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Wikileaks have said they have video footage of a massacre of civilians in [[Afghanistan]] by the US military, perhaps the [[Granai massacre]], which they are preparing to release shortly.<ref>{{cite news | title=Whistleblowers on US ‘massacre’ fear CIA stalkers | first=Matthew | last=Campbell | publisher=[[The Times]] | date=11 April 2010 | url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7094234.ece | accessdate=21 May 2010 | location=London}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | title=WikiLeaks works to expose government secrets, but Web site's sources are a mystery | first=Joby | last=Warrick | publisher=[[The Washington Post]] | date=19 May 2010 | url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051905333.html | accessdate=21 May 2010}}</ref>
Wikileaks have said they have video footage of a massacre of civilians in [[Afghanistan]] by the US military, perhaps the [[Granai massacre]], which they are preparing to release shortly.<ref>{{cite news | title=Whistleblowers on US ‘massacre’ fear CIA stalkers | first=Matthew | last=Campbell | publisher=[[The Times]] | date=11 April 2010 | url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7094234.ece | accessdate=21 May 2010 | location=London}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | title=WikiLeaks works to expose government secrets, but Web site's sources are a mystery | first=Joby | last=Warrick | publisher=[[The Washington Post]] | date=19 May 2010 | url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051905333.html | accessdate=21 May 2010}}</ref>
Julian Assange has said "right now we are sitting on history-making stuff".<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.theage.com.au/national/keeper-of-secrets-20100521-w230.html |author=Nikki Barrowclough |title=Keeper of secrets |publisher=The Age |date=May 22, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all |author=Raffi Khatchadourian |title=No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency |publisher=The New Yorker |date=June 7, 2010}}</ref>
Julian Assange has said "right now we are sitting on history-making stuff".<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.theage.com.au/national/keeper-of-secrets-20100521-w230.html |author=Nikki Barrowclough |title=Keeper of secrets |publisher=The Age |date=May 22, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all |author=Raffi Khatchadourian |title=No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency |publisher=The New Yorker |date=June 7, 2010}}</ref>

==Arrest of Bradley Manning==
{{Main|Arrest of Bradley Manning}}
A U.S. Army intelligence analyst, SPC Bradley Manning, has reportedly been arrested in connection with leaks to Wikileaks. He was allegedly turned in to the authorities by former hacker [[Adrian Lamo]], in whom he had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo he had leaked videos of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as "a quarter-million classified embassy cables." Manning reportedly wrote, "Everywhere there’s a U.S. post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/ |author=Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter |title=U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe |publisher=Wired |date=June 6, 2010}}</ref> According to the Washington Post, he also described the cables as, "explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/09/AR2010060906170.html |author=Ellen Nakashima |title=Messages from alleged leaker Bradley Manning portray him as despondent soldier |publisher=The Washington Post |date=June 10, 2010}}</ref> Wikileaks has denied receiving the leaked embassy cables.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10255887.stm |author=Jonathan Fildes |title=Hacker explains why he reported 'Wikileaks source' |publisher=BBC News |date=June 7, 2010}}</ref> Assange told the BBC that Wikileaks does not know if Manning was a source, because the group does not collect personal information from its sources. However, if the allegations against Manning are true, Assange said Manning would be given protection and legal assistance.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10265430.stm |author=Jonathan Fildes |title=Wikileaks site unfazed by arrest of US army 'source' |publisher=BBC News |date=June 8, 2010}}</ref>


== See also ==
== See also ==

Revision as of 13:14, 23 June 2010

WikiLeaks
Graphic of hourglass, colored in blue and grey; a circular map of the western hemisphere of the world drips from the top to bottom chamber of the hourglass.
Type of site
Whistleblower
URLwww.wikileaks.org
RegistrationPrivate

Wikileaks is an amorphous, international organization, originally based in Sweden,[1] that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of their sources. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press.[2] The organization has stated it was founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.[3] Newspaper articles and The New Yorker magazine (June 7, 2010) describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director.[4] Within a year of its launch, the site said its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents;[5] the "Collateral Murder" video is one of its most notable releases.[6][7] It has won a number of new media awards for its reports.

History

Wikileaks went public in January 2007, when it first appeared on the web.[8] The site states that it was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa".[3] The creators of Wikileaks were unidentified as of January 2007,[9] although it has been represented in public since January 2007 by non-anonymous speakers such as Julian Assange, who had described himself as a member of Wikileaks' advisory board[10] and was later referred to as the "founder of Wikileaks".[11] As of June 2009, the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers[3] and listed its advisory board as consisting of Assange, Phillip Adams, Wang Dan, CJ Hinke, Ben Laurie, Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, Xiao Qiang, Chico Whitaker, and Wang Youcai.[12] According to Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsang said he never agreed to be an advisor.[13]

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 behavior in their governments and corporations."[3][14]

In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish.[15] The documents were obtained by running a TOR exit node and spying on users' traffic, primarily that of Chinese hackers.[16] 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.[17]

Their stated goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers 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.[18]

The project has drawn comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.[19] 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.[19] 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."[20]

The site has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Economist magazine New Media Award,[21] and in June 2009, Wikileaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International UK's Media Award 2009 (in the category "New Media") for the 2008 publication of "Kenya: The Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances",[22] a report by the Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya.[23] In May 2010 it was rated number 1 of "web sites that could totally change the news".[6]

Suspension of activity, fundraising

On 24 December 2009, Wikileaks announced that it was experiencing a shortage of funds[24] and suspended all access to its website except for a form to submit new material.[25] Material that was previously published was no longer available, although some could still be accessed on unofficial mirrors.[26][27] Wikileaks stated on its website that it would resume full operation once the operational costs were covered.[25][28] Wikileaks saw this is as a kind of strike "to ensure that everyone who is involved stops normal work and actually spends time raising revenue".[29] While it was initially hoped that funds could be secured by 6 January 2010,[30] it was only on 3 February 2010 that WikiLeaks announced that its minimum fundraising goal had been achieved.[31]

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".[32] The account was restored on 25 January 2010.[33]

On May 18, 2010, WikiLeaks announced that its website and archive were back up.[34]

As of June 2010, Wikileaks was a finalist for a donation of more than half million dollars from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,[35] but did not make the cut.[36] Wikileaks commented, "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".[36]

Background

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.[29] 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 was paid for.[29] 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, The Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers Association.[29] Its only revenue stream is donations, but Wikileaks is planning to add an auction model.[29]

Technology

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."[37]

However, WikiLeaks established an editorial policy that accepted only documents that were "of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical interest".[38] 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."[39] 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 analyze their credibility and veracity."[40] After the 2010 relaunch, posting new commments to leaks was not possible any more.[41]

Wikileaks is based on several software packages, including MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP.[42] Wikileaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor due to the strong privacy needs of its users.[43]

Hosting, access, and security

Wikileaks describes itself as “an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking”. Wikileaks is 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.” PRQ is owned by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij who, through their involvement in The Pirate Bay, have significant experience in withstanding legal challenges from authorities. Being hosted by PRQ makes it difficult to take Wikileaks offline. 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".[44]

Police raid on German Wikileaks domain owner's home

The home of Theodor Reppe, owner 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.[45] The site was not affected.[46][47][48]

Chinese censorship

The Chinese government currently attempts to censor every web site with "wikileaks" in the URL, including the primary .org site and the regional variations .cn and .uk. However, the site is still accessible from behind the Chinese firewall through one of the many alternative names used by the project, such as "secure.sunshinepress.org". The alternate sites change frequently, and Wikileaks encourages users to search "wikileaks cover names" outside mainland China for the latest alternative names. Mainland search engines, including Baidu and Yahoo, also censor references to "wikileaks".[49]

Potential future Australian censorship

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.[50][51]

Harassment and surveillance

According to The Times, Wikileaks and its members have been the victims of continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organizations, including extended detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, “covert following and hidden photography.”[52]

After the release of the 2007 airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai massacre, 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 Reykjavik where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; 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."[53]

Wikileaks has claimed that Facebook deleted their fan page, which had 30,000 fans.[54][55][56][57]

Verification of submissions

Template:Wikinewshas

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."[58] 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."[59]

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.[60] In that group, Assange has the final decision about the assessment of a document.[60]

Icelandic Modern Media Initiative

In August 2009 Kaupthing, a large bank, succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging Iceland’s national broadcaster, RUV, 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. Citizens of Iceland felt outraged that RUV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.[61] Therefore, Wikileaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Sans Frontieres ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers.[62][63] Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of both Wikileaks and the Icelandic parliament, helped with passage of the bill.

Notable leaks

Pre-2009

Apparent Somali assassination order

WikiLeaks posted its first document in December, 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.[16] The New Yorker has reported that

(Julian) Assange and the others were uncertain of its authenticity, but they thought that readers, using Wikipedia-like features of the site, would help analyze it. They published the decision with a lengthy commentary, which asked, “Is it a bold manifesto by a flamboyant Islamic militant with links to Bin Laden? Or is it a clever smear by US intelligence, designed to discredit the Union, fracture Somali alliances and manipulate China?” ... The document’s authenticity was never determined, and news about WikiLeaks quickly superseded the leak itself.[16]

The document was covertly acquired by tapping into the Tor network, which was being used by other hackers in China to gather information on foreign governments.[16]

Daniel arap Moi family corruption

On 31 August 2007, The Guardian (Britain) featured on its front page a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi. The newspaper stated that their source of the information was Wikileaks.[64]

Bank Julius Baer lawsuit

In February 2008, the Wikileaks.org domain name was taken offline after the Swiss Bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks and the wikileaks.org domain registrar, Dynadot, in a court in California, United States, and obtained a permanent injunction ordering the shutdown.[65][66] Wikileaks had hosted allegations of illegal activities at the bank's Cayman Island branch.[65] Wikileaks' U.S. ISP, Dynadot, complied with the order by removing its DNS entries. However, the website remained accessible via its numeric IP address, and online activists immediately mirrored Wikileaks at dozens of alternate websites worldwide.[67]

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion protesting the censorship of Wikileaks. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press assembled a coalition of media and press that filed an amicus curiae brief on Wikileaks' behalf. The coalition included major U.S. newspaper publishers and press organisations, such as: the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press, the Citizen Media Law Project, The E.W. Scripps Company, the Gannett Company, The Hearst Corporation, the Los Angeles Times, the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the Newspaper Association of America, The Radio-Television News Directors Association, and The Society of Professional Journalists. The coalition requested to be heard as a friend of the court to call attention to relevant points of law that it believed the court had overlooked (on the grounds that Wikileaks had not appeared in court to defend itself, and that no First Amendment issues had yet been raised before the court). Amongst other things, the coalition argued that:[67]

"Wikileaks provides a forum for dissidents and whistleblowers across the globe to post documents, but the Dynadot injunction imposes a prior restraint that drastically curtails access to Wikileaks from the Internet based on a limited number of postings challenged by Plaintiffs. The Dynadot injunction therefore violates the bedrock principle that an injunction cannot enjoin all communication by a publisher or other speaker."[67]

The same judge, Judge Jeffrey White, who issued the injunction vacated it on 29 February 2008, citing First Amendment concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.[68] Wikileaks was thus able to bring its site online again. The bank dropped the case on 5 March 2008.[69] The judge also denied the bank's request for an order prohibiting the website's publication.[67]

The Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish, commented:

"It's not very often a federal judge does a 180 degree turn in a case and dissolves an order. But we're very pleased the judge recognized the constitutional implications in this prior restraint."[67]

Guantánamo Bay procedures

A copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta – the protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp – dated March 2003 was released on the Wikileaks website on 7 November 2007.[70] The document, named "gitmo-sop.pdf", is also mirrored at The Guardian.[71] 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 that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied.[72]

On 3 December 2007, Wikileaks released a copy of the 2004 edition of the manual,[73] together with a detailed analysis of the changes.[74]

Scientology

On 7 April 2008, Wikileaks reported receiving a letter (dated 27 March) from the Religious Technology Centre claiming ownership of several recently leaked documents pertaining to OT Levels within the Church of Scientology. These same documents were at the centre of a 1994 scandal. The email stated:

The Advanced Technology materials are unpublished, copyrighted works. Please be advised that your customer's action in this regard violates United States copyright law. Accordingly, we ask for your help in removing these works immediately from your service. -- Moxon and Kobrin[75]

The letter continued on to request the release of the logs of the uploader, which would remove their anonymity. Wikileaks responded with a statement released on Wikinews stating: "in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week",[76] and did so.

Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account contents

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.[77] The contents of the mailbox seemed to suggest that she used the private Yahoo account to send work-related messages in order to evade public record laws.[78] The hacking of the account was widely reported in mainstream news outlets.[79][80][81] Although Wikileaks was able to conceal the hacker's identity, the source of the Palin emails was eventually publicly identified in another way;[82] the hacker attempted to conceal his identity by using the anonymous proxy service ctunnel.com, but, because of the illegal nature of the access, ctunnel website administrator Gabriel Ramuglia assisted the FBI in tracking down the source of the hack.[83] The hacker was revealed to be David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics student at the University of Tennessee and the son of Democratic Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell from Memphis.[84]

BNP membership list

After briefly appearing on a blog, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to Wikileaks on 18 November 2008. The name, address, age and occupation of many of the 13,500 members were given, including several police officers, two solicitors, four ministers of religion, at least one doctor, and a number of primary and secondary school teachers. In Britain, police officers are banned from joining or promoting the BNP, and at least one officer was dismissed for being a member.[85] The BNP was known for going to considerable lengths to conceal the identities of members. On 19 November, BNP leader Nick Griffin stated that he knew the identity of the person who initially leaked the list on 17 November, describing him as a "hardliner" senior employee who left the party in 2007.[86][87][88] On 20 October 2009, a list of BNP members from April 2009 was leaked. This list contained 11,811 members.[89]

2009

In January 2009, over 600 internal United Nations reports (60 of them marked "strictly confidential") were leaked.[90]

On 7 February 2009, Wikileaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports.[91]

In March 2009, Wikileaks published a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign[92] and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian.[93]

Climatic Research Unit emails

In November 2009, controversial documents, including e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, were leaked from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia to various sites; one prominent host of the full 120MB archive was Wikileaks.[94][95][96]

Internet censorship lists

Wikileaks has published the lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for several countries.

On 19 March 2009, Wikileaks published what was alleged to be the Australian Communications and Media Authority's blacklist of sites to be banned under Australia's proposed laws on Internet censorship.[97] Reactions to the publication of the list by the Australian media and politicians were varied. Particular note was made by journalistic outlets of the type of websites on the list; while the Internet censorship scheme submitted by the Australian Labor Party in 2008 was proposed with the stated intention of preventing access to child pornography and sites related to terrorism,[98] the list leaked on Wikileaks contains a number of sites unrelated to sex crimes involving minors.[99][100] When questioned about the leak, Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in Australia's Rudd Labor Government, responded by claiming that the list was not the actual list, yet threatening to prosecute anyone involved in distributing it.[101] On 20 March 2009, Wikileaks published an updated list, dated 18 March 2009; it more closely matches the claimed size of the ACMA blacklist, and contains two pages which have been independently confirmed to be blacklisted by ACMA.

Wikileaks also contains details of Internet censorship in Thailand, including lists of censored sites dating back to May 2006.[102]

Bilderberg Group meeting reports

Since May 2009, Wikileaks has made available reports of several meetings of the Bilderberg Group.[103] It includes the group's history[104] and meeting reports from the years 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1963, and 1980.

2008 Peru oil scandal

On 28 January 2009, Wikileaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the "Petrogate" oil scandal. The release of the tapes led the front pages of five Peruvian newspapers.[105]

Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report

In September 2006, commodities giant Trafigura commissioned an internal report about a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast,[106] which (according to the United Nations) affected 108,000 people. The document, called the Minton Report, names various harmful chemicals "likely to be present" in the waste — sodium hydroxide, cobalt phthalocyanine sulfonate, coker naphtha, thiols, sodium alkanethiolate, sodium hydrosulfide, sodium sulfide, dialkyl disulfides, hydrogen sulfide — and notes that some of them "may cause harm at some distance". The report states that potential health effects include "burns to the skin, eyes and lungs, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of consciousness and death", and suggests that the high number of reported casualties is "consistent with there having been a significant release of hydrogen sulphide gas".

On September 11, 2009, Trafigura's lawyers, Carter-Ruck, obtained a secret "super-injunction"[107] against The Guardian, banning that newspaper from publishing the contents of the document. Trafigura also threatened a number of other media organizations with legal action if they published the report's contents, including the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation[106] and The Chemical Engineer magazine.[108] On 14 September 2009, Wikileaks posted the report.[109]

On 12 October, Carter-Ruck warned The Guardian against mentioning the content of a parliamentary question that was due to be asked about the report. Instead, the paper published an article stating that they were unable to report on an unspecified question and claiming that the situation appeared to "call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1689 Bill of Rights".[110] The suppressed details rapidly circulated via the internet and Twitter[111][112][113] and, amid uproar, Carter-Ruck agreed the next day to the modification of the injunction before it was challenged in court, permitting The Guardian to reveal the existence of the question and the injunction.[114] The injunction was lifted on 16 October.[115]

Kaupthing Bank

Wikileaks has made available an internal document[116] from Kaupthing Bank from just prior to the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008–2009 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. Kaupthing's lawyers have threatened Wikileaks with legal action, citing banking privacy laws. The leak has caused an uproar in Iceland.[117] Criminal charges relating to the multibillion euro loans to Exista and other major shareholders are being investigated. The bank is seeking to recover loans taken out by former bank employees before its collapse.[118]

9/11 pager messages

On 25 November 2009, Wikileaks released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages from the day of the September 11 attacks.[119] Among the released messages are communications between Pentagon officials and New York City Police Department.[citation needed]

2010

U.S. Intelligence report on Wikileaks

On 15 March 2010, Wikileaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report from March 2008. The document described some prominent reports leaked on the website which related to U.S. security interests and described potential methods of marginalizing the organization. Wikileaks editor Julian Assange said that some details in the Army report were inaccurate and its recommendations flawed,[120] and also that the concerns of the US Army raised by the report were hypothetical.[121] The report discussed deterring potential whistleblowers via termination of employment and criminal prosecution of any existing or former insiders, leakers or whistleblowers. Reasons for the attack include notable leaks such as U.S. equipment expenditure, human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay and the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah.[122]

Baghdad airstrike video

On 5 April 2010, Wikileaks released classified U.S. military footage from a series of attacks on 12 July 2007 in Baghdad by a U.S. helicopter that killed 12, including two Reuters news staff, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. The footage consisted of a 39-minute unedited version and an 18-minute version which had been edited and annotated. Analysis of the video indicates that one man was thought to have been carrying an AK-47 assault rifle and another an RPG (rocket propelled grenade), though "none were assuming a hostile posture."[123]

The military conducted an "informal" investigation into the incident, but has yet to release the investigative materials (such as the sworn statements of the soldiers involved or the battle damage assessment) that were used, causing the report to be criticized as "sloppy."[124]

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.[7]

Upcoming

Wikileaks have said they have video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US military, perhaps the Granai massacre, which they are preparing to release shortly.[125][126] Julian Assange has said "right now we are sitting on history-making stuff".[127][128]

See also

References

  1. ^ Haddow, Douglas (7 April 2010). "Grim truths of Wikileaks Iraq video". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 7 April 2010. ... a Sweden based non-profit website
  2. ^ Fundraising drive, wikileaks.org. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
  3. ^ a b c d "Wikileaks:About". Wikileaks. Archived from the original on 14 March 2008. Retrieved 3 June 2009.
  4. ^ McGreal, Chris. Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians, The Guardian, April 5, 2010.
  5. ^ "Wikileaks has 1.2 million documents?". Wikileaks. Retrieved 28 February 2008.
  6. ^ a b Reso, Paulina (May 20th 2010). "5 pioneering Web sites that could totally change the news". Daily News. Retrieved 8 June 2010. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ a b Current Google Insights trends: Wikileaks posts clasified military video, Masters, The Independent, (2010-04-12)
  8. ^ Steven Aftergood (3 January 2007). "Wikileaks and untraceable document disclosure". Secrecy News. Federation of American Scientists. Retrieved 28 February 2008.
  9. ^ Paul Marks (13 January 2007). "How to leak a secret and not get caught". New Scientist. Retrieved 28 February 2008.
  10. ^ Agence France Press (11 January 2007). "Chinese cyber-dissidents launch WikiLeaks, a site for whistleblowers". The Age. Retrieved 17 June 2010.
  11. ^ Richard Guilliatt (30 May 2009). "Rudd Government blacklist hacker monitors police". The Australian. Retrieved 17 June 2010.
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