of (and eventually more than a thousand) mirrors of the WikiLeaks site appeared and the Anonymous group of internet activists, called on supporters to attack the websites of companies which do not support WikiLeaks, under the banner of Operation Payback, previously aimed at anti-piracy organisations. AFP 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 3 December, 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 Department 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. 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 allegations of "illegal activity".

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. 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. On December 18, Bank of America announced it would "not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for Wikileaks" citing "Wikileaks may be engaged in activities that are... inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments". WikiLeaks responded in a tweet by encouraging their supporters who were BoA customer to close their accounts. Bank of America has long been believed to be the target of WikiLeaks' next major release.

On 7 December, The Guardian stated that people can still donate to WikiLeaks via Commerzbank Kassel in Germany or Landsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at the University of Melbourne or at the wikileaks.ch domain.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has stated that Visa, Mastercard and Amazon may be 'violating WikiLeaks' e pluribus unum right to freedom of expression' by withdrawing their services.

On 21 December, media reported that Apple had removed an application from its App Store, which provided access to the embassy cable leaks.

As part of its 'Initial Assessments Pursuant to ... WikiLeaks', the US Presidential Executive Office has issued a memorandum to the heads of Executive Departments and Agencies asking whether they have an 'insider threat program'.

Reception

Support

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

In July 2010 Veterans for Peace president Mike Ferner editorialised 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." Following the US diplomatic cable release, which a number of media reports sought to differentiate from Ellsberg's whistleblowing, Ellsberg claimed, "EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."

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?" In another speech at US House of Representatives Paul again defended WikiLeaks against criticism for revealing the truth and warned the US administration that "lying is not patriotic".

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.”

Australia’s most senior and high-profile media professionals expressed their support for WikiLeaks in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The letter was initiated by the Walkley Foundation, who present the yearly Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. The letter was signed by "the ten members of the Walkley Advisory Board as well as editors of major Australian newspapers and news websites and the news directors of the country’s three commercial TV networks and two public broadcasters." Their position (an extract from the letter) is summarised as follows:

“In essence, WikiLeaks, an organisation that aims to expose official secrets, is doing what the media have always done: bringing to light material that governments would prefer to keep secret. It is the media’s duty to responsibly report such material if it comes into their possession. To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.”

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 organisation is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. On 21 December the organisation announced it will host a mirror website for the leaked US diplomatic cables being published by WikiLeaks.

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."

A December 2010 rally in Australia protesting the Australian government's treatment of Julian Assange

The New York Times reported that over 200 WikiLeaks mirror sites sprang up after some hosting companies cut their services to the company. On 5 December, 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 organised 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, the 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 utilise our resources to raise awareness, attack those against, and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy."

In December 2010, the Internet Society stated that despite the international concern about the content released by WikiLeaks, "we nevertheless believe it must be subject to the same laws and policies of availability as all Internet sites" and that “free expression should not be restricted by governmental or private controls over computer hardware or software, telecommunications infrastructure, or other essential components of the Internet”. ISOC also called for appropriate action to "pursue and prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it [WikiLeaks] off the air” because suppressing communication would merely serve to “undermine the integrity of the global Internet and its operation”.

On 8 December 2010 the international civic organisation Avaaz launched a petition in support of WikiLeaks, which was signed by over 250 thousand people within the first few hours, the total number went up to 600 thousand by 15 December 2010.

In early December 2010, Noam Chomsky offered his support to protesters across Australia planning to take to the streets in defence of WikiLeaks. In an interview for Democracy Now!, Chomsky criticized the government response, saying, "perhaps the most dramatic revelation ... is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government -- Hillary Clinton, others -- and also by the diplomatic service."

Praise by governments

Brazil: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed his "solidarity" with Julian Assange following Assange's 2010 arrest in the United Kingdom. Lula went on to state—in reference to WikiLeaks disclosure of classified US diplomatic cables in November and December 2010—WikiLeaks had "exposed a diplomacy that had appeared unreachable." He further criticised the arrest of Julian Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression".

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 criticised Assange for "breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information."

Russia: In December 2010 the office of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev issued a statement calling on non-governmental organisations to consider "nominating [Julian] Assange as a Nobel Prize laureate." The announcement followed commentary by Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin who stated that Julian Assange's earlier arrest on Swedish charges demonstrated that there was "no media freedom" in the west.

Venezuela: Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, stated his support for WikiLeaks following the release of US 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." High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay subsequently voiced concern at the revelation that private companies were being pressured by states to sever their relationships with WikiLeaks.

Awards

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.

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 honour 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 in strongly requesting that WikiLeaks redact the names of Afghan civilians working as U.S. military informants from files they had released, in order to protect them from repercussions. Julian Assange responded by offering Amnesty International the opportunity to assist in the tedious document vetting process. When Amnesty International appeared to express reservations in accepting the offer, Assange stated that he had "no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses." Other groups that joined Amnesty International in criticising 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 organisation Reporters Without Borders praised WikiLeaks' past usefulness in exposing "serious violations of human rights and civil liberties" but criticised 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 organisation 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 criticised WikiLeaks for disclosing documents "without checking of the facts, without putting them in context, and without analysing 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 organisations whose files have been leaked by WikiLeaks have been critical of the organisation.

• 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 labelled 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." However, Australian officials later said that Assange has done nothing illegal.

• 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, also criticised WikiLeaks following the 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.

• Libya:Libyan leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi blamed WikiLeaks for the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia "[Do not be fooled by] WikiLeaks which publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos."

• Philippines: President Benigno Aquino III condemned WikiLeaks and leaked documents related to the country, saying that it can lead to massive cases of miscommunication.

• 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 organisation" 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, stated on 2 December 2010 that the US State Department does not regard WikiLeaks as a media organisation. "WikiLeaks is not a media organisation. That is our view." Crowley said and with regard to Assange;"Well, his – I mean he could be considered a political actor. I think he’s an anarchist, but he’s not a journalist."
  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 organisations publishing the US embassy cables being released by WikiLeaks could be investigated for breaking US espionage laws.

Public opinion

• United States: According to a telephone survey of 1,029 US residents age 18 and older, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in December 2010, 70% of American respondents – particularly Republicans and older people – think the leaks are doing more harm than good by allowing enemies of the United States government to see confidential and secret information about U.S. foreign policy. Approximately 22% – especially young liberals – think the leaks are doing more good than harm by making the U.S. government more transparent and accountable. A majority of 59% also want to see the people behind WikiLeaks prosecuted, while 31% said the publication of secrets is protected under the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

• Germany: According to a telephone survey of 1,004 German residents age 18 and older, which was conducted end of November for the German public broadcaster ARD, a majority of 53% disapprove of WikiLeaks, while 43% are generally in favour of the platform. Asked about the specific release of US diplomatic cables, almost two Thirds (65%) believe that these documents should not be published, compared to 31% that agree that they are being released to the public.

• United Kingdom: A CNN poll of 2,010 British adults conducted in December 2010 revealed that more people agree than disagree that WikiLeaks was right to release the cables, by 42% to 33%. The remaining 25% did not have a position. According to the same poll 41% of Britons believe that Assange should not be prosecuted for releasing the secret diplomatic cables, while 30% do want him prosecuted. Almost half of the respondents (44%) also believe that the sex charges against Assange are "an excuse" to keep him in custody so that the U.S. government can prosecute him for releasing secret diplomatic cables, while only 13% disagree. Nevertheless almost half of Britons stated that their government should send Assange to Sweden for questioning. Older people were significantly more likely to oppose WikiLeaks. While 42% of persons 65 and older say Assange should be prosecuted for releasing the secret diplomatic cables, this view is only held by 21% of those between 25 and 34.

• Australia: A UMR Research December 2010 poll showed that the majority of Australians are against the official government position on WikiLeaks. The findings which were done on 1,000 individuals show 59% support WikiLeaks' action in making the cables public and 25% oppose it. This was asked a few weeks after the initial release of the cables. The poll also looked at issues in relation to Julian Assange, with the results showing a positive opinion on him.

Spin-offs

Releases of US diplomatic cables inspired the creation of a number of other organisations based on the WikiLeaks model.

• OpenLeaks was created by the former deputy to Assange. Daniel Domscheit-Berg said the intention was to be more transparent than WikiLeaks as "In these last months, the organisation has not been open any more. It lost its open-source promise." It planned to start in early 2011.
• Brussels Leaks was focused on the European Union as a collaborative effort of media professionals and activists that sought to "pull the shady inner workings of the EU system out into the public domain. This is about getting important information out there, not about Brusselsleaks [or any other 'leaks' for that matter]."
• TradeLeaks was created to "do to trade and commerce what WikiLeaks has done to politics." It was founded by Australian Ruslan Kogan. Its goal is to ensure ""individuals and businesses should attain values from others through mutually beneficial and fully consensual trade, rather than force, fraud or deception."
• Balkan Leaks was founded by Bulgarain Atanas Chobanov in order to make the Balkans more transparent and to fight corruption as "There are plenty of people out there that want to change the Balkans for good and are ready to take on the challenge. We're offering them a hand."
• Indoleaks is an Indonesian site that seeks to publish classified documents primarily from the Indonesian government.
• RuLeaks is aimed at being a Russian equivalent to WikiLeaks. It was originally launched to provide translated versions of the WikiLeaks cables but the Moscow Times reports it has started to publish its own content as well.

See also

• Accountability
• Freedom of information
• Freedom of the press
• Transparency (social)
• Information security
• Digital rights
• Classified information in the United States
• Chilling Effects (group)
• New York Times Co. v. United States
• Open society

Footnotes

Notes

1. ^ The wikileaks.org domain currently redirects to mirror.wikileaks.info, a domain which is not included in the official list of mirrors.

References

Further reading

• Ampie, Guillermo Fernandez (20 October 2010). "Wikileaks and Freedom of the Press". Havana Times. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
• Assange, Julian et al. (18 April 2010). Logan Symposium: The New Initiatives (MP4) (Video). Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Retrieved 18 December 2010. {{cite AV media}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |authors= (help)
• Conway, Drew (17 August 2010). "Animated Heatmap of WikiLeaks Report Intensity in Afghanistan". R-bloggers.com. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
• Garfield, Bob (13 March 2009). "Transcript of 'Leak Proof'". On The Media. WNYC. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
• Sifry, Micah L. WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency. OR Books.
• "Special Reports: WikiLeaks Revelations". BBC News Online. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
• "Specials: WikiLeaks". TIME. Retrieved 19 December 2010.
• "Topics: WikiLeaks". Reuters. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
• Wikileaks (30 December 2008). Wikileaks vs. the World (M4V) (Video). Berlin: 25th Chaos Communication Congress. Retrieved 18 December 2010.
• "WikiLeaks, the Internet and Democracy" (Video). The Real News. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
• "Daniel Ellsberg: We Need Whistleblowers to Stop Murder". The Real News. 24 January 2011.

External links

• Official website (active from 15 December 2010)
• WikiLeaks on Facebook
• WikiLeaks on Twitter