Wikileaks
Encyclopedia
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources
, news leak
s, and whistleblower
s. 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. Julian Assange
, an Australian Internet activist
, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief and director. Kristinn Hrafnsson
is the only other publicly known acknowledged associate of WikiLeaks as of 2011. Hrafnsson is also a member of the company Sunshine Press Productions along with Assange, Ingi Ragnar Ingason and Gavin MacFadyen.
The group has released a number of significant documents which have become front-page news items. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war
and corruption in Kenya
. In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed by an Apache helicopter, as the Collateral Murder video. 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 to the public. 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 April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files
relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
In November 2010, WikiLeaks collaborated with major global media organisations to release U.S. State department diplomatic cables
in redacted format. The release was nicknamed CableGate. On 1 September 2011, it became public that an encrypted version of WikiLeaks' huge archive of unredacted U.S. State Department cables had been available via Bittorrent for months, and that the decryption key (similar to a password) was available to those who knew where to look. WikiLeaks blamed the breach on its former partner, The Guardian
, and that newspaper's journalist David Leigh
, who revealed the key in a book published in February 2011; The Guardian argued that WikiLeaks was to blame since they gave the impression that the decryption key was temporal (something not possible for a file decryption key). Der Spiegel
reported a more complex story involving errors on both sides. Widely expressed fears that the CableGate release could endanger innocent lives have so far proved unfounded.
, who is now generally recognised as 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, organizer, financier, and all the rest".
WikiLeaks relies heavily on volunteers and previously described 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
. The site was originally launched as a user-editable wiki
(hence its name), but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits. , the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange and eight other people, some of which denied any association with the organisation.
Despite using the name "WikiLeaks", the website is no longer wiki
-based as of May 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 ("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.
Another of the organisation's goals is to ensure that whistleblower
s and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents. The online "drop box" (currently not functioning) was designed to "provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists."
In an interview on The Colbert Report, Assange discussed 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."
s following a number of denial-of-service attack
s 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 for any authorities to take WikiLeaks offline; they place an onus of proof upon any complainant whose suit would circumscribe WikiLeaks' liberty, e.g. its rights to exercise 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 would be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks' new servers. The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge. Technicians of the party would make sure that the servers are maintained and working.
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 to move the operation there. According to Assange, Switzerland and Iceland
are the only countries where WikiLeaks would feel safe to operate.
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.
opened a criminal probe of WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange shortly after the leak of diplomatic cables
began. Attorney General Eric Holder
affirmed the probe was "not sabre-rattling", but was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation." 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 empanelled 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 Prime Minister 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 U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights
has issued a statement highlighting its alarm at the "multiple examples of legal overreach and irregularities" in his arrest.
encrypted and there has been speculation that it was intended 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."
and online payment systems. Annual expenses have been estimated at about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but might reportedly reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for.
WikiLeaks lawyers often work pro bono, and in some cases legal support has been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press
, Los Angeles Times
, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. WikiLeaks only revenue stream is donations, but it has considered other options including an auction model to sell early access to documents. In September 2011, Wikileaks began auctioning items on Ebay to raise funds, and Assange told an audience at Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas that the organisation might not be able to survive.
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
stated:
However, in December 2010 the Wau Holland Foundation
stated that 4 permanent employees, including Julian Assange, had begun to receive salaries.
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.
In 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.
In 2010, WikiLeaks received €635,772.73 in PayPal donations, less €30,000 in PayPal fees, and €695,925.46 in bank transfers. €500,988.89 of the sum was received in the month of December, primarily as bank transfers as PayPal suspended payments December 4. €298,057.38 of the remainder was received in April.
The Wau Holland Foundation
, one of the WikiLeaks' main funding channels, stated that they received more than €900,000 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.
On the 15th of June, 2011, WikiLeaks began accepting donations in Bitcoin
.
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 California judge had the service provider of WikiLeaks block the site's domain (wikileaks.org) on 18 February 2008, although the bank only wanted the documents to be removed but WikiLeaks had failed to name a contact. 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.
. 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, it 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 2008–2011 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, it announced that a super-injunction was being used by the commodities company Trafigura
to gag The Guardian (London) from reporting on a leaked internal document regarding a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast. In November, it hosted copies of e-mail correspondence between climate scientists
, although they were not originally leaked to WikiLeaks. It 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.
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, he 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 resident published internal documents of the city administration regarding the planning of Love Parade. The city government reacted by securing a court order on 16 August forcing the removal of the documents from the site on which it was hosted. On 20 August 2010, WikiLeaks released a publication entitled 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
.
), 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 cable
s 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 ridicule, 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.
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 had not been able to verify and release the material because they did 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 Computerworld
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 BBC Television that WikiLeaks had information it considered 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.
was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. An article in The New Yorker
said:
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 had been removed by 29 November 2010.
since 2007, but that this can be bypassed through encrypted connections or by using one of WikiLeaks' many covert URLs.
(ACMA) censorship blacklist. The site was not affected.
, 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; that 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
secured a court order preventing 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 were reported to be 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 WikiLeaks volunteer and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.
spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 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, and 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.
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.
As in individual responses, government officials had mixed feelings. Although Hillary Clinton refused to comment on specific reports, she claimed that the leaks "put people's lives in danger" and "threatens national security." Robert Gates, a former CIA chief and Deputy National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush, commented, "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."
Facebook
WikiLeaks claimed in April 2010 that Facebook deleted its 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 1.6 million fans. It was 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."
(London), 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 opposed 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 led 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 the account 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. In a statement on its website, it 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 because 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 was "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 would take legal action against Visa Europe and Mastercard, in order to resume allowing payments to the website.
On 7 December 2010, The Guardian stated that people could donate to WikiLeaks via Commerzbank
in Kassel, 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 stated that Visa, Mastercard, and Amazon may be "violating WikiLeaks' 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'.
On 14 July 2011 WikiLeaks and DataCell Ltd. of Iceland filed a complaint against the international card companies, VISA Europe and MasterCard Europe, for infringement of the antitrust rules of the EU, in response to their withdrawal of financial services to the organisation. In a joint press release, the organisations stated: "The closure by VISA Europe and MasterCard of Datcell‘s access to the payment card networks in order to stop donations to WikiLeaks violates the competition rules of the European Community."
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."
On 18 December 2010, Bank of America
announced it would "not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for Wikileaks," citing "Wikileaks might be engaged in activities ... inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments". WikiLeaks responded in a tweet by encouraging their supporters who were BoA customers to close their accounts. Bank of America has long been believed to be the target of WikiLeaks' next major release.
Late in 2010, Bank of America approached the law firm of Hunton & Williams
to put a stop to WikiLeaks. Hunton & Williams assembled a group of security specialists, HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies
, and Berico Technologies
. They decided upon a campaign that included the use of "false documents, disinformation, and sabotage."
During 5 and 6 February 2011, Anonymous
hacked HBGary's web site, copied tens of thousands of documents from HBGary, posted tens of thousands of company emails online, and usurped Barr's Twitter account in revenge
. Some of the documents taken by Anonymous show HBGary Federal was working on behalf of Bank of America
to respond to WikiLeaks' planned release of the bank's internal documents. Emails detailed a supposed business proposal by HBGary to assist Bank of America's law firm, Hunton & Williams
, and revealed that the companies were willing to break the law to bring down WikiLeaks and Anonymous.
In October 2011 Julian Assange said the financial blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks' revenues and announced that it was suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting the blockade and raising new funds.
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 on leaks was no longer possible.
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.
On 25 September 2010, after being suspended by Assange for "disloyalty, insubordination and destabilization", Daniel Domscheit-Berg
, the German spokesman for WikiLeaks, told Der Spiegel
that he was resigning, saying "WikiLeaks has a structural problem. I no longer want to take responsibility for it, and that's why I am leaving the project". Assange accused Domscheit-Berg of leaking information to Newsweek
, claiming the WikiLeaks team was unhappy with Assange's leadership and handling of the Afghan war
document releases. Domscheit-Berg left with a small group to start OpenLeaks.com
, a new leak organisation and website with a different management and distribution philosophy.
While leaving, Daniel Domscheit-Berg copied and then deleted roughly 3,500 unpublished documents from the WikiLeaks servers, including information on the US government's 'no-fly list' and inside information from 20 right wing organizations, and accordingly to a WikiLeaks statement, 5 gigabytes of data relating to Bank of America, the internal communications of 20 neo-Nazi organisations and US intercept information for "over a hundred internet companies." In Domscheit-Berg's book he wrote: "To this day, we are waiting for Julian to restore security, so that we can return the material to him, which was on the submission platform". In August 2011, Domscheit-Berg permanently deleted the files for which he claimed "in order to ensure that the sources are not compromised".
Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year old Icelandic university student, resigned after he challenged Assange on his decision to suspend Domscheit-Berg and was bluntly rebuked. Iceland MP Birgitta Jonsdottir
also left WikiLeaks, citing lack of transparency, lack of structure, and poor communication flow in the organisation. According to The Independent
(London), at least a dozen key supporters of WikiLeaks left the website in 2010.
'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". 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 criticized WikiLeaks for exposing classified information and claimed that the leaks harm national security and compromise 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.
References
Journalism sourcing
In journalism, a source is a person, publication, or other record or document that gives timely information. Outside journalism, sources are sometimes known as "news sources"...
, news leak
News leak
A news leak is a disclosure of embargoed information in advance of its official release, or the unsanctioned release of confidential information.-Types of news leaks:...
s, and whistleblower
Whistleblower
A whistleblower is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company...
s. 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. Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
, an Australian Internet activist
Internet activism
Internet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience...
, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief and director. Kristinn Hrafnsson
Kristinn Hrafnsson
Kristinn Hrafnsson is an Icelandic investigative journalist and frontman for the WikiLeaks organisation.He has worked at various newspapers in Iceland and had a popular TV programme on Stöð 2 , Kompás, where he and his team often exposed criminal activity and/or shocking corruption in high places...
is the only other publicly known acknowledged associate of WikiLeaks as of 2011. Hrafnsson is also a member of the company Sunshine Press Productions along with Assange, Ingi Ragnar Ingason and Gavin MacFadyen.
The group has released a number of significant documents which have become front-page news items. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
and corruption in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
. In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed by an Apache helicopter, as the Collateral Murder video. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
not previously available to the public. 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
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, to be mapped. In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files
Guantanamo Bay files leak
The Guantánamo Bay files leak began on 25 April 2011, when WikiLeaks, along with several independent news organizations, began publishing 779 formerly secret documents relating to detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp...
relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
In November 2010, WikiLeaks collaborated with major global media organisations to release U.S. State department diplomatic cables
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
in redacted format. The release was nicknamed CableGate. On 1 September 2011, it became public that an encrypted version of WikiLeaks' huge archive of unredacted U.S. State Department cables had been available via Bittorrent for months, and that the decryption key (similar to a password) was available to those who knew where to look. WikiLeaks blamed the breach on its former partner, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, and that newspaper's journalist David Leigh
David Leigh
David Leigh is a British journalist and author, currently investigations executive editor of The Guardian.-Early life:Leigh was born in 1946 and educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, receiving a research degree from Cambridge in 1968.-Career:Leigh has been a prominent...
, who revealed the key in a book published in February 2011; The Guardian argued that WikiLeaks was to blame since they gave the impression that the decryption key was temporal (something not possible for a file decryption key). Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
reported a more complex story involving errors on both sides. Widely expressed fears that the CableGate release could endanger innocent lives have so far proved unfounded.
Founding
The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006. The website was unveiled, and published its first document, in December 2006. WikiLeaks has been predominantly represented in public since January 2007 by Julian AssangeJulian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
, who is now generally recognised as the "founder of WikiLeaks". According to Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
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, organizer, financier, and all the rest".
WikiLeaks relies heavily on volunteers and previously described its founders as a mix of Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, Europe, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. The site was originally launched as a user-editable wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
(hence its name), but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits. , the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange and eight other people, some of which denied any association with the organisation.
Despite using the name "WikiLeaks", the website is no longer wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
-based as of May 2010. Also, despite some popular confusion due to both having the term "wiki" in their names, WikiLeaks and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
have no affiliation with each other ("wiki" is not a brand name); Wikia
Wikia
Wikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
, a for-profit corporation loosely affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
, did however purchase several WikiLeaks-related domain names (including wikileaks.com and wikileaks.net) as a "protective brand measure" in 2007.
Purpose
The WikiLeaks website says their goal is "to bring important news and information to the public... One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth."Another of the organisation's goals is to ensure that whistleblower
Whistleblower
A whistleblower is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company...
s and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents. The online "drop box" (currently not functioning) was designed to "provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists."
In an interview on The Colbert Report, Assange discussed 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
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
's leaking of the Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
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
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
guarantees anonymity, at least in the area of political discourse. Author and journalist Whitley Strieber
Whitley Strieber
Louis Whitley Strieber is an American writer best known for his horror novels The Wolfen and The Hunger and for Communion, a non-fiction account of his perceived experiences with non-human entities. Strieber also co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm with Art Bell, which inspired the film about...
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."
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.Hosting
WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". The site is available on multiple servers and different domain nameDomain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
s following a number of denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
s and its severance from different Domain Name System
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
(DNS) providers.
Until August 2010, WikiLeaks was hosted by PRQ
PRQ
PeRiQuito AB is a Swedish Internet service provider and web hosting company created in 2004.-Ownership:Based in Stockholm, PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij, two founders of The Pirate Bay.- Business model :...
, 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
Server log
A server log is a log file automatically created and maintained by a server of activity performed by it.A typical example is a web server log which maintains a history of page requests. The W3C maintains a standard format for web server log files, but other proprietary formats exist...
". Currently, WikiLeaks is mainly hosted by Bahnhof
Bahnhof
Bahnhof is a Swedish Internet service provider founded in 1994 by Oscar Swartz in Uppsala and was the first independent ISP in Sweden. Today the company is represented in Stockholm, Göteborg, Uppsala, Borlänge, and Lund....
in a facility
Pionen
Pionen is a former civil defence center built in the White Mountains in Stockholm, Sweden in the 1970s to protect essential government functions from nuclear strike. The address of the Pionen data center is Renstiernas street 35 and 37....
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
Constitution of Sweden
The Swedish Constitution consists of four fundamental laws :* The 1810 Act of Succession * The 1949 Freedom of the Press Act * The 1974 Instrument of Government * The 1991 Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression...
, 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 for any authorities to take WikiLeaks offline; they place an onus of proof upon any complainant whose suit would circumscribe WikiLeaks' liberty, e.g. its rights to exercise free speech online. Furthermore, "WikiLeaks maintains its own servers at undisclosed locations, keeps no logs and uses military-grade encryption
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
to protect sources and other confidential information." Such arrangements have been called "bulletproof hosting
Bulletproof hosting
Bulletproof hosting is a service provided by some domain hosting or web hosting firms that allows their customer considerable leniency in the kinds of material they may upload and distribute...
."
On 17 August 2010, it was announced that the Swedish Pirate Party would be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks' new servers. The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge. Technicians of the party would make sure that the servers are maintained and working.
After the site became the target of a denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
from a hacker on its old servers, WikiLeaks moved its site to Amazon
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
'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
OVH
OVH is a privately owned web hosting service company in France that provides dedicated servers, mutual hosting, domain names and VOIP telephony services. The company is a Société par actions simplifiée under French law and its headquarters are in Roubaix in northern France...
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
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
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
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
, Freenet
Freenet
Freenet is a decentralized, censorship-resistant distributed data store originally designed by Ian Clarke. According to Clarke, Freenet aims to provide freedom of speech through a peer-to-peer network with strong protection of anonymity; as part of supporting its users' freedom, Freenet is free and...
, Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
, and PGP
Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...
. WikiLeaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
because of the strong privacy needs of its users.
On 4 November 2010, Julian Assange told Swiss public television TSR
Télévision Suisse Romande
Télévision Suisse Romande is a TV network with 2 channels: TSR 1 and TSR 2. They are the main French language channels in Switzerland, part of SRG SSR idée suisse...
that he is seriously considering seeking political asylum
Right of asylum
Right of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
in neutral Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and setting up a WikiLeaks foundation to move the operation there. According to Assange, Switzerland and Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
are the only countries where WikiLeaks would feel safe to operate.
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 its service from WikiLeaks. Pro-WikiLeaks supporters retaliated by launching a DDoS attack against EveryDNS. Because of mistakes in the blogosphere, some supporters accidentally mistook EasyDNS for EveryDNS and a sizable internet backlash against EasyDNS ensued. Afterwards EasyDNS decided to provide WikiLeaks its name server service.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 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 it does 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 DepartmentUnited States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
opened a criminal probe of WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange shortly after the leak of diplomatic cables
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
began. Attorney General Eric Holder
Eric Holder
Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. is the 82nd and current Attorney General of the United States and the first African American to hold the position, serving under President Barack Obama....
affirmed the probe was "not sabre-rattling", but was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation." The Washington Post reported that the department was considering charges under the Espionage Act
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
, a move which former prosecutors characterised as "difficult" because of First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
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 empanelled grand jury in Alexandria [Virginia]" meeting to consider criminal charges in the WikiLeaks case.
In Australia, the government and the Australian Federal Police
Australian Federal Police
The Australian Federal Police is the federal police agency of the Commonwealth of Australia. Although the AFP was created by the amalgamation in 1979 of three Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, it traces its history from Commonwealth law enforcement agencies dating back to the federation of...
have not stated what Australian laws may have been broken by WikiLeaks, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard
Julia Eileen Gillard is the 27th and current Prime Minister of Australia, in office since June 2010.Gillard was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales and migrated with her family to Adelaide, Australia in 1966, attending Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School. In 1982 Gillard moved...
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
Ben Saul
Ben Saul is associate professor of the University of Sydney and Co-Director of the Sydney Centre for International Law. His research interests include international law, in particular, international aspects of anti-terrorism law, humanitarian law, human rights law, among others.Ben Saul publishes...
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 U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Constitutional Rights
Al Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...
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 AESAdvanced Encryption Standard
Advanced Encryption Standard is a specification for the encryption of electronic data. It has been adopted by the U.S. government and is now used worldwide. It supersedes DES...
encrypted and there has been speculation that it was intended to serve as insurance in case the WikiLeaks website or its spokesman Julian Assange are incapacitated, upon which the passphrase
Passphrase
A passphrase is a sequence of words or other text used to control access to a computer system, program or data. A passphrase is similar to a password in usage, but is generally longer for added security. Passphrases are often used to control both access to, and operation of, cryptographic programs...
could be published, similar to the concept of a dead man's switch
Dead man's switch
A dead man's switch is a switch that is automatically operated in case the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death or loss of consciousness....
. Following the first few days' release of the US diplomatic cables
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
starting 28 November 2010, the US television broadcaster CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
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."
Financing
WikiLeaks is a non-profit organisation, largely supported by volunteers, and it is dependent on public donations. Its main financing methods include conventional bank transfersWire transfer
Wire transfer or credit transfer is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or institution to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account or through a transfer of cash at a cash office...
and online payment systems. Annual expenses have been estimated at about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but might reportedly reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for.
WikiLeaks lawyers often work pro bono, and in some cases legal support has been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. WikiLeaks only revenue stream is donations, but it has considered other options including an auction model to sell early access to documents. In September 2011, Wikileaks began auctioning items on Ebay to raise funds, and Assange told an audience at Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas that the organisation might not be able to survive.
Funding model
The Wau Holland FoundationWau Holland Foundation
The Wau Holland Foundation is a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin, Germany.It was established in 2003 in memory of Wau Holland, co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club...
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
TechEye
TechEye is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by Mike Magee, James Crowley, and Allan Rutherford in January 2010. The site is the latest in a long line of technology news sites launched by Mike Magee, who originally co-founded The Register back in 1994....
stated:
However, in December 2010 the Wau Holland Foundation
Wau Holland Foundation
The Wau Holland Foundation is a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin, Germany.It was established in 2003 in memory of Wau Holland, co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club...
stated that 4 permanent employees, including Julian Assange, had begun to receive salaries.
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
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads...
. 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
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
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.
In 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
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is an American private, non-profit foundation dedicated to supporting transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts....
, 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
Jennifer 8. Lee
Jennifer 8. Lee is an American journalist. She has written for various sections of The New York Times for several years.- Early life and career :...
, who has done PR work for WikiLeaks with the press and on social networking sites.
In 2010, WikiLeaks received €635,772.73 in PayPal donations, less €30,000 in PayPal fees, and €695,925.46 in bank transfers. €500,988.89 of the sum was received in the month of December, primarily as bank transfers as PayPal suspended payments December 4. €298,057.38 of the remainder was received in April.
The Wau Holland Foundation
Wau Holland Foundation
The Wau Holland Foundation is a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin, Germany.It was established in 2003 in memory of Wau Holland, co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club...
, one of the WikiLeaks' main funding channels, stated that they received more than €900,000 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
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
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.
On the 15th of June, 2011, WikiLeaks began accepting donations in Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network over which users make transactions that are tracked and verified through this network. The word Bitcoin also refers to the digital currency implemented as the currency medium for user transactions over this network...
.
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 GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
published a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi
Daniel arap Moi
Daniel Toroitich arap Moi was the President of Kenya from 1978 until 2002.Daniel arap Moi is popularly known to Kenyans as 'Nyayo', a Swahili word for 'footsteps'...
based on information provided via WikiLeaks. In November 2007, a March 2003 copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta
Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures
The Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures is a document that was written under the authority of Geoffrey D. Miller when he was the officer in charge of Joint Task Force Guantanamo....
detailing the protocol of the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
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
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
, 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
Cayman Islands
The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...
branch of the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, which led to the bank suing WikiLeaks
Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit
Bank Julius Baer vs. Wikileaks lawsuit was filed by Bank Julius Baer against the website WikiLeaks.In early February 2008, a California judge forced Dynadot, the domain registrar of wikileaks.org, to disassociate the site's domain name records with its servers, preventing use of the domain name to...
and obtaining an injunction which temporarily shut down wikileaks.org. The California judge had the service provider of WikiLeaks block the site's domain (wikileaks.org) on 18 February 2008, although the bank only wanted the documents to be removed but WikiLeaks had failed to name a contact. The site was instantly mirrored by supporters, and later that month the judge overturned his previous decision citing First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction
Jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is the practical authority granted to a formally constituted legal body or to a political leader to deal with and make pronouncements on legal matters and, by implication, to administer justice within a defined area of responsibility...
. In March 2008, WikiLeaks published what they referred to as "the collected secret 'bibles' of Scientology
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
," 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
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
, the contents of a Yahoo account belonging to Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
(the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
) were posted on WikiLeaks
Sarah Palin email hack
The Sarah Palin email hack occurred on September 16, 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign when the Yahoo! personal email account of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was subjected to unauthorized access...
after being hacked into by members of Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
. In November 2008, the membership list of the far-right British National Party
British National Party
The British National Party is a British far-right political party formed as a splinter group from the National Front by John Tyndall in 1982...
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 scandal2008 Peru oil scandal
The 2008 Peru oil scandal started after a Peruvian TV station broadcast an audio tape of an alleged conversation between a government official and a lobbyist agreeing to help a firm win contracts...
. In February, WikiLeaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service
Congressional Research Service
The Congressional Research Service , known as "Congress's think tank", is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works exclusively and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a...
reports followed in March, by a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman
Norm Coleman
Norman Bertram Coleman, Jr. is an American attorney and politician. He was a United States senator from Minnesota from 2003 to 2009. Coleman was elected in 2002 and served in the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses. Before becoming a senator, he was mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, from 1994 to 2002...
senatorial campaign and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian. In July, it 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
Stuxnet
Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in June 2010. It initially spreads via Microsoft Windows, and targets Siemens industrial software and equipment...
computer worm. In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank
Kaupthing Bank
Kaupthing Bank was an international Icelandic bank, headquartered in Reykjavík, Iceland. It was formed by the merger of Kaupthing and Búnaðarbanki Íslands in 2003 and was the largest bank in Iceland....
were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008–2011 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
Joint Services Protocol 440
Joint Services Publication 440 is the name of a British 2001 Ministry of Defence 2,400-page restricted document describing requirements to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of military computer systems...
, a British document advising the security services on how to avoid documents being leaked was published by WikiLeaks. Later that month, it announced that a super-injunction was being used by the commodities company Trafigura
Trafigura
Trafigura is an Amsterdam-based multinational company founded in 1993 trading in base metals and energy, including oil. the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit....
to gag The Guardian (London) from reporting on a leaked internal document regarding a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast. In November, it hosted copies of e-mail correspondence between climate scientists
Climatic Research Unit email controversy
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia...
, although they were not originally leaked to WikiLeaks. It 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
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
and terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
, but the leaks revealed that other sites covering unrelated subjects were also listed.
2010
In mid-February, 2010, WikiLeaks received a diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Reykjavik relating to the Icesave scandal, which they published on February 18. The cable, known as Reykjavik 13 was the first of the classified documents WikiLeaks published among those allegedly provided to them by US Army Private Bradley Manning. 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 ReutersReuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
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
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
Insights. In June 2010, he was arrested after alleged chat logs were turned in to the authorities by former hacker Adrian Lamo
Adrian Lamo
Adrian Lamo is a threat analyst and "grey hat" hacker. He first gained media attention for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, culminating in his 2003 arrest...
, 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
Granai airstrike
The Granai airstrike, sometimes called the Granai massacre, refers to the killing of a large number of Afghan civilians, mostly children, and including women, by American aircraft on May 4, 2009, in the village of Granai in Farah Province, south of Herat, Afghanistan...
and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks. In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
between 2004 and the end of 2009 to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
. The documents detail individual incidents including friendly fire
Friendly fire
Friendly fire is inadvertent firing towards one's own or otherwise friendly forces while attempting to engage enemy forces, particularly where this results in injury or death. A death resulting from a negligent discharge is not considered 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
Love Parade stampede
On 24 July 2010, a stampede at the 2010 Love Parade electronic dance music festival in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, caused the death of 21 people. At least 510 more were injured....
in Duisburg
Duisburg
- History :A legend recorded by Johannes Aventinus holds that Duisburg, was built by the eponymous Tuisto, mythical progenitor of Germans, ca. 2395 BC...
, Germany, on 24 July 2010, a local resident published internal documents of the city administration regarding the planning of Love Parade. The city government reacted by securing a court order on 16 August forcing the removal of the documents from the site on which it was hosted. On 20 August 2010, WikiLeaks released a publication entitled 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
Iraq War documents leak
The Iraq War documents leak is the unsanctioned disclosure of a collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports, also called the Iraq War Logs, of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 to several international media organizations and published on the Internet by WikiLeaks on 2010. The files record...
relating to the Iraq War were released in October. The BBC quoted The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
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
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
by the Iraqi authorities during the period after the 2003 war
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
.
Diplomatic cables release
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País), France (Le MondeLe Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
), Germany (Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
), the United Kingdom (The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
), and the United States (The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
) started to simultaneously publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential — but not top-secret — diplomatic cable
Diplomatic cable
A diplomatic cable, also known as a diplomatic telegram or embassy cable, is the term given to a confidential text message exchanged between a diplomatic mission, like an embassy or a consulate, and the foreign ministry of its parent country....
s 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
Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak
This is a list of notable content from the United States diplomatic cables leak that shows the United States' opinion of related affairs. Beginning on 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks had been publishing classified documents of detailed correspondence—diplomatic cables—between the United...
include numerous unguarded comments and revelations regarding: critiques and praises about the host countries of various US embassies; political manoeuvring regarding climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
; discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East; efforts and resistance towards nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated....
; actions in the War on Terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
; assessments of other threats around the world; dealings between various countries; US intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
and counterintelligence efforts; and other diplomatic actions. Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak
Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak
Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak included stark criticism, anticipation, commendation, strong support for, as well as outright threats against people involved in the leak, satire and quiescence....
include stark criticism, anticipation, commendation, and quiescence. Consequent reactions to the US government include ridicule, sympathy, bewilderment and dismay. On 14 December 2010 the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
issued a subpoena directing Twitter
Twitter subpoena
On 14 December 2010, the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena accompanied by a national security letter to Twitter in relation to ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks...
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.
Guantanamo files
In late April 2011, files related to the Guantanamo prison were released.Upcoming leaks
In May 2010, WikiLeaks said it 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
BP
BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...
, and that they were "getting enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of a very high calibre" but added that they had not been able to verify and release the material because they did 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 Computerworld
Computerworld
Computerworld is an IT magazine that provides information for senior IT leaders. It is published in many countries around the world under the same or similar names. Its publisher is International Data Group. Computerworld serves the needs of IT management via print and online...
interview, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
". In 2010 he told Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
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
Mark Stephens (solicitor)
Mark Howard Stephens CBE is a British solicitor specialising in media law, intellectual property rights and human rights with the firm Finers Stephens Innocent...
, told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC Television that WikiLeaks had information it considered to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it would release if the organisation needs to defend itself.
In January 2011, Rudolf Elmer
Rudolf Elmer
Rudolf Elmer is a former employee of Swiss bank Julius Bär. He worked for the bank for close to two decades, the last position being overseeing the Caribbean operations of the bank for eight years until his dismissal in 2002...
, 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
Operational challenges
Assange has acknowledged that the practice of posting largely unfiltered classified information online could one day lead the website 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.Response from media
Chinese journalist Shi TaoShi Tao
Shi Tao is a mainland Chinese journalist, writer and poet, who in 2005 was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site after Yahoo! China provided his personal details to the Chinese government.-Brief history:Shi Tao...
was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. An article in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
said:
One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that was being used as a node for the Tor networkAssange 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)".Tor (anonymity network)Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
. 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."
Australia
On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media AuthorityAustralian Communications and Media Authority
The Australian Communications and Media Authority is an Australian government statutory authority within the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy portfolio...
added WikiLeaks to their proposed blacklist of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme
Internet censorship in Australia
Internet censorship in Australia currently consists of a regulatory regime under which the Australian Communications and Media Authority has the power to enforce content restrictions on Internet content hosted within Australia, and maintain a "black-list" of overseas websites which is then...
is implemented as planned. The blacklisting had been removed by 29 November 2010.
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 URLUniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
since 2007, but that this can be bypassed through encrypted connections or by using one of WikiLeaks' many covert URLs.
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 AuthorityAustralian Communications and Media Authority
The Australian Communications and Media Authority is an Australian government statutory authority within the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy portfolio...
(ACMA) censorship blacklist. The site was not affected.
Iceland
After the release of the 2007 airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai airstrikeGranai airstrike
The Granai airstrike, sometimes called the Granai massacre, refers to the killing of a large number of Afghan civilians, mostly children, and including women, by American aircraft on May 4, 2009, in the village of Granai in Farah Province, south of Herat, Afghanistan...
, 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
Reykjavík
Reykjavík is the capital and largest city in Iceland.Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay...
where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; that there was "covert following and hidden photography" by police and foreign intelligence services
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
; 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
Columbia Journalism Review
The Columbia Journalism Review is an American magazine for professional journalists published bimonthly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961....
, "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
Kaupthing Bank
Kaupthing Bank was an international Icelandic bank, headquartered in Reykjavík, Iceland. It was formed by the merger of Kaupthing and Búnaðarbanki Íslands in 2003 and was the largest bank in Iceland....
secured a court order preventing Iceland's national broadcaster, RÚV
RÚV
Ríkisútvarpið is Iceland's national public-service broadcasting organization.Operating from studios in the country's capital, Reykjavík, as well as regional centres around the country, the service broadcasts a variety of general programming to a wide audience across the whole country via radio...
, 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 were reported to be outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance. Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
The International Modern Media Institute is an international institution developing havens for freedom of information, speech, and expression. It creates supportive and attractive jurisdiction for the publication of investigative journalism and other threatened online media...
, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
(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
Birgitta Jónsdóttir
Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a member of parliament of Althing, the Icelandic parliament, formerly representing the Citizens' Movement, but now representing The Movement. Her district is the Reykjavík South Constituency. She was elected to the Icelandic parliament in April 2009 on behalf of a movement...
, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.
Thailand
The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) is currently censoring the WikiLeaks website in Thailand and more than 40,000 other webpages because of the emergency decree declared in Thailand at the beginning of April 2010 as a result of political instabilities.United States
On 17 July 2010, Jacob AppelbaumJacob Appelbaum
Jacob Appelbaum is an independent computer security researcher and hacker. He is currently employed by the University of Washington, and is a core member of the Tor project. Appelbaum is known for representing Wikileaks at the 2010 Hope conference...
spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 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
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
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
CNET
CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
that Appelbaum's bag was searched, receipts from his bag were photocopied, and 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
DEF CON
DEF CON is one of the world's largest annual computer hacker conventions, held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada...
conference and mentioned his phone being "seized". After speaking, he was approached by two FBI agents and questioned.
Access to WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. 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
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
, and the Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
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.
As in individual responses, government officials had mixed feelings. Although Hillary Clinton refused to comment on specific reports, she claimed that the leaks "put people's lives in danger" and "threatens national security." Robert Gates, a former CIA chief and Deputy National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush, commented, "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."
U.S. diplomatic cables leak responses
According to The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
(London), 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
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
that they believed they were being watched by the security services after the U.S. cables leak
United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began in February 2010 when WikiLeaks—a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers—began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates,...
, which started on 28 November 2010.
Furthermore, several companies severed ties with WikiLeaks. After providing 24-hour notification, American-owned EveryDNS
EveryDNS
EveryDNS.net was one of the world's largest free DNS management services, at one time providing DNS services for over 135,000 domains.- History :EveryDNS was founded in June 2001 by David Ulevitch. On the 7th of January 2010 EveryDNS was purchased by Dyn Inc....
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
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
severed its ties with WikiLeaks, to which it was providing infrastructure services, after an intervention by an aide of U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman
Joe Lieberman
Joseph Isadore "Joe" Lieberman is the senior United States Senator from Connecticut. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was the party's nominee for Vice President in the 2000 election. Currently an independent, he remains closely affiliated with the party.Born in Stamford, Connecticut,...
. Amazon denied acting under political pressure, citing a violation of its terms of service. Citing indirect pressure from the U.S. Government, Tableau Software
Tableau Software
Tableau Software is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA, USA. It produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence, and is reportedly anticipating revenue of $30 million to $40 million in 2010.- History :The company traces...
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
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads...
of the WikiLeaks site appeared, and the Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
group of Internet activists called on supporters to attack the websites of companies which opposed WikiLeaks, under the banner of Operation Payback
Operation Payback
Operation Payback is a coordinated, decentralized group of attacks on opponents of Internet piracy by Internet activists using the "Anonymous" moniker - a group sometimes affiliated with the website 4chan. Operation Payback started as retaliation to distributed denial of service attacks on torrent...
, previously aimed at anti-piracy organisations. AFP
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
reported that attempts to shut down the wikileaks.org address had led to the site surviving via the so-called Streisand effect
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely...
, whereby attempts to censor information online leads to it being replicated in many places.
On 3 December, PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
, the payment processor owned by eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, permanently cut off the account of the Wau Holland Foundation
Wau Holland Foundation
The Wau Holland Foundation is a nonprofit foundation based in Berlin, Germany.It was established in 2003 in memory of Wau Holland, co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club...
that had been redirecting donations to WikiLeaks. PayPal alleged that the account violated its "Acceptable Use Policy", specifically that the account 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
PostFinance
PostFinance is founded in 1906 and the financial services unit of Swiss Post, and the fifth largest retail financial institution in Switzerland...
announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange that it holds, totalling €31,000. In a statement on its website, it 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 because 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
MasterCard
Mastercard Incorporated or MasterCard Worldwide is an American multinational financial services corporation with its headquarters in the MasterCard International Global Headquarters, Purchase, Harrison, New York, United States...
announced that it was "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
XIPWIRE
Xipwire is a mobile payment service provider allowing payments and money transfers to be made with mobile devices using simple text messages. Mobile money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders....
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 would take legal action against Visa Europe and Mastercard, in order to resume allowing payments to the website.
On 7 December 2010, The Guardian stated that people could donate to WikiLeaks via Commerzbank
Commerzbank
Commerzbank AG is the second-largest bank in Germany, after Deutsche Bank, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main.-Activities:Commerzbank is mainly active in commercial bank, retail banking and mortgaging. It suffered reversals in investment banking in early 2000s and scaled back its Securities unit...
in Kassel, Germany, or Landsbanki
Landsbanki
Landsbanki, also commonly known as Landsbankinn in Iceland, is a private Icelandic bank with international operations...
in Iceland, or by post to a post office box at the University of Melbourne
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. Founded in 1853, it is the second oldest university in Australia and the oldest in Victoria...
or at the wikileaks.ch domain.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that Visa, Mastercard, and Amazon may be "violating WikiLeaks' 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'.
On 14 July 2011 WikiLeaks and DataCell Ltd. of Iceland filed a complaint against the international card companies, VISA Europe and MasterCard Europe, for infringement of the antitrust rules of the EU, in response to their withdrawal of financial services to the organisation. In a joint press release, the organisations stated: "The closure by VISA Europe and MasterCard of Datcell‘s access to the payment card networks in order to stop donations to WikiLeaks violates the competition rules of the European Community."
Response from financial industry
Since the publications of CableGate, WikiLeaks has faced an unprecedented global financial blockade by major finance companies including Mastercard, Visa and PayPal.In October 2010, it was reported that Moneybookers
Moneybookers
Moneybookers is an e-commerce business that allows payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. Moneybookers performs payment processing for websites, online auction sites, and...
, 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."
On 18 December 2010, Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
announced it would "not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for Wikileaks," citing "Wikileaks might be engaged in activities ... inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments". WikiLeaks responded in a tweet by encouraging their supporters who were BoA customers to close their accounts. Bank of America has long been believed to be the target of WikiLeaks' next major release.
Late in 2010, Bank of America approached the law firm of Hunton & Williams
Hunton & Williams
Founded in 1901, Hunton & Williams LLP is a US law firm that employs more than 800 lawyers. It has been called "one of the most well-connected legal and lobbying firms in DC." The firm was founded in Richmond, Virginia and has 18 other offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In...
to put a stop to WikiLeaks. Hunton & Williams assembled a group of security specialists, HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tysons Corner, Virginia, New York City and Covent Garden, London, is a software company that produces the Palantir Government and Palantir Finance platforms...
, and Berico Technologies
Berico Technologies
Berico Technologies is an analysis and technology company. Its customers are primarily Defense and Intelligence groups in the US government.It is based in Arlington, Virginia.- History :Berico was founded in 2006 by military veterans....
. They decided upon a campaign that included the use of "false documents, disinformation, and sabotage."
During 5 and 6 February 2011, Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
hacked HBGary's web site, copied tens of thousands of documents from HBGary, posted tens of thousands of company emails online, and usurped Barr's Twitter account in revenge
Revenge
Revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It is also called payback, retribution, retaliation or vengeance; it may be characterized, justly or unjustly, as a form of justice.-Function in society:Some societies believe that the...
. Some of the documents taken by Anonymous show HBGary Federal was working on behalf of Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
to respond to WikiLeaks' planned release of the bank's internal documents. Emails detailed a supposed business proposal by HBGary to assist Bank of America's law firm, Hunton & Williams
Hunton & Williams
Founded in 1901, Hunton & Williams LLP is a US law firm that employs more than 800 lawyers. It has been called "one of the most well-connected legal and lobbying firms in DC." The firm was founded in Richmond, Virginia and has 18 other offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In...
, and revealed that the companies were willing to break the law to bring down WikiLeaks and Anonymous.
"CEO Aaron Barr thought he'd uncovered the hackers' identities and like rats, they'd scurry for cover. If he could nail them, he could cover up the crimes H&W, HBGary, and BoA planned, bring down WikiLeaks, decapitate Anonymous, and place his opponents in prison while collecting a cool fee. He thought he was 88% right; he was 88% wrong."
In October 2011 Julian Assange said the financial blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks' revenues and announced that it was suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting the blockade and raising new funds.
Restructuring
Some supporters were unhappy when WikiLeaks moved from a community-based Wiki model to a more centralised organisational structure. 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 on leaks was no longer possible.
Defections
Within WikiLeaks, there has been public disagreement between founder and spokesperson Julian AssangeJulian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
and Daniel Domscheit-Berg
Daniel Domscheit-Berg
-External links:*, the whistleblower website started by Domscheit-Berg* collected news and commentary at Der Spiegel...
, 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.
On 25 September 2010, after being suspended by Assange for "disloyalty, insubordination and destabilization", Daniel Domscheit-Berg
Daniel Domscheit-Berg
-External links:*, the whistleblower website started by Domscheit-Berg* collected news and commentary at Der Spiegel...
, the German spokesman for WikiLeaks, told Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
that he was resigning, saying "WikiLeaks has a structural problem. I no longer want to take responsibility for it, and that's why I am leaving the project". Assange accused Domscheit-Berg of leaking information to Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, claiming the WikiLeaks team was unhappy with Assange's leadership and handling of the Afghan war
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
document releases. Domscheit-Berg left with a small group to start OpenLeaks.com
OpenLeaks
-External links:* *...
, a new leak organisation and website with a different management and distribution philosophy.
While leaving, Daniel Domscheit-Berg copied and then deleted roughly 3,500 unpublished documents from the WikiLeaks servers, including information on the US government's 'no-fly list' and inside information from 20 right wing organizations, and accordingly to a WikiLeaks statement, 5 gigabytes of data relating to Bank of America, the internal communications of 20 neo-Nazi organisations and US intercept information for "over a hundred internet companies." In Domscheit-Berg's book he wrote: "To this day, we are waiting for Julian to restore security, so that we can return the material to him, which was on the submission platform". In August 2011, Domscheit-Berg permanently deleted the files for which he claimed "in order to ensure that the sources are not compromised".
Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year old Icelandic university student, resigned after he challenged Assange on his decision to suspend Domscheit-Berg and was bluntly rebuked. Iceland MP Birgitta Jonsdottir
Birgitta Jónsdóttir
Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a member of parliament of Althing, the Icelandic parliament, formerly representing the Citizens' Movement, but now representing The Movement. Her district is the Reykjavík South Constituency. She was elected to the Icelandic parliament in April 2009 on behalf of a movement...
also left WikiLeaks, citing lack of transparency, lack of structure, and poor communication flow in the organisation. According to The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
(London), at least a dozen key supporters of WikiLeaks left the website in 2010.
Reception
WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organisation has won a number of awards, including The EconomistThe Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
's New Media Award in 2008 at the Index on Censorship Awards and Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
'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
Sam Adams Award
The Sam Adams Award is given annually by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers, to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. It is named after Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War, and takes...
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". In its first days, an Internet petition
Internet petition
An Internet petition is a form of petition posted on a website. Visitors to the website in question can add their email addresses or names, and after enough "signatures" have been collected, the resulting letter may be delivered to the subject of the petition, usually via e-mail.-Pros and cons:The...
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 criticized WikiLeaks for exposing classified information and claimed that the leaks harm national security and compromise 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
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
the UN Special Rapporteur has called on states and other actors to keep international legal principles in mind.
Spin-offs
Releases of US diplomatic cables inspired the creation of a number of other organisations based on the WikiLeaks model.- OpenLeaksOpenLeaks-External links:* *...
was created by a former WikiLeaks spokesperson. Daniel Domscheit-BergDaniel Domscheit-Berg-External links:*, the whistleblower website started by Domscheit-Berg* collected news and commentary at Der Spiegel...
said the intention was to be more transparent than WikiLeaks. OpenLeaks was supposed to start public operations in early 2011 but despite much media coverage it is still not functioning. - 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." Unfortunately the site itself appears to have become discounted by its users, as evidenced by the highest rated article being "Tradeleaks tampering with leak vote count mechanism".
- Balkan Leaks was founded by Bulgarian Atanas Chobanov in order to make the BalkansBalkansThe Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
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.
- PPLeaks and PSOELeaks are related to the Spanish Partido PopularPeople's Party (Spain)The People's Party is a conservative political party in Spain.The People's Party was a re-foundation in 1989 of the People's Alliance , a party led and founded by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a former Minister of Tourism during Francisco Franco's dictatorship...
and PSOESpanish Socialist Workers' PartyThe Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...
leaks and scandals. - Leakymails is a project designed to obtain and publish relevant documents exposing corruption of the political class and the powerful in ArgentinaArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. - Myanmar Wiki leaks is a Burmese site that seeks to publish classified documents primarily from the Burmese government, business organizations, Armed forces or rebel groups.
See also
- AccountabilityAccountabilityAccountability is a concept in ethics and governance with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility, answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving...
- Chilling Effects (group)
- Classified information in the United StatesClassified information in the United StatesThe United States government classification system is currently established under Executive Order 13526, the latest in a long series of executive orders on the topic. Issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, Executive Order 13526 replaced earlier executive orders on the topic and modified the...
- Digital rightsDigital rightsThe term digital rights describes the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network...
- Freedom of informationFreedom of informationFreedom of information refers to the protection of the right to freedom of expression with regards to the Internet and information technology . Freedom of information may also concern censorship in an information technology context, i.e...
- Freedom of the pressFreedom of the pressFreedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
- Information securityInformation securityInformation security means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, perusal, inspection, recording or destruction....
- Julian AssangeJulian AssangeJulian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
- New York Times Co. v. United StatesNew York Times Co. v. United StatesNew York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 , was a United States Supreme Court per curiam decision. The ruling made it possible for the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.President Richard Nixon had...
- Open societyOpen societyThe open society is a concept originally developed by philosopher Henri Bergson and then by Austrian and British philosopher Karl Popper. In open societies, government is purported to be responsive and tolerant, and political mechanisms are said to be transparent and flexible...
- Transparency (social)Transparency (social)Transparency is a general quality. It is implemented by a set of policies, practices and procedures that allow citizens to have accessibility, usability, utility, understandability, informativeness and auditability of information and process held by centers of authority...
- TorTor (anonymity network)Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
Footnotes
Notes- , the wikileaks.org domain redirected to mirror.wikileaks.info, a domain which is not included in the official list of mirrors.
- , until Wikileaks.org domain became accessible once again, wikileaks.ch served as the official website.
References
External links
- IRCInternet Relay ChatInternet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
server: irc://sunshinepress.org:9999/ (SSL required)