WikiLeaks is an international, online,
non-profit[2]
organisation which publishes secret information,
news
leaks,[5]
and classified media from anonymous
sources.[2][6]
Its website, initiated during 2006 in Iceland by the organisation
Sunshine Press,[7]
claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of
its initiation.[8]
Julian Assange, an
Australian
Internet activist, is generally described as its founder,
editor-in-chief, and director.[9]
Kristinn Hrafnsson,
Joseph P. Farrell and Sarah Harrison are the only other publicly
known and acknowledged associates of Julian Assange.[10]
Hrafnsson is also a member of Sunshine Press Productions along with
Assange, Ingi Ragnar Ingason and Gavin MacFadyen.[11][12]
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.[13]
During April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the
12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among
those killed by an
AH-64 Apache helicopter, known as the
Collateral Murder video. During July of the same year, WikiLeaks
released
Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about
the
War in Afghanistan not available previously to the public.[14]
During October 2010, the group released a set of almost 400,000
documents named the "Iraq
War Logs" in coordination with major commercial media organisations.
This allowed the mapping of 109,032 deaths in "significant" attacks by
insurgents in Iraq that had been reported to
Multi-National Force – Iraq, including about 15,000 that had not
been
previously published.[15][16]
During April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing
779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[17]
During November 2010, WikiLeaks collaborated with major global media
organisations to release
U.S. State department diplomatic "cables" in redacted format. 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 find it. WikiLeaks
blamed the breach on its former publication partner, the UK newspaper
The Guardian, and that newspaper's journalist
David Leigh, who revealed the key in a book published during
February 2011;[18]
The Guardian argued that WikiLeaks was to blame since they gave
the impression that the decryption key was temporary (something not
possible for a file decryption key).[19]
The German periodical
Der Spiegel reported a more complex story[20]
involving errors on both sides. The incident resulted in widely
expressed fears that the information released could endanger innocent
lives.[21][22]
History
Founding
.jpg/220px-Julian_Assange_(1).jpg)
Julian Assange was one of the early members of the
WikiLeaks staff and is credited as the website's founder.
The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006.[3]
The website was begun, and published its first document, during December
2006.[23][24]
WikiLeaks has been predominantly represented in public since January
2007 by
Julian Assange, who is now generally recognised as the "founder of
WikiLeaks."[25]
According to the magazine
Wired, 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."[26]
WikiLeaks relies to some degree on volunteers and previously
described its founders as a mixture of
Asian dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company
technologists from the
United States,
Taiwan,
Europe,
Australia, and
South Africa[27]
(hence its name), but has progressively adopted a more traditional
publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits.
As of June 2009, the website had more than 1,200 registered volunteers[27]
and listed an advisory board comprising Assange, his deputy Jash Vora
and seven other people, some of which denied any association with the
organisation.[28][29]
Despite using the name "WikiLeaks", the website no longer uses the "wiki"
publication method as of May 2010.[30]
Also, despite some popular confusion[31]
due to both having the term "wiki" in their names, WikiLeaks and
Wikipedia are not affiliated with each other ("wiki" is not a brand
name);[32][33]
Wikia, a
for-profit corporation affiliated loosely with the
Wikimedia Foundation, did purchase several WikiLeaks-related domain
names (including wikileaks.com and wikileaks.net) as a "protective brand
measure" during 2007.[34]
Purpose
According to the WikiLeaks website, its 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 journalists and
"whistleblowers"
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 as part of the American television program
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".[35]
The project has been compared to
Daniel Ellsberg's revelation of the "Pentagon
Papers" (US war-related secrets) during 1971.[36]
In the United States, the "leaking" of some documents may be protected
legally . The
U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the
Constitution guarantees anonymity, at least in the context of
political discourse.[36]
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."[37]
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.[38]
WikiLeaks does not have any official headquarters. During November 2010
the Wikileaks-endorsed[39]
news and activism site Wikileaks Central was initiated and was
administrated by editor
Heather Marsh who oversaw 70+ writers and volunteers.[40]
She resigned as editor in chief, administrator and domain holder of
Wikileaks Central on 8 March 2012.[41]
Hosting
WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable
mass document leaking".[42]
The website is available on multiple servers and different
domain names as a result of a number of
denial-of-service attacks and its elimination from different
Domain Name System (DNS) providers.[43][44]
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".[45]
Currently, WikiLeaks is hosted mainly by the Swedish internet service
provider
Bahnhof in the
Pionen
facility, a former nuclear bunker in Sweden.[46][47]
Other servers are spread around the world with the main server located
in Sweden.[48]
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.[48]
It is forbidden according to Swedish law for any administrative
authority to make inquiries about the sources of any type of newspaper.[49]
These laws, and the hosting by PRQ, make it difficult for any
authorities to eliminate WikiLeaks; 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."[45][50]
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.[51][52]
After the site became the target of a
denial-of-service attack on its old servers, WikiLeaks moved its
website to
Amazon.com's servers.[53]
Later, however, the website was "ousted" from the Amazon servers.[53]
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."[54]
WikiLeaks then decided to install itself on the servers of
OVH, a
private web-hosting service in France.[55]
After criticism from the French government, the company sought two court
rulings about the legality of hosting WikiLeaks. While the court in
Lille
immediately refused to force OVH to deactivate the WikiLeaks website,
the court in Paris stated it would need more time to examine the complex
technical issue.[56][57]
WikiLeaks is based on several softwares, including
Tor to preserve anonymity[58]
and
PGP.[citation
needed] WikiLeaks was implemented on
MediaWiki software between 2006 and October 2010.[59]
WikiLeaks strongly encouraged postings via
Tor because of the strong privacy needs of its users.[60]
On 4 November 2010, Julian Assange told Swiss public television
organization
Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) that he is seriously considering
seeking
political asylum in neutral
Switzerland and establishing a WikiLeaks foundation to move the
operation there.[61][62]
According to Assange, Switzerland and
Iceland
are the only countries where WikiLeaks would be safe to operate.[63][64]
Name servers
WikiLeaks had been using EveryDNS's services, which resulted in
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
attacks on the host.[clarification
needed] The attacks affected the quality of service
at EveryDNS, so the company withdrew its service from WikiLeaks.
Pro-WikiLeaks activists retaliated by initiating a DDoS attack against
EveryDNS. Because of mistakes by weblogs, some people accidentally
mistook EasyDNS for EveryDNS and a sizable internet backlash against
EasyDNS ensued. Afterwards EasyDNS decided to provide WikiLeaks its name
server service.[65]
Verification of submissions
WikiLeaks states that it has never released a misattributed document
and that documents are assessed before release. In response to concerns
about the possibility of misleading or fraudulent leaks, WikiLeaks has
stated that misleading leaks "are already well-placed in the mainstream
media. WikiLeaks is of no additional assistance."[66]
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."[67]
According to statements by Assange during 2010, submitted documents
are vetted by a group of five reviewers, with expertise with different
topics such as language or programming, who also investigate the
background of the leaker if his or her identity is known.[68]
In that group, Assange has the final decision about the assessment of a
document.[68]
Legal status
Legal background
The legal status of WikiLeaks is complex. Assange considers WikiLeaks
a 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.[69]
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 laws to protect confidential
source-journalist relationships.[70][71]
WikiLeaks has stated it does not solicit any information.[70]
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.[72]
Potential criminal prosecution
The
U.S. Justice Department began a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks
and Julian Assange soon after the
leak of diplomatic cables began.[73][74]
Attorney General
Eric Holder affirmed the investigation was "not sabre-rattling", but
was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation."[74]
The Washington Post reported that the department was considering
charges under the
Espionage Act of 1917, an action which former prosecutors
characterised as "difficult" because of
First Amendment protections for the press.[73][75]
Several Supreme Court cases have established previously that the
American constitution protects the re-publication of information gained
illegally provided the publishers did not themselves violate any laws in
acquiring it.[76]
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 method is
also difficult.[77]
Any prosecution of Assange would require extraditing him to the United
States, a procedure made more complicated and potentially delayed by any
preceding extradition to Sweden.[78]
One of Assange's lawyers, however, says they are fighting extradition to
Sweden because it might result in his extradition to the United States.[79]
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 for the WikiLeaks case.[80]
In Australia, the government and the
Australian Federal Police have not stated what Australian laws may
have been violated 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.[81]
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."[82]
Spencer Zifcak, President of Liberty Victoria, an Australian civil
liberties group, notes that without a charge or a trial completed, it is
inappropriate to state that WikiLeaks is guilty of illegal activities.[83]
On threats by various governments toward Julian Assange, legal expert
Ben
Saul argues that Assange is the target of a global smear campaign to
demonise him as a criminal or as a terrorist, without any legal basis.[84]
The U.S.
Center for Constitutional Rights has issued a statement emphasizing
its alarm at the "multiple examples of legal overreach and
irregularities" in his arrest.[85]
Insurance files
On 29 July 2010 WikiLeaks added a 1.4 GB "Insurance file" to the
Afghan War Diary page. The file is
AES encrypted and has a
SHA1 checksum of "cce54d3a8af370213d23fcbfe8cddc8619a0734c".[86][87]
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.[88][89]
After the first few days' release of the
US diplomatic cables starting 28 November 2010, the US television
broadcasting company
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."[90]
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."[90]
On 22 February 2012, there was another insurance file release, this
time 65 GB in size.[91][92]
The insurance files are not to be confused with another encrypted
file containing diplomatic cables, the password of which
has been compromised. The insurance files' passwords have not been
compromised and their contents are still unknown.
Financing
WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit organisation, funded largely by
volunteers, and it is dependent on public donations. Its main financing
methods include conventional
bank transfers and
online payment systems. Annual expenses have been estimated at about
€200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but might reportedly
become €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were to become
paid.[38]
WikiLeaks' lawyers often work pro bono, and in some cases legal aid
has been donated by media organisations such as the
Associated Press, the
Los Angeles Times, and the
National Newspaper Publishers Association.[38]
WikiLeaks' only revenue consists of donations, but it has considered
other options including auctioning early access to documents.[38]
During 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 Foundation helps to process donations to WikiLeaks.
During July 2010, the Foundation stated that WikiLeaks was not receiving
any money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and
bandwidth.[93]
An article in
TechEye
stated:
As a charity accountable under German law, donations for
WikiLeaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in
escrow and are given to WikiLeaks after the whistleblower
website files an application containing a statement with proof
of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor
give any renumeration [
sic]
to WikiLeaks' personnel, corroborating the statement of the
site's former German representative Daniel Schmitt [real name
Daniel Domscheit-Berg]
[94]
on national television that all personnel works voluntarily,
even its speakers.
[93]
However, during December 2010 the
Wau Holland Foundation stated that 4 permanent employees, including
Julian Assange, had begun to receive salaries.[95]
On 24 December 2009, WikiLeaks announced that it was experiencing a
shortage of funds[96]
and suspended all access to its website except for a form to submit new
material.[97]
Material that was published previously was no longer available, although
some could still be accessed on unofficial
mirror websites.[98]
WikiLeaks stated on its website that it would resume full operation once
the operational costs were paid.[97]
WikiLeaks saw this as a kind of work stoppage "to ensure that everyone
who is involved stops normal work and actually spends time raising
revenue".[38]
While the organisation initially planned for funds to be secured by 6
January 2010,[99]
it was not until 3 February 2010 that WikiLeaks announced that its
minimum fundraising goal had been achieved.[100]
On 22 January 2010, the internet payment intermediary
PayPal
suspended WikiLeaks' donation account and froze its assets. WikiLeaks
said that this had happened before, and was done for "no obvious
reason".[101]
The account was restored on 25 January 2010.[102]
On 18 May 2010, WikiLeaks announced that its website and archive were
operational again.[103]
During 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,[24]
but did not make the final approval.[104]
WikiLeaks commented via Twitter, "WikiLeaks was highest rated project in
the Knight challenge, strongly recommended to the board but gets no
funding. Go figure."[105]
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".[104]
A spokesman of the Knight Foundation disputed parts of WikiLeaks'
statement, saying "WikiLeaks was not recommended by Knight staff to the
board."[105]
However, he refused 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 websites.[105]
During 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 4 December. €298,057.38 of the
remainder was received in April.[106]
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, 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.[107][108]
On 15 June 2011, WikiLeaks began accepting donations in
Bitcoin.[109][110]
The Icelandic judiciary decided that Valitor (a company related to
visa and mastercard) was violating the law when it prevented donation to
the site by credit card. A justice ruled that the donations will be
allowed to return to the site after 14 days or they would be fined in
the amount of U$ 6,000.[111]
Leaks
2006–08
WikiLeaks posted its first document during December 2006, a decision
to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh
Hassan Dahir Aweys."[24]
During August 2007, the UK newspaper
The Guardian published a story about corruption by the family of
the former Kenyan politician
Daniel arap Moi based on information provided via WikiLeaks.[112]
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.[113]
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 denied repeatedly.[114]
During February 2008, WikiLeaks released allegations of illegal
activities at the
Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss Bank
Julius Baer, which resulted in the bank
suing WikiLeaks and obtaining an injunction which temporarily
suspended the operation of wikileaks.org.[115]
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 website was mirrored instantly by supporters, and later
that month the judge overturned his previous decision citing
First Amendment concerns and questions about legal
jurisdiction.[116][117]
During 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.[118]
During 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 a group
known as
Anonymous.[119]
During November 2008, the membership list of the rightist
British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks, after appearing
briefly on a weblog.[120]
A year later, on October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked.[121]
2009
During January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept
recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the
2008 Peru oil scandal.[122]
During February, WikiLeaks released 6,780
Congressional Research Service reports[123]
followed in March by a list of contributors to the
Norm Coleman senatorial campaign[124][125]
and a set of documents belonging to
Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of
The Guardian.[126]
During July, it released a report relating to a serious nuclear accident
that had occurred at the Iranian
Natanz nuclear facility during 2009.[127]
Later media reports have suggested that the accident was related to the
Stuxnet
computer "worm".[128][129]
During September, internal documents from
Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of
Iceland's banking sector, which caused the
2008–2012 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.[130]
During October,
Joint Services Protocol 440, a British document advising the
security services on how to avoid documents being leaked, was published
by WikiLeaks.[131]
Later that month, it announced that a
super-injunction was being used by the commodities company
Trafigura to stop The Guardian (London) from reporting on a
leaked internal document regarding a
toxic dumping incident in Côte d'Ivoire.[132][133]
During November, it hosted copies of
e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, although they were
not leaked originally to WikiLeaks.[134][135]
It also released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages sent on the day of
the
11 September attacks.[136]
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 featuring
unrelated subjects were also listed.[137][138][139]
2010
During mid-February 2010, WikiLeaks received a diplomatic cable from
the US Embassy in Reykjavik relating to the
Icesave scandal, which they published on 18 February.[140]
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. During March 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret
32-page
U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report
written during March 2008 discussing the leaking of material by
WikiLeaks and how it could be deterred.[141][142][143]
During April, a classified video of the
12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two
Reuters
employees being fired at, after the pilots mistakenly thought the men
were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras.[144]
During the week after the release, "wikileaks" was the search term with
the most significant growth worldwide during the last seven days as
measured by
Google Insights.[145]
During June 2010, Manning was arrested after alleged chat logs were
given to US 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 about 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks.[146]
During July, WikiLeaks released
92,000 documents related to the
war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to the
publications
The Guardian,
The New York Times and
Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including
"friendly
fire" and civilian casualties.[147]
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.[88]
About 15,000 of the 92,000 documents have not yet been released by
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.[148]
After 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 website on which it
was hosted.[149]
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.[150][151]
After the leak of information concerning the Afghan War, during October
2010, around
400,000 documents relating to the
Iraq
War were released. The BBC quoted the US
Dept. of Defense referring to the Iraq War Logs as "the largest leak
of classified documents in its history." Media coverage of the leaked
documents emphasized claims that the U.S. government had ignored reports
of
torture by the Iraqi authorities during the period after the
2003 war.[152]
Diplomatic
cables release
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El
País), France (Le
Monde), Germany (Der
Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The
Guardian), and the United States (The
New York Times) started simultaneously to publish the first 220
of 251,287 leaked confidential – but not top-secret{dated from 28
December 1966 to 28 February 2010.[153][154]
WikiLeaks plans to release the entirety of the cables in phases over
several months.[154]
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 varied. 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.[155]
Twitter decided to notify its users.[156]
The
overthrow of the presidency in Tunisia of 2011 has been attributed
partly to reaction against the corruption revealed by leaked cables.[157][158][159]
2011–12
During late April 2011, files related to the Guantanamo prison were
released.[160]
In December 2011, WikiLeaks started to release the Spy Files.[161]
On 27 February 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing more than five million
emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company
Stratfor.[162]
On 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the
Syria Files, more than two million emails from Syrian political
figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to
March 2012.[163]
On Thursday, 25 October 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing
The Detainee Policies, more than 100 classified or otherwise
restricted files from the United States Department of Defense covering
the rules and procedures for detainees in U.S. military custody.[164]
Announcements of upcoming leaks
During 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.[165][166]
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,[167]
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.[168]
During October 2010, Assange told a major Moscow newspaper that "The
Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks
disclosures about Russia".[169][170]
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".[171]
In a 2009 interview by the magazine
Computerworld, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from
Bank of America". During 2010, he told
Forbes
magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another "megaleak" early during
2011, from the private sector, involving "a big U.S. bank" and revealing
an "ecosystem of corruption". Bank of America's stock price decreased by
3%, apparently as a result of this announcement.[172][173]
Assange commented on the possible effect of the release that "it could
take down a bank or two."[174][175]
During August 2011,
Reuters
announced that
Daniel Domscheit-Berg had destroyed approximately 5GB of data cache
from
Bank of America, that Assange had under his control.[176]
During 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 against the
authorities.[177]
During January 2011,
Rudolf Elmer, a former Swiss banker, passed data containing account
details of 2,000 prominent people to Assange, who stated that the
information will be vetted before being made available publicly at a
later date.[178]
Backlash and
pressure
A truck bearing a slogan and WikiLeaks logo as a prop at the
Occupy Wall Street protest in New York on 25 September
2011.
Operational
challenges
Assange has acknowledged that the practice of posting largely
unfiltered classified information online could one day cause the website
to have "blood on our hands."[24][179]
He expressed the opinion that the potential to save lives, however,
outweighs the danger to innocents.[180]
Furthermore, WikiLeaks has highlighted independent investigations which
have failed to find any evidence of civilians harmed as a result of
WikiLeaks' activities.[181][182]
A surveillance-resistant social network,
Friends of WikiLeaks (FoWL), was initiated by sympathizers with the
organization during May 2012 to perform advocacy.[183][184][185]
Response from
media
Chinese journalist
Shi Tao
was sentenced to 10 years during 2005 after publicising an email from
Chinese officials about the anniversary of the
Tiananmen Square massacre.[186]
An article in
The New Yorker said:
One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that was being used
as a node for the
Tor network. Millions of secret transmissions passed through it.
The activist noticed that hackers from China were using the network
to gather foreign governments’ information, and began to record this
traffic. Only a small fraction has ever been posted on WikiLeaks,
but the initial tranche served as the site's foundation, and Assange
was able to say, "[w]e have received over one million documents from
thirteen countries."[24][187]
Assange responded to the suggestion that eavesdropping on Chinese
hackers played a crucial part in the early days of WikiLeaks by saying
"the imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 investigation
into Chinese espionage one of our contacts was involved in. Somewhere
between none and handful of those documents were ever released on
WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the Chinese espionage, such as
Tibetan associations were informed (by us)".[188]
Response
from governments
Australia
On 16 March 2009, the
Australian Communications and Media Authority added WikiLeaks to
their proposed list of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if
the
mandatory internet filtering scheme is implemented as planned.[189][190]
The blacklisting had been removed by 29 November 2010.[191]
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 websites with
"wikileaks" in the
URL since 2007, but that this can be bypassed by encrypted
connections or by using one of WikiLeaks' many covert URLs.[192]
Germany
The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the German WikiLeaks domain
name, wikileaks.de, was raided on 24March 2009 after WikiLeaks released
the
Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
censorship blacklist.[193]
The site was not affected.[194][195]
Iceland
After the release of the
2007 Baghdad airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film
of the
Granai airstrike, Julian Assange has said that his group of
volunteers came under intense surveillance. In an interview and Twitter
posts he said that a restaurant in
Reykjavík where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance
during 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."[196]
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."[197]
During 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 to
WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks website; faced with an
injunction minutes before broadcast, the channel broadcasted a
screen-shot 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.[198]
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.[199][200]
Birgitta Jónsdóttir, 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[201]
and more than 40,000 other webpages[202]
because of the emergency decree declared in Thailand at the beginning of
April 2010 as a result of political instabilities.[203]
United States
On 17 July 2010,
Jacob Appelbaum 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.[204][205]
He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again operating,
after it had been suspended temporarily.[204][206][207]
Assange was a surprise speaker at a
TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, England, and confirmed
that the site had begun accepting submissions again.[167]
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.[208]
The sources told
Cnet that Appelbaum's bag was searched, receipts from his bag
were photocopied, and his laptop computer was inspected, although in
what manner was unknown.[208]
Appelbaum reportedly refused to answer questions without a lawyer
present, and was not allowed to make a telephone call. His three mobile
telephones were reportedly taken and not returned.[208]
On 31 July, he spoke at a
Defcon
conference and mentioned his telephone being "seized". After speaking,
he was approached by two
FBI agents and questioned.[208]
Access to WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the United States
Library of Congress.[209]
On 3 December 2010 the White House Office of Management and Budget sent
a memorandum forbidding all unauthorised federal government employees
and contractors from accessing classified documents publicly available
on WikiLeaks and other websites.[210]
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",[211]
although former prosecutors say doing so would be difficult.[75]
According to a report on the website Daily Beast, the Obama
administration asked the UK, 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.[212]
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.'"[213]
All U.S. federal government staff have been blocked from viewing
WikiLeaks.[214]
As for 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."[23]
Former United States Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates commented, "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward?
Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."[23]
Response
from corporations
Facebook
WikiLeaks claimed during April 2010 that Facebook deleted its fan
page, which had 30,000 fans.[215][216][217]
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,[218]
to more than 1.6 million fans. It was also the largest growth of the
week.[219]
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."[220]
U.S. diplomatic cables leak responses
According to
The
Times (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."[165]
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.[221]
Furthermore, several companies ended association with WikiLeaks.
After providing 24-hour notification, American-owned
EveryDNS deleted WikiLeaks from its entries on 2 December 2010,
citing
DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure".[43][222]
The website's 'info' DNS lookup remained operational at alternative
addresses for direct access respectively to the WikiLeaks and Cablegate
websites.[223]
On the same day,
Amazon.com severed its association with WikiLeaks, to which it was
providing infrastructure services, after an intervention by an aide of
U.S. Senator
Joe Lieberman.[224][225][226]
Amazon denied acting under political pressure, citing a violation of its
terms of service.[227]
Citing indirect pressure from the U.S. Government,
Tableau Software also deleted WikiLeaks' data from its website for
people to use for data visualisation.[228][229]
During the days following, hundreds of (and eventually more than a
thousand)[230]
mirror websites of the WikiLeaks website were established, and the
Anonymous group of Internet activists asked sympathizers to attack
the websites of companies which opposed WikiLeaks,[231]
under the banner of
Operation Payback, previously directed at anti-piracy organisations.[232]
AFP reported that attempts to deactivate the wikileaks.org address
had resulted the website surviving via the so-called
Streisand effect, whereby attempts to censor information online
causes it to be replicated in many places.[233]
On 3 December,
PayPal,
the payment processor owned by
eBay,
permanently ended 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."[234][235]
The Vice President of PayPal stated later 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.[236]
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".[237]
On 6 December, the Swiss bank
PostFinance announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange that
it has, 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.[238]
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".[239]
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."[240]
The next day,
Visa
Inc. announced it was suspending payments to WikiLeaks, pending
"further investigations".[241]
In a move of support for WikiLeaks, the organization
XIPWIRE
established a way to donate to WikiLeaks, and waived their fees.[242]
Datacell, the Iceland-based IT company controlled by Swiss investors
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.[243]
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.[244]
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.[245]
On 21 December, media reported that
Apple Inc. had removed an application from its
App Store, which provided access to the embassy cable leaks.[246]
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'.[247][248]
On 14 July 2011 WikiLeaks and DataCell ehf. 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."[249]
DataCell filed a compaint[250]
with the European Commission on 14 July 2011.
Response from the financial industry
Since the publications of CableGate, WikiLeaks has experienced an
unprecedented global financial blockade by major finance companies
including Mastercard, Visa and PayPal although there has not been any
legal accusation of any wrongdoing.
During October 2010, it was reported that the organization
Moneybookers, which collected donations for WikiLeaks, had ended its
relationship with the website. Moneybookers stated that its decision had
been made "to comply with money laundering or other investigations
conducted by government authorities, agencies or commissions."[251]
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 sympathizers who were BoA customers to close
their accounts. Bank of America has long been believed to be the target
of WikiLeaks' next major release.[252]
Late during 2010, Bank of America communicated with the law company
Hunton & Williams to stop WikiLeaks. Hunton & Williams assembled a
group of security specialists,
HBGary Federal,
Palantir Technologies, and
Berico Technologies.
During 5 and 6 February 2011, the group
Anonymous hacked HBGary's website, 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 company,
Hunton & Williams, and revealed that the companies were willing to
violate the law to damage 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."[253]
During 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 emphasize fighting the
blockade and raising new funds.[254]
On 18 July 2012 Wikileaks, shunned by the financial industry and
almost insolvent, announced that it had found a new method to accept
donations. Accordingly, the
Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality (FDNN) had agreed to channel
contributions via
Carte Bleue, and WikiLeaks claimed that contractual obligation would
prevent Visa and MasterCard blocking participation with such
transactions.[255]
Internal conflicts
Restructuring
Some sympathizers were unhappy[citation
needed] when WikiLeaks ended a community-based Wiki
format in favor of a more centralised organisation. The "about" page
originally read:[256]
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").[257]
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."[258]
It is no longer possible for anybody to post to it or edit it, in any
country, as the original FAQ promised. Instead, submissions are
regulated by an internal review process and some are published, while
documents not conforming to 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."[259]
After the 2010 reorganization, posting new comments on leaks was no
longer possible.[30]
Defections
Within WikiLeaks, there has been public disagreement between founder
and spokesperson
Julian Assange and
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the website'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 website.[94][260][261]
Julian Assange (left) with Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
Domscheit-Berg was ejected from WikiLeaks and started a
rival "
whistleblower"
organisation named OpenLeaks.
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".[262][263][264]
Assange accused Domscheit-Berg of leaking information to
Newsweek, claiming the WikiLeaks team was unhappy with Assange's
management and handling of the
Afghan war document releases.[264]
Domscheit-Berg left with a small group to start OpenLeaks.com, a new
leak organisation and website with a different management and
distribution philosophy.[262][265]
While leaving, Daniel Domscheit-Berg copied and then deleted roughly
3,500 unpublished documents from the WikiLeaks servers,[266]
including information on the US government's 'no-fly list' and inside
information from 20 right-wing organizations, and according 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."[267]
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".[268]
During August 2011, Domscheit-Berg permanently deleted the files for
which he claimed "in order to ensure that the sources are not
compromised".[269]
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.[264]
Iceland MP
Birgitta Jónsdóttir also left WikiLeaks, citing lack of
transparency, lack of structure, and poor communication flow in the
organisation.[270]
According to the periodical
The Independent (London), at least a dozen major workers of
WikiLeaks left the website during 2010.[271]
Reception
WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organisation
has won a number of awards, including
The Economist's New Media Award during 2008 at the Index on
Censorship Awards[272]
and
Amnesty International's UK Media Award during 2009.[273][274]
In 2010, the New York
Daily News listed WikiLeaks first among websites "that could
totally change the news",[275]
and Julian Assange received the
Sam Adams Award[276]
and was named the Readers' Choice for
TIME's Person of the Year during 2010.[277]
The UK
Information Commissioner has stated that "WikiLeaks is part of the
phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen".[278]
During its first days, an
Internet petition calling for the cessation of extra-judicial
intimidation of WikiLeaks attracted more than six hundred thousand
signatures.[279]
Sympathizers of WikiLeaks in the media and academia have commended it
for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency,
assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while
challenging powerful institutions.[280][281][282][283][284][285][286]
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.[287][288][289][290][291]
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.[292]
Some journalists have likewise criticised a perceived lack of editorial
discretion when releasing thousands of documents at once and without
sufficient analysis.[293]
In response to some of the negative reaction, the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed concern over the
"cyber war" against WikiLeaks,[294]
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.[295]
According to journalist
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, WikiLeaks is motivated by "a theory of
anarchy,"
not a theory of journalism or social activism.[296]
Spin-offs
Release of US diplomatic cables was followed by the creation of a
number of other organisations based on the WikiLeaks format.[297]
- OpenLeaks was created by a former WikiLeaks spokesperson.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg said the intention was to be more
transparent than WikiLeaks. OpenLeaks was supposed to start public
operations during early 2011 but despite much media coverage it is
still not functioning.
- During December 2011, Wikileaks initiated Friends of
Wikileaks, a social network for sympathizers and initiators of
the website.[298]
- Brussels Leaks emphasized 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 initiated 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."
However, the website itself seems 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 initiated by Bulgarian Atanas Chobanov in order
to make
Balkan politics more public 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 website that seeks to publish classified documents
primarily from the Indonesian government.
- RuLeaks is aimed at being a Russian equivalent to WikiLeaks. It
was initiated originally to provide translated versions of the
WikiLeaks cables but the
Moscow Times reports it has started to publish its own
content as well.[299]
- PPLeaks and PSOELeaks are related to the Spanish
Partido Popular and
PSOE leaks and scandals.
- Leakymails is a project designed to obtain and publish relevant
documents exposing corruption of the political class and the
powerful in
Argentina.[300][301][302]
- >Honest
Appalachia, initiated during January 2012, is a website based in
the United States intended to appeal to potential "whistleblowers"
in West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee
and North Carolina, and serve as a replicable model for similar
projects elsewhere.[303][304]