logo
screenshot
collapsible	yes
url	www.wikileaks.org
commercial	No
type	Document archive & disclosure
owner	The Sunshine Press
author	Julian Assange
launch date
current status	Active
awards	Economist Freedom of Expression Award (2008)Amnesty International UK Media Award (2009)Sam Adams Award (2010)
alexa	18,439 () }}

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. 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. WikiLeaks describes 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. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its director. 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.

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 November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

History

Founding

The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006. The website was unveiled, and published its first document, in December 2006. The site claims to have been "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa".

The creators of WikiLeaks have not been formally identified. It has been represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assange and others. Assange describes himself as a member of WikiLeaks' advisory board. News reports in ''The Australian'' have called Assange 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, organiser, financier, and all the rest". , the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange and eight other people.

Purpose

WikiLeaks states that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations."

In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish. 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."

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)". 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 in the Afghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.

The organisation's stated goal is to ensure that whistleblowers and journalists are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents, as happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

In an interview on ''The Colbert Report'', Assange explained about 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."

Funding

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 organization 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.

Operational challenges

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. 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.

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. 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. 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 organization. According to ''The Independent'' (London), at least a dozen key supporters of WikiLeaks left the website in 2010.

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. The expenses per year are about €200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy, but would reach €600,000 if work currently done by volunteers were paid for. WikiLeaks does not pay for lawyers, as hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations such as the Associated Press, ''Los Angeles Times'', and the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Its only revenue stream is donations, but WikiLeaks has planned to add an auction model to sell early access to documents. The Wau Holland Foundation 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: to WikiLeaks' personnel, corroborating the statement of the site's former German representative Daniel Schmitt [real name Daniel Domscheit-Berg] on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.}} However, in December 2010 the Wau Holland Foundation stated that 4 permanent employees, including Julian Assange, had begun to receive salaries.

Site management issues

Within WikiLeaks, there has been public disagreement between founder and spokesperson Julian Assange 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 organization due to internal conflicts over management of the site.

Hosting

WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking". The site is available on multiple servers and different domain names following a number of denial-of-service attacks 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.

Financing

WikiLeaks is a non-profit organisation, and it is dependent on public donations. Its main financing methods include conventional bank transfers and online payment systems. Wau Holland Foundation, one of the WikiLeaks' main funding channels, stated that they received more than €900,000 (US$1.2 million) 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.

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. Due to mistakes in the blogosphere, some supporters accidentally mistook EasyDNS for EveryDNS. These mistaken attacks caused EasyDNS to experience outages, instead of the intended EveryDNS. Afterwards EasyDNS decided to provide WikiLeaks its name server service.

Name and policies

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.

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.

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 status

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 Department 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 ''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 empaneled 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.

Insurance file

On 29 July 2010, WikiLeaks added a 1.4 GB "Insurance File" to the Afghan War Diary page. The file is AES 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."

Leaks

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 Guardian'' 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 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.

2009

In January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the 2008 Peru oil scandal. 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 2008–2010 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.

2010

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 Reuters 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 January 2010, WikiLeaks received the first test cable. A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley Manning, leaked a US embassy cable relating to IceSave, thereafter referred as "Reykjavik 13". 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.

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 to simultaneously publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential — but not top-secret — diplomatic cables 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.

2011

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, 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 ''Computer World'' 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 organization 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.

Backlash and pressure

Governments

Australia

On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority 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.

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 URL 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 Authority (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 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 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.

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

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. Some Department of Homeland Security staff say the ban on accessing WikiLeaks on government computers and other government devices is hampering their work; "More damage will be done by keeping the federal workforce largely in the dark about what other interested parties worldwide are going to be reading and analysing." One official says that the ban apparently covers personal computers also.

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." On the other hand, Robert Gates, a former CIA chief and Deputy National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush, argued, "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest."

Organizations and companies

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 1.5 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."

Moneybookers

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."

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 organizations, 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' ''e pluribus unum'' 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'.

Bank of America

On 18 December, 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.

"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."

Reception

WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organization has won a number of awards, including ''The Economist's'' New Media Award in 2008 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 organizations 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.

Spin-offs

Releases of US diplomatic cables inspired the creation of a number of other organizations based on the WikiLeaks model.

OpenLeaks was created by the former deputy to Assange. Daniel Domscheit-Berg said the intention was to be more transparent than WikiLeaks as "In these last months, the organisation has not been open any more. It lost its open-source promise." It started in early 2011.

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 has become discounted by its users as evidenced by the highest rated article being "Tradeleaks tampering with leak vote count mechnism".

Balkan Leaks was founded by Bulgarian Atanas Chobanov in order to make the Balkans 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, about 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.

See also

Accountability

Chilling Effects (group)

Classified information in the United States

Digital rights

Freedom of information

Freedom of the press

Information security

Julian Assange

New York Times Co. v. United States

Open society

Transparency (social)

Tor

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

Further reading

External links

IRC server: irc://sunshinepress.org:9999/ (SSL required)

''Wikirebels'' documentary about WikiLeaks

What Does it Cost to Change the World?

Category:Applications of cryptography Category:Classified documents Category:Espionage Category:Information sensitivity Category:International organizations Category:Internet censorship by organisation Category:Internet properties established in 2006 Category:Internet services shut down by a legal challenge Category:MediaWiki websites Category:National security Category:Online archives Category:Organizations based in Sweden Category:Web 2.0 Category:Whistleblowing Category:2007 establishments in Sweden

af:WikiLeaks als:WikiLeaks ar:ويكيليكس az:WikiLeaks bn:উইকিলিকস be:WikiLeaks be-x-old:WikiLeaks bcl:WikiLeaks bar:WikiLeaks bs:WikiLeaks br:WikiLeaks bg:УикиЛийкс ca:WikiLeaks cv:ВикиЛикс cs:WikiLeaks cy:WikiLeaks da:WikiLeaks de:WikiLeaks et:WikiLeaks el:WikiLeaks es:WikiLeaks eo:WikiLeaks eu:WikiLeaks fa:ویکی‌لیکس fr:WikiLeaks fy:WikiLeaks ga:WikiLeaks gd:Wikileaks gl:WikiLeaks ko:위키리크스 hy:ՎիքիԼիքս hi:विकिलीक्स hr:WikiLeaks id:WikiLeaks is:Wikileaks it:WikiLeaks he:ויקיליקס jv:WikiLeaks kn:ವಿಕಿಲೀಕ್ಸ್ pam:WikiLeaks ka:WikiLeaks rw:WikiLeaks ku:Wikileaks lv:WikiLeaks lb:WikiLeaks lt:Wikileaks hu:WikiLeaks mk:Викиликс mg:WikiLeaks ml:വിക്കിലീക്‌സ് mr:विकिलीक्स ms:WikiLeaks my:WikiLeaks nl:WikiLeaks ne:विकिलिक्स ja:ウィキリークス no:WikiLeaks nn:WikiLeaks pnb:وکی لیکس ps:WikiLeaks nds:WikiLeaks pl:WikiLeaks pt:WikiLeaks ro:WikiLeaks ru:WikiLeaks sah:WikiLeaks sc:WikiLeaks sq:WikiLeaks scn:Wikileaks si:විකීලීක්ස් simple:WikiLeaks sk:WikiLeaks sl:WikiLeaks sr:Викиликс sh:WikiLeaks fi:Wikileaks sv:Wikileaks ta:விக்கிலீக்ஸ் tt:WikiLeaks te:వికీలీక్స్ th:วิกิลีกส์ tr:WikiLeaks uk:WikiLeaks ur:WikiLeaks vec:WikiLeaks vi:WikiLeaks wuu:WikiLeaks zh-yue:WikiLeaks diq:WikiLeaks zh:維基解密

name	Julian Assange
birth date	July 03, 1971
birth place	Townsville, Queensland, Australia
occupation	Editor-in-chief and spokesperson for WikiLeaks
awards	Economist Freedom of Expression Award (2008)Amnesty International UK Media Award (2009)Sam Adams Award (2010)Le Monde Person of the Year (2010)Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal (2011)Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011)
death date
death place	}}

Julian Paul Assange ( ; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian publisher, journalist, 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. Assange was a hacker in his youth, before becoming a computer programmer. He has lived in several countries and has made public appearances in many parts of the world to speak about freedom of the press, censorship and investigative journalism.

Assange serves on the WikiLeaks advisory board. WikiLeaks has published material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya, toxic waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, and banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer. In 2010, WikiLeaks published Iraq War documents and Afghan War documents about American involvement in the wars, some of which was classified material. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five international print media partners (''Der Spiegel'', ''The New York Times'', ''Le Monde'', ''The Guardian'' and ''El País'') began publishing U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange received a number of awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award for publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya and Readers' Choice for ''TIME'' magazine's 2010 Person of the Year.

Assange appealed a February 2011 decision by English courts to extradite him to Sweden for questioning in relation to a sexual assault investigation. He said the allegations of wrongdoing are "without basis". On 12 and 13 July 2011, a hearing was held before the High Court, which deferred its decision to a later date.

Early life

Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, and spent much of his youth living on Magnetic Island.

His biological father was John Shipton, and his mother Christine was the daughter of Scottish-born principal of Northern Rivers College, Warren Hawkins. When Julian was one year old, Christine married theatre director Brett Assange, who gave him his surname. Brett and Christine Assange ran a touring theatre company. His stepfather, Julian's first "real dad", described Julian as "a very sharp kid" with "a keen sense of right and wrong". "He always stood up for the underdog ... he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people."

In 1979, his mother remarried; her new husband was a musician whom Julian Assange believed belonged to a New Age group called Santiniketan Park Association led by Yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne. The couple had a son, but broke up in 1982 and engaged in a custody struggle for Assange's half-brother. His divorced mother fled her boyfriend across Australia, taking both children into hiding for the next five years. Assange moved 30 times before he turned 14, attending many schools, including Goolmangar Primary School from 1979 to 1983, sometimes being home-schooled. In an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Assange stated that he had lived in 50 different towns and attended 37 different schools.

Hacking and conviction

In 1987, after turning 16, Assange began hacking under the name "Mendax" (derived from a phrase of Horace: "splendide mendax", or "nobly untruthful"). He and two other hackers joined to form a group they named the International Subversives. Assange wrote down the early rules of the subculture: "Don't damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don't change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information". The ''Personal Democracy Forum'' said he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker." The Australian Federal Police became aware of this group and set up "Operation Weather" to investigate their hacking. In September 1991 Mendax was discovered in the act of hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications company. In response the Australian Federal Police tapped Assanges' phoneline and subsequently raided his Melbourne home in 1991. He was also reported to have accessed computers belonging to an Australian university, the USAF 7th Command Group in the Pentagon and other organisations, via modem. It took three years to bring the case to court, where he was charged with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. Nortel said his incursions cost them more than $100,000. Despite representing hacking as a victimless crime, he nonetheless pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking. Six charges were dropped. He was released on bond for good conduct after being fined A$2,100. The judge said "there is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to—what's the expression—surf through these various computers" and stated that Assange would have gone to jail for up to 10 years if he had not had such a disrupted childhood.

Assange later commented, "It's a bit annoying, actually. Because I co-wrote a book about [being a hacker], there are documentaries about that, people talk about that a lot. They can cut and paste. But that was 20 years ago. It's very annoying to see modern day articles calling me a computer hacker. I'm not ashamed of it, I'm quite proud of it. But I understand the reason they suggest I'm a computer hacker now. There's a very specific reason."

In 2011, court records revealed that in 1993, Assange helped the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit by providing technical advice and assisted in prosecuting persons.

Child custody issues

In 1989, Assange started living with his girlfriend and they had a son, Daniel Assange. They split up during the period of Assange's arrest and conviction. They subsequently engaged in a lengthy custody struggle and did not agree on a custody arrangement until 1999.

The entire process prompted Assange and his mother to form Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection, an activist group centered on creating a "central databank" for otherwise inaccessible legal records related to child custody issues in Australia. In an interview with ABC Radio, his mother explained their "most important" issue was demanding "that there be direct access to the children's court by any member of the public for an application for protection for any child that they believe is at serious risk from abuse, where the child protection agency has rejected that notification."

Computer programming and university studies

In 1993, Assange was involved in starting one of the first public internet service providers in Australia, Suburbia Public Access Network. Starting in 1994, he lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software. In 1995, he wrote ''Strobe'', the first free and open source port scanner. He contributed several patches to the PostgreSQL project in 1996. He helped to write the book ''Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier'' (1997), which credits him as a researcher and reports his history with International Subversives. Starting around 1997, he co-invented the Rubberhose deniable encryption system, a cryptographic concept made into a software package for Linux designed to provide plausible deniability against rubber-hose cryptanalysis; he originally intended the system to be used "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field." Other free software that he has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache and Surfraw, a command-line interface for web-based search engines. In 1999, he registered the domain leaks.org; "But", he says, "then I didn't do anything with it."

From 2003 to 2006, Assange attended the University of Melbourne, mainly studying physics and mathematics and briefly studying philosophy and neuroscience. In most of his maths courses, he received the minimum "pass" grade. He did not graduate; the fact that his fellow students were doing research for Pentagon's DARPA was reportedly a factor in motivating him to drop out and start WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006. That year, Assange wrote two essays setting out the philosophy behind WikiLeaks: "To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not." In his blog he wrote, "the more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.... Since unjust systems, by their nature, induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

Assange is a prominent media spokesman on WikiLeaks' behalf. While newspapers have described him as a "director" or "founder" of WikiLeaks, Assange has said, "I don't call myself a founder"; he does describe himself as the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site. Assange says that WikiLeaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined: "That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are – rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful." He advocates a "transparent" and "scientific" approach to journalism, saying that "you can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism." In 2006, ''CounterPunch'' called him "Australia's most infamous former computer hacker." ''The Age'' has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter." Assange has called himself "extremely cynical". He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics, and as thriving on intellectual battle.

WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents. In 2008, Assange published an article entitled "The Hidden Curse of Thomas Paine", in which he wrote "What does it mean when only those facts about the world with economic powers behind them can be heard, when the truth lays naked before the world and no one will be the first to speak without payment or subsidy?"

In late 2010, Assange was in the process of completing his memoirs for publication in 2011.

Public appearances

In addition to exercising great authority and editorial control within WikiLeaks, Assange acts as its public face. He has appeared at media conferences such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen, the 2010 Logan Symposium in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and at hacker conferences, notably the 25th and 26th Chaos Communication Congress. In the first half of 2010, he appeared on ''Al Jazeera English'', ''MSNBC'', ''Democracy Now!'', ''RT'', and ''The Colbert Report'' to discuss the release of the Baghdad airstrike video by WikiLeaks. On 3 June he appeared via videoconferencing at the Personal Democracy Forum conference with Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg told MSNBC "the explanation he [Assange] used" for not appearing in person in the U.S. was that "it was not safe for him to come to this country." On 11 June he was to appear on a Showcase Panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Las Vegas, but there are reports that he cancelled several days prior.

On 10 June 2010, it was reported that Pentagon officials were trying to determine his whereabouts. Based on this, there were reports that U.S. officials wanted to apprehend Assange. Ellsberg said that the arrest of Bradley Manning and subsequent speculation by U.S. officials about what Assange may be about to publish "puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now." In ''The Atlantic'', Marc Ambinder called Ellsberg's concerns "ridiculous", and said that "Assange's tendency to believe that he is one step away from being thrown into a black hole hinders, and to some extent discredits, his work." In Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald questioned "screeching media reports" that there was a "manhunt" on Assange underway, arguing that they were only based on comments by "anonymous government officials" and might even serve a campaign by the U.S. government, by intimidating possible whistleblowers.

On 21 June 2010, he took part at a hearing in Brussels, Belgium, appearing in public for the first time in nearly a month. He was a member on a panel that discussed Internet censorship and expressed his worries over the recent filtering in countries such as Australia. He also talked about secret gag orders preventing newspapers from publishing information about specific subjects and even divulging the fact that they are being gagged. Using an example involving ''The Guardian'', he also explained how newspapers are altering their online archives sometimes by removing entire articles. He told ''The Guardian'' that he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert and will avoid travel to America, saying "[U.S.] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable." He said "politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the U.S. during this period."

On 17 July, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York City, replacing Assange due to 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 WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again. On 26 July, after the release of the Afghan War Diary, he appeared at the Frontline Club for a press conference. On 15 March 2011, Assange gave a speech at the Cambridge Union Society. After initially discouraging recording, a video of this has been made available by the Society.

Release of U.S. diplomatic cables

On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing some of the 251,000 American diplomatic cables in their possession, of which over 53 percent are listed as unclassified, 40 percent are "Confidential" and just over six percent are classified "Secret". The following day, the Attorney-General of Australia, Robert McClelland, told the press that Australia would inquire into Assange's activities and WikiLeaks. He said that "from Australia's point of view, we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by the release of this information. The Australian Federal Police are looking at that". McClelland would not rule out the possibility that Australian authorities will cancel Assange's passport, and warned him that he might face charges should he return to Australia. The Federal Police inquiry found that Assange had not committed any crime.

The United States Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation related to the leak. U.S. prosecutors are reportedly considering charges against Assange under several laws, but any prosecution would be difficult. In relation to its ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks, on 14 December 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a subpoena ordering Twitter to release information relating to Assange's account, amongst others.

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange "is serving our democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." On the issue of national security considerations for the U.S., Ellsberg added, "He's obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn't. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody's national security." Assange told London reporters that the leaked cables showed U.S. ambassadors around the world were ordered "to engage in espionage behavior", which he said seemed to be "representative of a gradual shift to a lack of rule of law in U.S. institutions that needs to be exposed and that we have been exposing."

The WikiLeaks diplomatic cable revelations have been credited with sparking the Tunisian Revolution.

Recognition as a journalist

Assange received the 2009 Media award from Amnesty International for ''Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances'', and he has been recognized as a journalist by the Centre for Investigative Journalism. Assange has been a member of the Australian journalist union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, for several years, and in 2011, was made an honorary member. Alex Massie wrote an article in ''The Spectator'' called "Yes, Julian Assange is a journalist", but acknowledged that "newsman" might be a better description of Assange. Alan Dershowitz said "Without a doubt. He is a journalist, a new kind of journalist". Assange has said that he has been publishing factual material since age 25, and that it is not necessary to debate whether or not he is a journalist. He has stated that his role is "primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists".

Financial developments

On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance, announced that it had frozen assets of Assange's totalling 31,000 euros, because he had "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account. MasterCard, Visa Inc., and Bank of America also halted dealings with WikiLeaks. Assange described these actions as "business McCarthyism". The English-language Swedish newspaper web-site "Local" quoted Assange on 27 December 2010, as saying that legal costs for the whistleblowing website and his own defence had reached £500,000. The decisions to halt donations to WikiLeaks by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal had cost it £425,000, the same amount it costs the website to publish for six months. Assange said WikiLeaks had been receiving as much as £85,000 a day at its peak.

Autobiography

In December 2010, Assange sold the publishing rights to his autobiography for over £1 million. He told ''The Sunday Times'' that he was forced to enter the deals for an autobiography due to the financial difficulties he and the site encountered, he told them "I don't want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat". On 14 February 2011, Assange filed for the trademark JULIAN ASSANGE in Europe. The trademark is to be used for "public speaking services; news reporter services; journalism; publication of texts other than publicity texts; education services; entertainment services".

Criticism

A number of political and media commentators, as well as current and former U.S. government officials, have accused Assange of terrorism. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said "I would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers." In May 2010, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had used the phrase, calling Assange "a high-tech terrorist", and saying "he has done enormous damage to our country. I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law". Also in May 2010, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: "Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant."

In July 2010, after WikiLeaks released classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, said at a Pentagon news conference, "Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we've been given, but don't put those who willingly go into harm's way even further in harm's way just to satisfy your need to make a point. Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." Assange responded later in an interview by saying, "There is, as far as we can tell, no incident of that. So it is a speculative charge. Of course, we are treating any possible revelation of the names of innocents seriously. That is why we held back 15,000 of these documents, to review that".

Support

The Australian government had considered charging Assange for treason, but later retracted its previous statements that Assange's actions were criminal. They also found no grounds to withdraw his Australian passport after an investigation by the Australian Federal Police. Since then, government representatives and the major opposition, including Craig Emerson the Minister for Trade and Helen Coonan the former minister for Communications, have made statements supportive of WikiLeaks and deprecated some threats. Emerson stated on ABC's Q&A; program; "We condemn absolutely the threats that have been made by some people in the United States against Julian Assange and he deserves all of the rights of being an Australian citizen."

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, then president of Brazil, expressed his "solidarity" with Assange following his 2010 arrest in the United Kingdom. He further criticised the arrest of Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression".

Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin condemned Assange's detention as "undemocratic". A source within the office of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Assange be nominated for a Nobel Prize, and said that "Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him."

In December 2010, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank LaRue, said Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face criminal charges for any information they disseminated, noting that "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."

Daniel Ellsberg, who was working in the U.S. Department of Defense when he leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was a signatory to a statement by an international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials in support of Assange's work, which was released in late December 2010. Other signatories included David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, and five recipients of annual Sam Adams Award: Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson. Ellsberg has said, "If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me ... I would be called not only a traitor – which I was [called] then, which was false and slanderous – but I would be called a terrorist... Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has come under widespread condemnation and a backlash within her own party for failing to support Assange after calling the leaks "an illegal act" and suggesting that his Australian passport should be cancelled. Hundreds of lawyers, academics and journalists came forward in his support with Attorney-General Robert McClelland, unable to explain how Assange had broken Australian law. Opposition Legal Affairs spokesman, Senator George Brandis, a Queen's Counsel, accused Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language, stating, "As far as I can see, he (Assange) hasn't broken any Australian law, nor does it appear he has broken any American laws." Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who supports Assange, stated that any decision to cancel the passport would be his, not Gillard's. Queen's Counsel Peter Faris, who acted for Assange in a hacking case 15 years ago, said that the motives of Swedish authorities in seeking Assange's extradition for alleged sex offences are suspect: "You have to say: why are they [Sweden] pursuing it? It's pretty obvious that if it was Bill Bloggs, they wouldn't be going to the trouble." Following the Swedish Embassy issuing of a "prepared and unconvincing reply" in response to letters of protest, Gillard was called on to send a message to Sweden "querying the way charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor."

On 10 December 2010, over five hundred people rallied outside Sydney Town Hall and about three hundred and fifty people gathered in Brisbane where Assange's lawyer, Rob Stary, criticised Julia Gillard's position, telling the rally that the Australian government was a "sycophant" of the U.S. A petition circulated by GetUp!, who have placed full page ads in support of Assange in ''The New York Times'' and ''The Washington Times'', received more than signatures.

Awards

He won the 2009 Amnesty International UK Media Award (New Media), for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya by distributing and publicizing the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR)'s investigation ''The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances''. Accepting the award, Assange said, "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented."

In 2010, Assange was awarded the Sam Adams Award, Readers' Choice in ''TIME'' magazine's Person of the Year poll, and runner-up for Person of the Year. In April 2011 he was listed on the Time 100 list of most influential people. An informal poll of editors at Postmedia Network named him the top newsmaker for the year after six out of 10 felt Assange had "affected profoundly how information is seen and delivered".

''Le Monde'', one of the five publications to cooperate with WikiLeaks' publication of the recent document leaks, named him person of the year with fifty six percent of the votes in their online poll.

In February 2011, it was announced that Assange had been awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation gold medal by the Sydney Peace Foundation of the University of Sydney for his "exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights." There have been four recipients of the award in the foundation's fourteen year history: Nelson Mandela; the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso; Daisaku Ikeda; and Assange.

In June 2011, Assange was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. The prize is awarded on an annual basis to journalists "whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel'". The judges said, "WikiLeaks has been portrayed as a phenomenon of the hi-tech age, which it is. But it's much more. Its goal of justice through transparency is in the oldest and finest tradition of journalism."

Allegations of sexual misconduct

On 20 August 2010, Swedish police began an investigation into allegations concerning Assange's behaviour in separate sexual encounters involving two different women. Assange has said allegations of wrongdoing are "without basis", describing all the sexual encounters as consensual. In December 2010, Assange, then in Britain, learned that the Swedish authorities had issued a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) to extradite him to Sweden for questioning.

An extradition hearing took place on 7–8 and 11 February 2011 before the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court when the extradition warrant was upheld.

On 2 March 2011, his lawyers lodged papers at the London High Court to challenge the ruling to extradite Assange to Sweden. Assange remains on conditional bail. After a hearing on 12 and 13 July 2011, the High Court deferred its decision to a later date.

Residency

Though an Australian citizen, Assange has not had a permanent address for several years. He has lived for periods in Australia, Kenya and Tanzania, and began renting a house in Iceland on 30 March 2010, from which he and other activists, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, worked on the 'Collateral Murder' video.

For much of 2010, he was visiting the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden and other European countries. On 4 November 2010, Assange told Swiss public television TSR that he was seriously considering seeking political asylum in neutral Switzerland and moving the operation of the WikiLeaks foundation there. In December 2010, it was reported that U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland Donald S. Beyer had warned the Swiss government against offering asylum to Assange.

In late November 2010, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas of Ecuador spoke about giving Assange residency with "no conditions... so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums". Lucas believed that Ecuador may benefit from initiating a dialogue with Assange. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino stated on 30 November that the residency application would "have to be studied from the legal and diplomatic perspective". A few hours later, President Rafael Correa stated that WikiLeaks "committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information... no official offer was [ever] made." Correa noted that Lucas was speaking "on his own behalf"; additionally, he will launch an investigation into possible ramifications Ecuador would suffer from the release of the cables.

In a hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 December 2010, Assange identified a post office box as his address. When told by the judge that this information was not acceptable, he submitted "Parkville, Victoria, Australia" on a sheet of paper. His lack of permanent address and nomadic lifestyle were cited by the judge as factors in denying bail. He was ultimately released, in part because journalist Vaughan Smith offered to provide Assange with an address for bail during the extradition proceedings, Smith's Norfolk mansion, Ellingham Hall.

References

}}

External links

Wikirebels (Documentary about Julian Assange)

home page on Julian Assange's web site iq.org (at the Internet Archive)

Profile: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at BBC News

Interview with Julian Assange on release of Afghan war files – 1 August 2010 Russia Today via YouTube

Frost Over the World – Julian Assange – December 2010. Al Jazeera English via You tube

Julian Assange interviewed by John Pilger on New Statesman January 2011

Julian Assange: The "60 Minutes" Interview interviewed by Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes January 2011.

Interview Julian Assange. Frontline. 4 April 2011.

Category:1971 births Category:Alternative journalists Category:Australian Internet personalities Category:Australian activists Category:Australian computer programmers Category:Australian journalists Category:Australian people of Scottish descent Category:Australian whistleblowers Category:Cypherpunks Category:Internet activists Category:Living people Category:People from Townsville Category:University of Melbourne alumni Category:WikiLeaks Category:Australian memoirists

af:Julian Assange als:Julian Assange ar:جوليان أسانج az:Culian Assanj bcl:Julian Assange bg:Джулиан Асандж ca:Julian Assange cv:Ассанж Джулиан cs:Julian Assange cy:Julian Assange da:Julian Assange de:Julian Assange et:Julian Assange el:Τζούλιαν Ασάντζ es:Julian Assange eo:Julian Assange eu:Julian Assange fa:جولین آسانژ fr:Julian Assange ga:Julian Assange gl:Julian Assange gu:જુલિયન અસાંજે ko:줄리언 어산지 hy:Ջուլիան Ասանժ hi:जूलियन असांजे hr:Julian Assange id:Julian Assange is:Julian Assange it:Julian Assange he:ג'וליאן אסנג' jv:Julian Assange kn:ಜೂಲಿಯನ್ ಅಸ್ಸಾಂಜೆ pam:Julian Assange ka:ჯულიან ასანჟი ku:Julian Assange la:Iulianus Assange lv:Džulians Asānžs hu:Julian Assange mk:Џулијан Асанж ml:ജൂലിയൻ അസാൻജ് mr:जुलियन असांज mzn:ژولین آسانژ ms:Julian Assange my:ဂျူလီယန် အက်စ်ဆန်း nl:Julian Assange ne:जुलियन असान्ज ja:ジュリアン・アサンジ no:Julian Assange nn:Julian Assange pnb:جولین اسانج nds:Julian Assange pl:Julian Assange pt:Julian Assange ro:Julian Assange ru:Ассанж, Джулиан sah:Дьулиан Ассандьж sc:Julian Assange sq:Julian Assange si:ජුලියන් අ'සාන්ජ් simple:Julian Assange sk:Julian Assange sr:Џулијан Асанж sh:Julian Assange fi:Julian Assange sv:Julian Assange ta:ஜூலியன் அசான்ச் th:จูเลียน อาสซานจ์ tr:Julian Assange uk:Джуліан Ассанж ur:جولین اسانژ vec:Julian Assange vi:Julian Assange zh:朱利安·阿桑奇