WikiLeaks: Difference between revisions

Wikileaks is a website running on modified MediaWiki software which allows whistleblowers to release (whilst remaining anonymous) government and corporate documents, allegedly without possible retribution. It is hosted in Sweden by PRQ.

It claims that postings are untraceable by anyone attempting to do so. It was launched in December 2006 and, as of November 2007, had contained over 1.2 million documents.^[1] It provides mirrors which can be used during outages.

The site and its project were themselves secret, pre-launch, until their existence was disclosed in January of 2007 by Steven Aftergood, editor of Secrecy News.^[2] Wikileaks had approached Aftergood to serve on their advisory board. The site in part is being developed by Chinese government dissidents.^[3] According to the Wikileaks website, their main targets for leaked disclosure are the former Soviet bloc, sub-Saharan Africa, and Middle Eastern nations, but they expect it to be used for leaks of information about Western governments and corporations.^[4] All current staff, developers, or employees of Wikileaks are thought to be secret and unidentified as of January 2007.^[5]

According to a January 2007 interview with Julian Assange, a member of the Wikileaks advisory board, the site was planned to go live in March 2007 but was unprepared for the media attention its ahead-of-schedule disclosure generated. Their advisory board includes members of the expatriate Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst, and cryptographers. There are no ties between Wikileaks and the Wikimedia Foundation.^[6] The website has stated that they have over 1,200,000 leaked documents already that they are preparing to publish.^[7]The first example document released was written by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys of Somalia's radical Islamic Courts Union.^[8] They also posted a 19 page analysis.^[9] The group has subsequently released a number of other significant documents which have become front-page news items, ranging from documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings^[10] in the Afghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.

According to the group, Wikileaks will be "an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis."^[11] Wikileaks developers have stated that there will be checks in place to keep the "completely anonymous" system from being flooded with false documents, porn, spam, and related things. All users will be able to comment on all documents, analyze them, and identify false material.^[5] Their stated goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive or classified documents, such as what happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.^[12] According to James Chen, an organizer of the site, traffic since its disclosure increased from 8 Google searches to over 1,000,000 in the first two weeks.^[13]

It has been observed that the existence of a project like Wikileaks can be of benefit and is needed, drawing comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.^[14] Additionally, at least 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.^[14] Whitley Strieber, author and journalist, has observed 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."^[15]

On 31 August 2007, The Guardian newspaper featured on its front page a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel Arap Moi. They claim their source of the information was Wikileaks on The looting of Kenya under President Moi.^[16]

The Chinese government currently attempts to censor every web site with "wikileaks" in the URL. This includes the main wikileaks.org site as well as regional variations such as wikileaks.cn and wikileaks.org.uk. However, the site can be accessed from behind the Chinese firewall at the time of writing using https://secure.wikileaks.org/ or one of the many alternative names used by the project, such as ljsf.org or sunshinepress.org. As these alternatives may change frequently, the site suggests users from the mainland of China search for "wikileaks cover names" on non mainland-china search engines such as google.co.uk to locate the latest alternative names. Mainland based search engines, including those of Baidu and Yahoo, also censor references to "wikileaks."^[17]

According to the FAQ, "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."^[18]

Wikileaks is based on several software packages, including MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP.^[19]

In response to concerns about the possibility of misleading or fraudulent leaks, Wikileaks said misleading leaks “are already well-placed in the mainstream media. [Wikileaks] is of no additional assistance.”^[20] The FAQ states that:

"The simplest and most effective countermeasure is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents."^[21]

A copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta dating from March 2003, the protocol of the US Army at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, was released on the Wikileaks website on the 7th November 2007.^[22] The document, named gitmo-sop.pdf, is also mirrored at The Guardian.^[23] Its release revealed some of the restrictions placed over detainees at the camp, including the designation of some prisoners as off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something the US military have in the past repeatedly denied.^[24]

On December 3, 2007 Wikileaks released a copy of the 2004 edition of the manual,^[25] together with a detailed analysis of the changes.^[26]

Wikinews has related news:

• 'Wikileaks.org' taken off line in many areas after fire, court injunction

In February 2008, Wikileaks' Wikileaks.org domain name was taken offline. Wikileaks published a statement that the Swiss Bank Julius Baer had sued Wikileaks and the wikileaks.org domain registrar, Dynadot, and obtained a permanent injunction ordering the shutdown.^[27][28][29] The text of the injunction posted by Wikileaks states that it was issued on February 18, 2008 by Judge Jeffrey White of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The injunction orders Dynadot to prevent wikileaks.org from being used to access the website,^[30] and in exchange orders the plaintiffs to file a dismissal with prejudice in favor of Dynadot, i.e., to never sue Dynadot again over the issue. The injunction mentions that it was based on a stipulation, meaning Dynadot and Julius Baer agreed to it, although Wikileaks says it was not consulted.^[31] An earlier U.S. legal dispute regarding censorship of Internet domain name listings targeted the racist site alpha.org in 1999.^[32]

Wikileaks hosts allegations of illegal activities at the bank's Cayman Island branch.^[33] The text of the posted injunction stated that "immediate harm will result to Plaintiffs in the absence of injunctive relief",^[34] as is required for injunctions to be granted. The general assumption is that some leaked documents were alleged by the bank to be libellous, trade secrets, copyrighted, or otherwise prohibited for distribution, in a manner that would cause harm to it.

Alternate domain names, such as http://wikileaks.be/, were not affected.^[35] Wikileaks is also available via the IP address http://88.80.13.160/. To shut down these access methods, it would be necessary to pursue injunctions in the jurisdictions where they are registered, or where the servers reside, which are deliberately scattered to make this difficult.

• Classified information
• Freedom of information legislation
• Open government
• Secrecy
• Cryptome
• Intellipedia
• irrepressible.info

• Schmidt, Tracy Samantha (2007-01-22). "A Wiki for Whistle-Blowers". Time. Retrieved 2007-12-14. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

• http://88.80.13.160 - formerly wikileaks.org
• https://88.80.13.160 - formerly secure.wikileaks.org - secured connection, useful for bypassing the Great Firewall of China
• https://wikileaks.cx
• http://wikileaks.org.uk
• http://wikileaks.org.au
• http://wikileaks.cn
• http://wikileaks.in
• http://wikileaks.org.nz
• http://www.cauce.us/wiki/Wikileaks
• https://secure.wikileaks.be/
• https://secure.ljsf.org/ - alternative name to bypass the Great Firewall of China
• https://secure.sunshinepress.org/ - alternative name to bypass the Great Firewall of China
• https://secure.freedomsbell.org/ - alternative name to bypass the Great Firewall of China
• https://secure.libertypen.org/ - alternative name to bypass the Great Firewall of China