Wikileaks backgrounder

Wikileaks  • Founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, 40,

Australian, hacker    

• “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis” (Assange in The New Yorker July 2010); “a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes” (Keller, NYT, 2011)

 

Wikileaks  

• Assange is intensely paranoid• Repeated run-ins with authorities• Views illegitimate government and

institutions as conspiracies that use “collaborative secrecy”

• Internal lines of communication must be disrupted in order to dissolve regimes

Timeline    • 2008 - Leaked documents on corruption in Kenya,

“Climategate” emails, and otherso Little reaction from mainstream media

• 2010

o Spring: Collateral Murder video – Footage originally requested by Reuters, leaked to Wikileaks; edited in one week in a hideout in Iceland

o Summer: Afghan War Diaries – Military dispatches on a difficult war

o November: "Cablegate” – 250,000 diplomatic cables from nearly every U.S. Embassy in the world

 

"Cablegate"• June, 2010: Wikileaks approached The Guardian

(London) about a potential collaboration, promised a treasure trove of secret military dispatches and diplomatic cables; grew to The New York Times, Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain)

• Bill Keller, former editor of The New York Times: "We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda."

• Suspected source was a disaffected PFC, Bradley Manning.o Walked out with the files on a flash drive o 500,000 had access to the files

"Cablegate"• Impact of leaked cables is hard to measure

o Diplomatic implicationso Global repercussions: Tunisia, Egypt...

• Media circus surrounding Assangeo Fighting extradition to Sweden; wanted for questioningo US considering options for prosecutiono Politicians weighing in, from Joe Biden and Mike Huckabee to

Sarah Palin

• Larger questions about the role of journalism, the importance of secrecy, the value of information

• Undoubtedly controversial (Terrorist or Nobel Peace Prize Winner?), but probably only the beginning.• Palestine Papers, OpenLeaks, “Green Leaks”, NYT (?)

History repeats itself?

Today, the National Archives are releasing the full Pentagon Papers, 40 years after they were originally leaked by Daniel Ellsberg.

Papers were a report commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the history of US involvement in Vietnam, with very negative conclusions.

Why has it taken so long?

Daniel Ellsberg

History repeats itself?

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

—Justice Black, The New York Times Co. v United States