If you’re a news addict, you may have come across the word ‘WikiLeaks’ in the past few years. Back in 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks was in news almost every second day, due to the various controversies surrounding it. WikiLeaks, since it gained popularity has been headache to various corrupt officials or governments but very few students actually know about this. In this post we’ll talk in brief about WikiLeaks, its role in journalism and how it’s impact globally.
What is WikiLeaks?
WikiLeaks about page says: “WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists”. WikiLeaks is a website where users can share confidential government or other organisation’s facts to show people the truth. It’s purpose is to save the whistleblowers, who wish to expose the truth, to the public domain but can’t do it in main-stream media or internet due to the fear of getting arrested. According to their website, their goal is: “to bring important news and information to the public… One of our most important activities is to publish original source material along our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth.”
WikiLeaks started in 2006 and is still live at http://www.wikileaks.org.
Julian Assange
Julian Assange, an Australian citizen is the known as the founder of WikiLeaks. According to a volunteer, in private conversations Julian describes himself as “the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest”. He is the public face of WikiLeaks, their spokesperson and take all the blame for the website. Julian has been arrested because of releasing confidential U.S. Diplomatic cables to the public (http://www.theguardian.com/news/blog/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-updates). Nine people helped Julian Assange, including two members of the British aristocracy and a Nobel Prize winner, to pay a bail amount of 93000 pounds. Since WikiLeaks gained popularity Assange got many death threats, but still continues to work on this website.
Julian Assange
Hosting problems:
To be live on the internet. every website needs web-hosting From its start to 2010, PRQ a “highly secure, no-questions-asked hosting services” hosted WikiLeaks. But WikiLeaks became a target of Denial Of Service (DOS) attack by a hacker who goes by the alias of “Jester” in 2010 after releasing the US Diplomatic cables. To get more security, WikiLeaks shifted its servers to Amazon.com. Amazon faced a lot of criticism for the same and pressure from prominent members of Congress made them expel WikiLeaks from its servers. WikiLeaks then moved to OVH, a french hosting provider. After constant criticism from French Govt, the company took legal steps to make sure WikiLeaks is up and running. Later. WikiLeaks started using their own super advanced and complicated servers. There was a time when WikiLeaks.org was shut down, and the site was active on multiple domain names and had a few mirror sites as backups. Today, WikiLeaks.org is live and is hosted on LeaseWeb.
How WikiLeaks works?
WikiLeaks doesn’t work on its own. There is a team, but only to manage the privacy and server settings. All the cables or documents published on the website are sen by people who want to bring out the truth. If any person has some confidential documents that is hidden but needs to come out in public, they can give it directly to WikiLeaks at https://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:Submissions page. WikiLeaks top priority is safety of the whistleblower, hence each document submitted is encrypted and the website doesn’t keep any logs related to the documents or the IP address of sender. WikiLeaks also accepts documents submitted using TOR. All the documents are checked before publishing. WikiLeaks is pretty serious when it comes to the uploader’s privacy, and thus tries it best to make sure that there are no logs or IP information of the uploader. Visit https://wikileaks.org/About.html for more information.
WikiLeaks Controversies.
WikiLeaks got global recognition after a classified video of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike, showing two Reuters employees being fired at, after the pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras. Those two were international journalists. We can also see the Pilots waiting for civilians to pick up guns just to shoot them. An US army private Chelsea Manning found out this video and submitted it to WikiLeaks. She was later arrested, when the person she confided to revealed the chat logs to US Officials. The video can be seen below. Warning: It has disturbing graphical images of people being killed.
One of the video’s leaked online says:
Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from an US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths occurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com
It played a major role in success of WikiLeaks. People all around the world saw and knew realised there was something really wrong. The US government declared Julian Assange as a criminal and threat to the nation and gave orders to arrest him. The families of people who died finally got some closure after watching what really happened. Since then, WikiLeaks has always been on the spotlight with releasing many cables on political manoeuvring about climate change, war on terror, efforts and resistance towards nuclear disarmament, Guantanamo prison and Spy files. WikiLeaks also gained popularity after revealing two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, known as Syria Files.
WikiLeaks was running on donations and PayPal refused its support to WikiLeaks after pressure from US Govt. A Hacker activists group known as ‘Anonymous’ then hacked and bought down PayPal through DDOS attack.
US Govt. believes such sensitive information should not be shared and making all this information public will result in increase of tension among various nations. On the other hand WikiLeaks stands for exposing the truth and freedom of journalism.
Why is WikiLeaks so important?
The goal of freedom for journalism and exposing the misdeeds of your government was how WikiLeaks was born. WikiLeaks gives safe and secure platform for activists to expose and bring out the hidden truth. Truth about corruption, Illegal activities, misdeeds etc. However, the cable’s authenticity can’t be proven, WikiLeaks does check each cable before releasing it to public. Many people have extended their support since the Baghdad Airstrike video became public and WikiLeaks are getting a lot of donation since then. WikiLeaks believes in transparency and it’s only aim is to bring out the truth!
Good Article