Reading Exercise 11

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes secret information, news leaks, and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Its website, initiated in 2006 in Iceland by the organisation Sunshine Press, claims a database of 10 million documents in 10 years since its launch. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director. Since September 2018, Kristinn Hrafnsson has served as its editor-in-chief.

The group has released a number of prominent document dumps. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and a report informing a corruption investigation in Kenya.  In April 2010, WikiLeaks released the Collateral Murder footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed. Other releases in 2010 included the Afghan War Diary and the "Iraq War Logs". The latter allowed the mapping of 109,032 deaths in "significant" attacks by insurgents in Iraq that had been reported to Multi-National Force – Iraq, including about 15,000 that had not been previously published.  In 2010, WikiLeaks also released the US State Department diplomatic "cables", classified cables that had been sent to the US State Department. In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, WikiLeaks released emails and other documents from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. These releases caused significant harm to the Clinton campaign, and have been attributed as a potential contributing factor to her loss. The U.S. intelligence community expressed "high confidence" that the leaked emails had been hacked by Russia and supplied to WikiLeaks, while WikiLeaks denied their source was Russia or any other state. During the campaign, WikiLeaks promoted conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. In private conversations from November 2015 that were later leaked, Julian Assange expressed a preference for a GOP victory in the 2016 election, explaining that "Dems+Media+liberals would  then form a block to reign  in their worst qualities. With Hillary in charge, GOP will be pushing for her worst qualities, dems+ media+ neoliberals will be mute." In private correspondence with the Trump campaign on election day (8 November 2016), WikiLeaks encouraged the Trump campaign to contest the election results in case they lost.

WikiLeaks has drawn criticism for its absence of whistleblowing on or criticism of Russia, and for criticising the Panama Papers' exposé of businesses and individuals with offshore bank accounts.  WikiLeaks has also been criticised for inadequately curating its content and violating the personal privacy of individuals. WikiLeaks has, for instance, revealed Social Security numbers, medical information, credit card numbers and details of suicide attempts.

WikiLeaks has contended that it has never released a misattributed document and that 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 topics 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.

Columnist Eric Zorn wrote in 2016 that "it's possible, even likely, that every stolen email WikiLeaks has posted has been authentic." (Writer Glenn Greenwald goes further, asserting that WikiLeaks has a "perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents." However, cybersecurity experts agree that it is trivially easy for a person to fabricate an email or alter it, as by changing headers and metadata. Some of the more recent releases, such as many of the emails contained in the Podesta emails, contain DKIM headers. This allows them to be verified as genuine to some degree of certainty.

Short of simply disclosing information in the public interest, WikiLeaks has been accused of purposely targeting certain states and people, and presenting its disclosures in misleading and conspiratorial ways to harm those people. Writing in 2012, Foreign Policy's Joshua Keating noted that "nearly all its major operations have targeted the U.S. government or American corporations." In a 2017 speech addressing the Center for Strategic and International Studies, CIA Director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as "a non-state hostile intelligence service" and described founder Julian Assange as a narcissist, fraud, and coward.

WikiLeaks has drawn criticism for violating the personal privacy of a multitude of individuals and inadequately curating its content. These critics include transparency advocates, such as Edward Snowden, the Sunlight Foundation and the Federation of American Scientists. WikiLeaks has published individuals' Social Security numbers, medical information, and credit card numbers.  An analysis by the Associated Press found that WikiLeaks had in one of its mass-disclosures published "the personal information of hundreds of people – including sick children, rape victims and mental health patients".  WikiLeaks has named teenage rape victims, and outed an individual arrested for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia. Some of WikiLeaks' cables "described patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees". An analysis of WikiLeaks' Saudi cables "turned up more than 500 passport, identity, academic or employment files ... three dozen records pertaining to family issues in the cables – including messages about marriages, divorces, missing children, elopements and custody battles. Many are very personal, like the marital certificates that reveal whether the bride was a virgin. Others deal with Saudis who are deeply in debt, including one man who says his wife stole his money. One divorce document details a male partner's infertility. Others identify the partners of women suffering from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and Hepatitis C." Two individuals named in the DNC leaks were targeted by identity thieves following WikiLeaks' reveal of their Social Security and credit card information. In its leak of DNC e-mails, WikiLeaks revealed the details of an ordinary staffer's suicide attempt and brought attention to it through a tweet.

WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organisation won a number of awards in its early years, including The Economist's New Media Award in 2008 at the Index on Censorship Awards and Amnesty International's UK Media Award in 2009. In 2010, the New York Daily News listed WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news," and Julian Assange received the Sam Adams Award and 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." During its first days, an Internet petition in support of WikiLeaks attracted more than six hundred thousand signatures.

Sympathisers of WikiLeaks in the media and academia commended it during its early years for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions. In 2010, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern over the "cyber war" being led at the time against WikiLeaks, and in a joint statement with the Organization of American States the UN Special Rapporteur called on states and other people to keep international legal principles in mind.

References

Andrea, Peterson. "Snowden and WikiLeaks clash over leaked Democratic Party emails". The Washington Post. Retrieved 28 May 2019.

 Bridge, Mark (27 September 2018). "Loss of internet forces Assange to step down from Wikileaks editor role". The Times. Retrieved 11 April 2019.

Editors, The (16 August 2012). "WikiLeaks". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 May 2019.

 Erlanger, Jo Becker, Steven; Schmitt, Eric (31 August 2016). "How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West's Secrets". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 Feburary 2019.

Harding, Alec Luhn Luke (7 April 2016). "Putin dismisses Panama Papers as an attempt to destabilise Russia". The Guardian. London. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 January 2019.

"How Much Did WikiLeaks Hurt Hillary Clinton?". FiveThirtyEight. 23 December 2016. Retrieved 15 May 2019. 

 Ioffe, Julia. "The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks". The Atlantic. Retrieved 13 May 2019.

Karhula, Päivikki (5 October 2012). "What is the effect of WikiLeaks for Freedom of Information?". International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.   Retrieved 11 October 2019.

Satter, Raphael  & Michael, Maggie (23 August 2016). "Private lives are exposed as WikiLeaks spills its secrets". Associated Press.

Tufekci, Zeynep (4 November 2016). "WikiLeaks Isn't Whistleblowing". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 5 November 2016.

 "Wikileaks Mirrors". WikiLeaks. 24 August 2012. Retrieved 11 April 2019.

"Wikileaks.org Traffic, Demographics and Competitors – Alexa". www.alexa.com. Retrieved 10 April 2019.

"WikiLeaks Fuels Conspiracy Theories About DNC Staffer's Death". NBC News. Retrieved 8 May 2019.

"Who is Search Results: wikileaks.org". Domaintools.com. Retrieved 15 April 2019.

 "WikiLeaks Ten Year Anniversary". WikiLeaks. Retrieved 23 May 2019.

"WikiLeaks names one-time spokesman as editor-in-chief". Associated Press. Retrieved 24 May 2019.

Questions for Discussion:

Do you follow Wikileaks? Why?

In your opinion, is it ethical to disclose people secrets even for good intentions?