Julian Assange says he could be killed in US jail

Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside Beccles police station in Suffolk, which he has to visit every day as one of the terms of his bail. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/23/julian-assa...


The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/23/julian-assa...

Julian Assange: my fate will rest in Cameron's hands if US charges me

WikiLeaks founder says it would be 'politically impossible' for Britain to extradite him to the US

Luke Harding

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 December 2010

Article history

Julian Assange said today that it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to extradite him to the United States, and that the final word on his fate if he were charged with espionage would rest with David Cameron.

In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country mansion where he is living under virtual house arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks said it would be difficult for the prime minister to hand him over to the Americans if there was strong support for him from the British people.

"It's all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor," he said.

Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden. He strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct with two Swedish women. But he believes the biggest threat to his freedom and to WikiLeaks, his whistleblowing website, emanates from a wrathful United States.

There is no evidence of any imminent US move to indict him. But according to Assange, the Obama administration is "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence officer and alleged source of the more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables embarrassingly leaked last month. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is also examining "computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism", Assange claims.

Sitting in front of a log fire, his Apple MacBook Pro perched on his lap, Assange said his recent nine-day spell in Wandsworth jail had prepared him for the possibility that he might spend a long period in prison if indicted by the US. He said the prospect of solitary confinement was no longer an "intellectual abstraction" but a reality. The high court bailed him to Norfolk last Thursday, with his extradition hearing scheduled for 6-7 February.

He said: "Solitary confinement is very difficult. But I know that provided there is some opportunity for correspondence I can withstand it. I'm mentally robust. Of course it would mean the end of my life in the conventional sense."

If the US succeeded in removing him from the UK or Sweden, Assange said there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in the US prison system.

Since moving to Ellingham Hall, a Georgian country house and organic farm owned by his friend and supporter Vaughan Smith, Assange has given numerous media interviews. But he said he was fed up with the press and described an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme – in which John Humphrys grilled him on how many people he had slept with – as "awful".

Assange also took issue with a lengthy report in Saturday's Guardian setting out the prosecution allegations against him in Sweden. Assange acknowledged that the Guardian had a right to publish the material, dealing with his alleged encounters with the women. But he said it had been "sub-selected" and not placed properly in context. Swedish prosecutors have demanded that he return to Sweden to face further questions about the allegations.

Assange also said WikiLeaks did not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though "a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us". He said legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching £500,000. The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks – apparently following US pressure – had robbed the website of a "war chest" of around €500,000, he complained. This would have been enough to fund WikiLeaks' publishing operations for six months. At its peak the organisation was receiving €100,000 a day, he said.

According to publishing sources, however, Assange can take cheer from the fact that he has secured a seven-figure advance for a book about WikiLeaks and his life story. The sources suggest he is likely to receive £250,000 himself, allowing him to pay off some of his debts and to settle his personal defence fund, currently "paralysed". The book is to be published in the spring by Knopf in the US and Canongate in the UK, the sources suggest.

Assange – who has to wear his electronic tag in the bath, and report every day to Beccles police station – confessed he has no idea where he will be in a year's time. He described the next chapter in his life as "not yet predictable.

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception."

He argued that Cameron and Nick Clegg were in a stronger position than the previous, Labour government to resist his extradition by Washington. "There is a new government, which wants to show it hasn't yet been co-opted by the US," he said, claiming that the security services – British and Australian – had a history of spying on and unduly influencing Labour politicians.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have now gone home for Christmas, leaving Assange with a scaled-down team over the holiday period, on an estate where the pheasant and grouse greatly outnumber the humans.

His immediate plan, he said, was to rest after a gruelling couple of months and then to continue with the staged global release of redacted US state department cables in the new year. Physically, he appeared somewhat wrung out, although very much composed and in good spirits.

Assange defended one of WikiLeaks' collaborators, Israel Shamir, following claims Shamir passed sensitive cables to Belarus's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko has arrested 600 opposition supporters and journalists since Sunday's presidential election. The whereabouts and fate of several of the president's high-profile opponents are unknown.

Of Shamir, Assange said: "WikiLeaks works with hundreds of journalists from different regions of the world. All are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and are generally only given limited review access to material relating to their region. We have no reason to believe these rumours in relation to Belarus are true."

Over the past month the Guardian has published more than 200 articles based on the trove of US diplomatic dispatches obtained by WikiLeaks, and 739 of the cables themselves. All cables published by the Guardian and the four other international news organisations who had exclusive early access to the material have been carefully redacted to protect sources who could be placed in danger, and the redacted versions have been passed to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks now plans to begin sharing the cables with a wider group of regional news organisations. Julian Assange says all future cables released by WikiLeaks will either be redacted by other partner news organisations, or by WikiLeaks itself. The Guardian and its partners in the project, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais and Le Monde, will continue to share redactions with WikiLeaks for any cables they publish in future.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4671950

Julian Assange says he could be killed in US jail

Edited on Thu Dec-23-10 10:24 PM by Turborama
Source: AFP

WIKILEAKS chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.


The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Mr Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington. "Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.

Mr Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/julian-assange-say...



The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/23/julian-assa...

A historical refresher for anyone who might not know what Jack Ruby did...

On Sunday, November 24 Oswald was being led through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters preparatory to his transfer to the county jail when, at 11:21 a.m., Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby stepped from the crowd and shot Oswald in the abdomen. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m. at Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where Kennedy had died two days earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald#Death



WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8188503/assange-says-he-could-be-killed-in-us-jail

Fri Dec 24 2010

Assange says he could be killed in jail

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.

The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington.

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.

He said US authorities were "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the US army soldier suspected of providing WikiLeaks with the cables.

Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.

Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald at a police station in Dallas, Texas days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Ruby's alleged links to organised crime sparked conspiracy theories about his involvement in an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.

Assange has previously said that he and other WikiLeaks staff have received death threats since the website began to release a cache of about 250,000 secret US State Department cables in November.

The 39-year-old has been staying at a friend's country mansion in eastern England since his release from jail last week on strict bail conditions that include reporting to police daily and wearing an electronic tag.

A court in London is due to hold a full hearing on the Swedish extradition request starting February 7.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/assange-says-he-could-be-killed-in-us-jail-20101224-196z2.html

AFP

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.

The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington.

Advertisement: Story continues below

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.

He said US authorities were "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the US army soldier suspected of providing WikiLeaks with the cables.

Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.

Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald at a police station in Dallas, Texas days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Ruby's alleged links to organised crime sparked conspiracy theories about his involvement in an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.

Assange has previously said that he and other WikiLeaks staff have received death threats since the website began to release a cache of about 250,000 secret US State Department cables in November.

The 39-year-old has been staying at a friend's country mansion in eastern England since his release from jail last week on strict bail conditions that include reporting to police daily and wearing an electronic tag.

A court in London is due to hold a full hearing on the Swedish extradition request starting February 7.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/assange-says-he-could-be-killed-in-us-jail-20101224-196z2.html

Assange says he could be killed in US jail

December 24, 2010

AFP

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.

The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington.

Advertisement: Story continues below

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.

He said US authorities were "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the US army soldier suspected of providing WikiLeaks with the cables.

Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.

Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald at a police station in Dallas, Texas days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Ruby's alleged links to organised crime sparked conspiracy theories about his involvement in an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.

Assange has previously said that he and other WikiLeaks staff have received death threats since the website began to release a cache of about 250,000 secret US State Department cables in November.

The 39-year-old has been staying at a friend's country mansion in eastern England since his release from jail last week on strict bail conditions that include reporting to police daily and wearing an electronic tag.

A court in London is due to hold a full hearing on the Swedish extradition request starting February 7.


WikiLeaks

 is an international new media non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources andnews leaks. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press.[4] Within a year of its launch, the site claimed its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.[8] The organisation has described itself as having been founded by Chinesedissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.[4] Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its director.[9]

WikiLeaks has received praise as well as criticism. The organization won a number of awards, including The Economist's 2008 New Media Award.[10] In June 2009, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange won Amnesty International's UK Media Award, in the category "New Media", for the 2008 publication of "Kenya: The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances",[11] a report by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights about police killings in Kenya.[12] In May 2010, New York City's Daily News listed WikiLeaks as first in a ranking of "websites that could totally change the news".[13] Julian Assange was named the Readers' Choice for TIME's Person of the Year for 2010.[14] Several U.S. government officials have criticized WikiLeaks for exposing state secrets, harming national security, and compromising international diplomacy.[15][16][17][18][19] Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International criticized WikiLeaks for not adequately redacting the names of civilians working with the U.S. military.[20] Some journalists have criticized the lack of editorial discretion when releasing thousands of documents at once and without sufficient analysis.[21] Negative public reactions in the United States have characterized the organization as irresponsible, immoral, and illegal.[22][23][24]

In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted video from a 2007 incident in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by US forces, on a website called Collateral Murder. 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 for public review.[25] 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. In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks was originally launched as a user-editable wiki site, but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication model, and no longer accepts either user comments or edits. 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.[26][27]\\

History

The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006.

[5] The website was unveiled, and published its first document in December 2006.[28][29] 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".[4]

The creators of WikiLeaks have not been formally identified.[30] It has been represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assangeand others. Assange describes himself as a member of WikiLeaks' advisory board.[31] News reports in The Australian have called Assange the "founder of WikiLeaks".[32] 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".[33] As of June 2009, the site had over 1,200 registered volunteers[4] and listed an advisory board comprising Assange,Phillip Adams, Wang Dan, C. J. Hinke, Ben Laurie, Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, Xiao Qiang, Chico Whitaker and Wang Youcai.[34]Despite appearing on the list, when contacted by Mother Jones magazine in 2010, Khamsitsang said that while he received an e-mail from WikiLeaks, he had never agreed to be an advisor.[35]

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."[4][36]

In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish.[37] 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."[29][38]

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 were 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)".[39] 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 theAfghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.[40]

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.[41]

The project has drawn comparisons to Daniel Ellsberg's leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.[42] 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.[42] 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."[43]

On 24 December 2009, WikiLeaks announced that it was experiencing a shortage of funds[44] and suspended all access to its website except for a form to submit new material.[45] Material that was previously published was no longer available, although some could still be accessed on unofficial mirrors.[46][47] WikiLeaks stated on its website that it would resume full operation once the operational costs were covered.[45] WikiLeaks saw this as a kind of strike "to ensure that everyone who is involved stops normal work and actually spends time raising revenue".[48] While the organisation initially planned for funds to be secured by 6 January 2010,[49] it was not until 3 February 2010 that WikiLeaks announced that its minimum fundraising goal had been achieved.[50]

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".[51] The account was restored on 25 January 2010.[52] On 18 May 2010, WikiLeaks announced that its website and archive were back up.[53]

As of 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,[29] but did not make the cut.[54] 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".[54] A spokesman of the Knight Foundation disputed parts of WikiLeaks' statement, saying "WikiLeaks was not recommended by Knight staff to the board."[55] 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.[55]

On 17 July, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City, replacing Assange because of the presence of federal agents at the conference.[56][57] He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended.[56][58] Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conferenceon 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that the site had begun accepting submissions again.[59]

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.[60] The sources told Cnet that Appelbaum's bag was searched, receipts from his bag were photocopied, his laptop was inspected, although in what manner was unclear.[60] 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.[60]On 31 July, he spoke at a Defcon conference and mentioned his phone being "seized". After speaking, he was approached by two FBIagents and questioned.[60]

Assange is quoted as acknowledging that his practice of posting largely unfiltered classified information online could one day lead the Web site to have "blood on our hands."[61]

In 2010, at least a dozen key supporters of WikiLeaks have left the website.[62]

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.[48] 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.[48]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.[48] Its only revenue stream is donations, but WikiLeaks is planning to add an auction model to sell early access to documents.[48] According to the Wau Holland Foundation, WikiLeaks receives no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth.[63] An article in TechEYE.net wrote

As a charity accountable under German law, donations for WikiLeaks can be made to the foundation. Funds are held in escrow and are given to WikiLeaks after the whistleblower website files an application containing a statement with proof of payment. The foundation does not pay any sort of salary nor give any renumeration [sic] to WikiLeaks' personnel, corroborating the statement of the site's former German representative Daniel Schmitt (real name Daniel Domscheit-Berg)[64] on national television that all personnel works voluntarily, even its speakers.[63]

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 organisation due to internal conflicts over management of the site.[65][66][64]

Hosting

WikiLeaks describes itself as "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking".[67] 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".[68] The servers are spread around the world with the central server located in Sweden.[69] 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.[69] It is forbidden according to Swedish law for any administrative authority to make inquiries about the sources of any type of newspaper.[70] These laws, and the hosting by PRQ, make 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."[68][71]

On 17 August 2010, it was announced that the Swedish Pirate Party will be hosting and managing many of WikiLeaks' new servers. The party donates servers and bandwidth to WikiLeaks without charge. Technicians of the party will make sure that the servers are maintained and working.[72][73]

Some servers are hosted in an underground nuclear bunker in Stockholm.[74][75]

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.[76] Later, however, the website was "ousted"[76] from the Amazon servers, without a public statement from the company.[citation needed] WikiLeaks then decided to install itself on the servers of OVH in France.[77] 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.[76][78]

WikiLeaks is based on several software packages, including 

MediaWiki, Freenet, Tor, and PGP.[79] WikiLeaks strongly encouraged postings via Tor because of the strong privacy needs of its users.[80]

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 in the country to move the operation there.[81][82] According to Assange, Switzerland and Iceland are the only countries where WikiLeaks would feel safe to operate.[83][84]

Financing

WikiLeaks is dependent on public donations since it is a non-profit organisation. 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 have 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 donations throughPayPal was twice[vague] as through normal banks, before PayPal's decision to suspend WikiLeaks' account. He also noted that donations were never as strong as when WikiLeaks started publishing leaked diplomatic cables.[85][86]

Name servers

WikiLeaks had been using EveryDNS's services, which led to DDoS attacks on the host.[clarification needed] The attacks affected the quality of service at EveryDNS, so the company withdrew their 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 and attacked it. The attacks caused both EveryDNS and EasyDNS to experience outages. Afterwards EasyDNS decided to provide WikiLeaks its name server service.[87]

Name and policies

Despite using the name "WikiLeaks", the website is no longer wiki-based as of December 2010. Also, despite some popular confusion[88] due to both having the term "wiki" in their names, WikiLeaks and Wikipedia have no affiliation with each other;[89][90] i.e. "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.[91]

The "about" page originally read:[92]

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").[93] 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."[94] 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."[95] After the 2010 relaunch, posting new comments to leaks was no longer possible.[96]

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."[97] 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."[98]

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.[99] In that group, Assange has the final decision about the assessment of a document.[99]

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.[100] 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.[101][102] WikiLeaks has stated that they "do not solicit any information".[101] 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.[103]

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.[104][105] Attorney General Eric Holder affirmed the probe was  not saber-rattling”, but was "an active, ongoing criminal investigation."[105] 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.[104][106] 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.[107] 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.[108] 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.[109] One of Assange's lawyers, however, says they are fighting extradition to Sweden because it might lead to his extradition to the United States.[110] 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.[111]

In Australia, the government and the Australian Federal Police have not stated what Australian laws may have been broken by WikiLeaks, but Julia Gillard has stated that the foundation of Wikileaks and the stealing of classified documents from the US administration is illegal in foreign countries.[112] 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."[113] 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.[114]

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.[115]

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 has been speculated to serve as insurance in case the WikiLeaks website or its spokesman Julian Assange are incapacitated, upon which thepassphrase could be published, similar to the concept of a dead man's switch.[116][117] 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."[118] 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."[118]

Investigations, censorship, harassment, and surveillance

According to The Times, WikiLeaks and its members have complained about continuing harassment and surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organisations, including extended detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, “covert following and hidden photography.”[119] 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 US cables leak.[120]

By governments

Police raid on German WikiLeaks domain holder's home

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.[121] The site was not affected.[122][123]

P.R. China

Wikileaks's 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's many covert URLs.[124]

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.[125][126] The blacklisting was removed 30 November 2010.[127]

Thai censorship

The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) is currently censoring the website WikiLeaks in Thailand[128] and more than 40,000 other webpages[129] because of the emergency decree in Thailand imposed as a result of political instabilities (Emergency decree declared beginning of April 2010[130]).

United States

Access to WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the United States Library of Congress.[131] 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.[132] 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",[133] although former prosecutors say doing so would be difficult.[106] 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.[134]

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; there was "covert following and hidden photography" by police and foreignintelligence 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."[119] 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."[135]

In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank succeeded in obtaining a court order gagging 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 felt outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance.[136] 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.[137][138] Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former volunteer for WikiLeaks and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.

By organisations and companies

Facebook Inc.

WikiLeaks claimed in April 2010 that Facebook deleted their fan page, which had 30,000 fans.[139][140][141] 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,[142] to more than 1,300,000 fans. It is also the largest growth of the week.[143] 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."[144]

Moneybookers Ltd

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."[145]

After the US diplomatic cables leak

Following the US diplomatic cables leak, which started on 28 November 2010, 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".[26][146] The site's 'info' DNS lookup remained operational at alternative addresses for direct access respectively to the WikiLeaks and Cablegate websites.[147] 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.[7][148][149]Amazon denied acting under political pressure citing a violation of its terms of service.[150] Citing indirect pressure from the U.S. Government, Tableau Software also dropped WikiLeaks' data from its site for people to use for data visualisation.[151][152]

In the days following, hundreds of (and eventually more than a thousand[153]) mirrors of the WikiLeaks site appeared and the Anonymousgroup of internet activists, called on supporters to attack the websites of companies which do not support WikiLeaks,[154] under the banner of Operation Payback, previously aimed at anti-piracy organisations.[155] AFP reported that attempts to shut down the wikileaks.org address had lead to the site surviving via the so-called Streisand effect, whereby attempts to censor information online leads to it being replicated in many places.[156]

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 it was used for "activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity."[157][158] 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.[159] 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".[160]

On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance, announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange that it holds, totalling 31,000 euros. In a statement on their website, they stated that this was because Assange "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account.[161] WikiLeaks released a statement saying this was due to that Assange, "as a homeless refugee attempting to gain residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's address in Geneva for the bank's correspondence".[162] On the same day, MasterCard announced that it "is 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."[163] The next day, Visa Inc. announced it was suspending payments to WikiLeaks, pending "further investigations".[164] In a move of support for WikiLeaks, XIPWIRE established a way to donate to WikiLeaks, and waived their fees.[165] Datacell, the Swiss-based IT company that enabled WikiLeaks to accept credit card donations, announced that it will take legal action against Visa Europe and Mastercard, in order to resume allowing payments to the website.[166]

On 7 December 2010, The Guardian stated that people can still donate to WikiLeaks via Commerzbank Kassel in Germany orLandsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at the University of Melbourne or at the wikileaks.ch domain.[167]

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has highlighted that Visa, Mastercard and Amazon may be 'violating WikiLeaks' [e pluribus unum] right to freedom of expression' by withdrawing their services.[168]

Reception

Support

In July 2010 Veterans for Peace president Mike Ferner editorialised on the group's website "neither Wikileaks nor the soldier or soldiers who divulged the documents should be prosecuted for revealing this information. We should give them a medal."[171]

Documentary filmmaker John Pilger wrote an August 2010 editorial in the Australian publication Green Left titled "Wikileaks Must Be Defended." In it, Pilger said WikiLeaks represented the interests of "public accountability" and a new form of journalism at odds with "the dominant section ... devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it."[172]

Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, has been a frequent defender of WikiLeaks. Following the November 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables, Ellsberg rejected criticism that the site was endangering the lives of U.S. military personnel and intelligence assets stating "not one single soldier or informant has been in danger from any of the WikiLeaks releases. That risk has been largely overblown."[169] Ellsberg went on to note that government claims to the contrary were "a script that they roll out every time there's a leak of any sort."[170] Following the US diplomatic cable release, which a number of media reports sought to differentiate from Ellsberg's whistleblowing,[173] Ellsberg claimed, "EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."[174]

On 3 December 2010 Republican Congressman of Texas, Ron Paul, spoke out publicly during a Fox Business interview in support of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange; "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble." Paul went on to state, "Why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?"[175] In another speech at US House of Representatives Paul again defended WikiLeaks against criticism for revealing the truth and warned the US administration that "lying is not patriotic".[176]

Fellow Republican congressman Connie Mack IV of Florida also praised WikiLeaks, stating that Americans have a right to know the contents of the leaks, “no matter how we acquire that knowledge.”[177]

Australia’s most senior and high-profile media professionals expressed their support for WikiLeaks in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard.[178] The letter was initiated by the Walkley Foundation, who present the yearly Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. The letter was signed by "the ten members of the Walkley Advisory Board as well as editors of major Australian newspapers and news websites and the news directors of the country’s three commercial TV networks and two public broadcasters." Their position (an extract from the letter) is summarized as follows:

“In essence, WikiLeaks, an organisation that aims to expose official secrets, is doing what the media have always done: bringing to light material that governments would prefer to keep secret. It is the media’s duty to responsibly report such material if it comes into their possession. To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.”[179]

Following the November 2010 leak of United States diplomatic cables The Atlantic, in a staff editorial, opined "Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press." Calling legal and physical threats against WikiLeaks volunteers "shameful" the magazine went on to state, "Not since President Richard Nixon directed his minions to go after Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan ... has a working journalist and his source been subjected to the kind of official intimidation and threats that have been directed at Assange and Manning by high-ranking members of the Obama Administration."[180]

On 4 December 2010, Reporters Without Borders condemned the "blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure" being directed at WikiLeaks. The organisation is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.[181]

In an article titled "Only WikiLeaks can save US policy" published on the online foreign affairs magazine The Diplomat, former long-time CIA counter-terrorism expert Michael Scheuer said the source of interest in WikiLeaks revelations was in the inherent dishonesty of recent U.S. administrations. "In recent years, the US public has had to hear its leaders repeatedly tell Americans that black was white," Scheuer wrote, referencing the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.[182]

Evan Hughes, editor-in-chief of wired.com published his support for WikiLeaks in an online editorial titled "Why WikiLeaks is Good for America." Despite an often contentious relationship between Wired and WikiLeaks, with the former having being accused by the latter of complicity in the identification and arrest of Bradley Manning, Hughes argued that "WikiLeaks stands to improve our democracy, not weaken it." He went on to note that "The greatest threat we face right now from WikiLeaks is not the information it has spilled and may spill in the future, but the reactionary response to it that’s building in the United States that promises to repudiate the rule of law and our free speech traditions, if left unchecked."[183]

The New York Times reported that over 200 WikiLeaks mirror sites sprang up after some hosting companies cut their services to the company.[184] On 5 December, a group of activists and hackers known as "Anonymous" called upon supporters to attack sites of companies that oppose WikiLeaks as part of Operation Avenge Assange.[185] Paypal has been targeted following their decision to stop processing donations for Wikileaks.[186][187]Gregg Housh, who previously worked on other projects with Anonymous, said that he had noticed an organised attempt taking place to attack companies that have not supported WikiLeaks. In reference to the support being shown for Wikileaks, Mr. Housh said; "The reason is amazingly simple, we all believe that information should be free, and the Internet should be free."[154] On 8 December 2010, Paypal website was victim of a Denial-of-service attack by Anonymous.[188][189][190] Later that day, Paypal announced in their blog that they will release all remaining funds in the account to the foundation that was raising funds for WikiLeaks.[191][192] On the same day, the websites of Visa and Mastercard were attacked by WikiLeaks supporters. By then over 1,200 mirror sites had been set up for hosting content no longer accessible at WikiLeaks.com. Anonymous also issued a fresh statement; "While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons. We want transparency, and we counter censorship...This is why we intend to utilise our resources to raise awareness, attack those against, and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy."[193]

The Internet Society (ISOC) stated that despite the international concern about the content released by WikiLeaks, "we nevertheless believe it must be subject to the same laws and policies of availability as all Internet sites" and that “free expression should not be restricted by governmental or private controls over computer hardware or software, telecommunications infrastructure, or other essential components of the Internet”. ISOC also called for appropriate action to "pursue and prosecute entities (if any) that acted maliciously to take it [WikiLeaks] off the air” because suppressing communication would merely serve to “undermine the integrity of the global Internet and its operation”.[194]

On 8 December 2010 the international civic organisation Avaaz launched a petition in support of WikiLeaks, which was signed by over 250 thousand people within the first few hours, the total number went up to 600 thousand by 15 December 2010.[195][196][197]

In early December 2010, Noam Chomsky offered his support to protesters across Australia planning to take to the streets in defence of WikiLeaks.[198]

On 14 December 2010, Michael Moore offered $20,000 to help bail Assange out of jail.[199][200]

Awards received

In 2008, Index on Censorship presented WikiLeaks with their inaugural Economist New Media Award.

In 2009, Amnesty International awarded WikiLeaks their Media Award for exposing "extra judicial killings and disappearances" in Kenya.[201]

Praise by governments

 Brazil: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva expressed his "solidarity" with Julian Assange following Assange's 2010 arrest in the United Kingdom. Lula went on to state—in reference to WikiLeaks disclosure of classified US diplomatic cables in November and December 2010—WikiLeaks had "exposed a diplomacy that had appeared unreachable."[202][203] He further criticised the arrest of Julian Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression".[204]

 Ecuador: In late November 2010 a representative of the government of Ecuador made what was, apparently, an unsolicited public offer to Julian Assange to establish residency in Ecuador. Deputy Foreign Minister Kinto Lucas stated "we are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just on the Internet, but in various public forums."[205] Lucas went on to state his praise for WikiLeaks and Assange calling them "[people] who are constantly investigating and trying to get light out of the dark corners of [state] information."[206] The following day, however, president Rafael Correadistanced his administration from the offer stating that Lucas had been speaking for himself and not on the government's behalf. Correa then criticised Assange for "breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information."[207]

 Russia: In December 2010 the office of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev issued a statement calling on non-governmental organisations to consider "nominating [Julian] Assange as a Nobel Prize laureate." The announcement followed commentary by Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin who stated that Julian Assange's earlier arrest on Swedish charges demonstrated that there was "no media freedom" in the west.[208]

 Venezuela: Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, stated his support for WikiLeaks following the release of US diplomatic cables in November 2010 that showed the United States had tried to rally support from regional governments to isolate Venezuela. "I have to congratulate the people of WikiLeaks for their bravery and courage," Chávez commented in televised remarks.[209]

 United Nations: In December 2010 United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank LaRue stated he agreed with the idea that Julian Assange was a "martyr for free speech." LaRue went on to say Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face legal accountability 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."[210] High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay subsequently voiced concern at the revelation that private companies were being pressured by states to sever their relationships with WikiLeaks.[211]

Criticism

WikiLeaks has attracted criticism from a variety of sources.[212]

In 2007 John Young, operator of Cryptome, left his position on the WikiLeaks Board of Directors accusing the group of being a "CIA conduit". Young subsequently retreated from his assertion but has continued to be critical of the site.[213] In a 2010 interview withCNET.com Young accused the group of a lack of transparency regarding their fundraising and financial management. He went on to state his belief that WikiLeaks could not guarantee whistleblowers the anonymity or confidentiality they claimed and that he "would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about at risk."[214]

Citing the leaking of the sorority rituals of Alpha Sigma Tau, Steven Aftergood has opined that WikiLeaks "does not respect the rule of law nor does it honour the rights of individuals." Aftergood went on to state that WikiLeaks engages in unrestrained disclosure of non-governmental secrets without compelling public policy reasons and that many anti-corruption activists were opposed to the site's activities.[215]

In 2010, Amnesty International joined several other human rights groups criticising WikiLeaks for not adequately redacting the names of Afghan civilians working as U.S. military informants from files they had released. Julian Assange responded by offering Amnesty International staff the opportunity to assist in the document vetting process. When Amnesty International appeared to express reservations in accepting the offer, Assange dismissed the group as "people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses." Other groups that joined Amnesty International in criticising WikiLeaks subsequently noted that, despite their displeasure over the issue of civilian name redaction, they generally appreciated WikiLeaks's work.[216]

In an August 2010 open letter, the non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders praised WikiLeaks' past usefulness in exposing "serious violations of human rights and civil liberties" but criticised the group over a perceived absence of editorial control, stating "indiscriminately publishing 92,000 classified reports reflects a real problem of methodology and, therefore, of credibility. Journalistic work involves the selection of information. The argument with which you defend yourself, namely that WikiLeaks is not made up of journalists, is not convincing."[217] The group subsequently clarified their statement as a criticism of WikiLeaks release procedure and not the organisation itself, stating "we reaffirm our support for Wikileaks, its work and its founding principles."[218]

On 30 November 2010, former Canadian government adviser Tom Flanagan, while appearing on the CBC television program "Power & Politics", called for Julian Assange to be killed. "I think Assange should be assassinated," Flanagan stated, before noting to host Evan Solomon, "I'm feeling pretty manly today." Flanagan subsequently retracted his call for the death of Assange while reiterating his opposition to WikiLeaks.[219] Dimitri Soudas, spokesman to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, decried Flanagan's comments and said the former Tory strategist's remarks are "simply not acceptable." Ralph Goodale, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, called Flanagan's remarks "clearly contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."[220]

Russian investigative reporter Andrei Soldatov has criticised WikiLeaks for disclosing documents "without checking of the facts, without putting them in context, and without analysing them.” Soldatov believes WikiLeaks is "filling the gap" left by the decline of investigative journalism with a sensationalist alternative while journalistic support of WikiLeaks is motivated by anger over declining funding and resources for investigative reporting.[221]

Contrary Views. A number of authors contend that Wikileaks, contrary to appearances, is actually a charade or intelligence agency disinformation ploy conducting psychological warfare. They point to the effects on mobilizing public opinion against freedom of information and to allegations in the purported leaks which incriminate targets of US foreign policy, such as Iran. Notable critics in this vein include Michel Chossudovsky[222] and F. William Engdahl.[223]

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has said: "Speaking as Wikipedia's co-founder, I consider you enemies of the U.S.—not just the government, but the people." [224]

According to a telephone survey of 1,029 US residents age 18 and older, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in December 2010, Americans are overwhelmingly critical of WikiLeaks. The poll found that 70 percent of respondents – particularlyRepublicans and older people – think the leaks are doing more harm than good by allowing America's enemies to see confidential and secret information about U.S. foreign policy. Just 22 percent – especially young liberals – think the leaks are doing more good than harm by making the U.S. government more transparent and accountable. A majority of 59 percent also wants to see the people behind WikiLeaks prosecuted, while 31 percent said the publication of secrets is protected under the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.[225]

Criticism by governments

Most of the governments and organisations whose files have been leaked by WikiLeaks have been critical of the organisation.

  •  Australia: On 2 December 2010 Prime Minister Julia Gillard made a statement that she 'absolutely condemns' Wikileaks' actions and that the release of information on the site was 'grossly irresponsible' and 'illegal.'[226] Wikileaks founder Julian Assange isAustralian and he responded two days later by accusing his prime minister of betraying him as an Australian citizen.[227] However, on 8 December 2010—after WikiLeaks published U.S. diplomatic cables in which United States diplomats labelled him a "control freak", former Australian Prime Minister and current foreign minister Kevin Rudd said the leak of the US secret cables raised questions about US security. Rudd said, "The core responsibility, and therefore legal liability, goes to those individuals responsible for that initial unauthorised release."[228][229] In an article in The Australian, Assange claimed, "The Australian attorney-general is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US."[230]However, Australian officials later said that Assange has done nothing illegal.[231]
  •  France: The French Industry Minister Éric Besson said in a letter to the CGIET technology agency, WikiLeaks "violates the secret of diplomatic relations and puts people protected by diplomatic secret in danger." Therefore it would be 'unacceptable' that the site was hosted on servers based in France. The minister asked for measures to bar WikiLeaks from France.[232]
  •  Iran: The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also criticised WikiLeaks following the release of United States diplomatic cables. Ahmadinejad claimed that the release of cables purporting to show concern with Iran by Arab states was a planned leak by the United States to discredit his government, though he did not indicate whether he believed WikiLeaks was in collusion with the United States or was simply an unwitting facilitator.[233]
  •  Philippines: President Benigno Aquino III comdemned Wikileaks and leaked documents related to the country, saying that it can lead to massive cases of miscommunication.[234]
  •  United States: Following the November 2010 release of United States diplomatic cables, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clintondenounced the group saying, "this disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community."[235] Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee of the United States House of Representatives has stated his support for listing Wikileaks as a "foreign terrorist organisation" explaining that "WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States."[236] In a contrary statement, secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said that concerns about the disclosures were "over-wrought" in terms of their likely adverse impact on ordinary diplomatic activities.[237] Philip J. Crowley, United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, stated on 2 December 2010 that the US State Department does not regard WikiLeaks as a media organisation. "WikiLeaks is not a media organization. That is our view." Crowley said and with regard to Assange;"Well, his – I mean he could be considered a political actor. I think he’s an anarchist, but he’s not a journalist."[238]
    US Senator Joe Lieberman, who first called on Amazon to shut down WikiLeaks and then praised the company after doing so called for other companies to follow suit.[149] He also proposed new legislation targeting similar cases—Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination Act,[148] also known as the SHIELD Act,[239] not to be confused with a shield law. Lieberman later said that also The New York Times and other news organisations publishing the US embassy cables being released by WikiLeaks could be investigated for breaking US espionage laws.[240]

Spin offs

Following the initial releases of US diplomatic cables, a number of other sites based on the WikiLeaks model were borne.[241]

  • 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 planned to start 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 Ruslan Kogan, a fellow Australian of Assange. 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."
  • Balkan Leaks was founded by Bulgarain 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 that sought to publish classified documents of the Indonesian government, though the Jakarta Globe said "the [Indonesian] government claimed not to be concerned by the website."

Leaks

2006–08

WikiLeaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys."[29] In August 2007, The Guardian published a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moibased on information provided via WikiLeaks.[242] 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.[243] 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.[244] 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.[245] The site was instantly mirrored by supporters and later that month the judge overturned his previous decision citing First Amendmentconcerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.[246][247] 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.[248] 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 ofAnonymous.[249] In November 2008, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks, after briefly appearing on a blog.[250] A year later, on October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked.[251]

2009

In January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the 2008 Peru oil scandal.[252] In February, WikiLeaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports[253] follwed in March, by a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign[254][255] and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian.[256] In July, they released a report relating to a serious nuclear accident that had occurred at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in 2009.[257] Later media reports have suggested that the accident was related to theStuxnet computer worm.[258][259] 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.[260] In October, Joint Services Protocol 440, a British document advising the security services on how to avoid documents being leaked was published by WikiLeaks.[261] Later that month, they announced that a super-injunction was being used by the commodities company, Trafigura to gag The Guardian newspaper from reporting on a leaked internal document regarding a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast.[262][263] In November, they hosted copies of e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, although they were not originally leaked to WikiLeaks.[264] They also released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages sent on the day of the 11 September attacks.[265] 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.[266][267][268]

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.[269][270] 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.[271] 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.[272] In June 2010, A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley Manning, 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.[273] 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.[274] 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.[116] 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.[275] Following the Love Parade stampede in Duisburg, Germany on 24 July 2010, a local published internal documents of the city administration regarding the planning of Love Parade. The city government reacted by acquiring a court order on 16 August forcing the blog to remove the documents from its blog.[276] On 20 August WikiLeaks released a publication titled Loveparade 2010 Duisburg planning documents, 2007–2010, which comprised 43 internal documents regarding the Love Parade 2010.[277][278] Following on from the leak of information from the Afghan War, in October 2010, around 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War where released in October. The BBC quoted The Pentagonreferring 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.[279]

Diplomatic cables release

On 28 November 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[280] of 251,287 leaked confidential—but not top secret—diplomatic cables from 274 embassies dated from 1966–2010.[281] WikiLeaks plans to release the entirety of the cables in phases over several months.[281]

The contents of the diplomatic cables include numerous unguarded comments and revelations: critiques and praises about the host countries of various US embassies, 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.

Announcements on upcoming leaks

In May 2010, WikiLeaks said they had video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US military which they were preparing to release.[119][282]

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,[283] and that they were "getting enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of a very high calibre"[284] but added that they have not been able to verify and release the material because they do not have enough volunteer journalists.[285]

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."[286][287] 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".[288]

In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from Bank of America", and in 2010 told Forbesmagazine that WikiLeaks was planning another "megaleak" for early in 2011, which this time would be from inside the private sector and involve "a big U.S. bank". Bank of America's stock price fell by three percent as a result of this announcement.[289][290] Assange commented on the possible impact of the release that ”it could take down a bank or two.”[291][292]

In December 2010, Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, that WikiLeaks had information it considers to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it would release if the organisation needs to defend itself.[293]



The www.wikileaks.org domain is currently redirecting to wikileaks.info, a domain not affiliated with WikiLeaks and not included in the official list of mirrors. The Spamhaus Project has stated that the domain is hosted in a "very dangerous 'neighborhood'"

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Julian Assange
Enemy of the State Hero of the People
By Lucy Carne LONDON
SEEDS OF CHANGE: Julian Assange the boy and the thorn in the side of governments, and a rally by his Brisbane supporters this week
In front of an adoring crowd at the Frontline journalist’s club in London last month, Australia Julian Assange explained why he’s risking the wrath of the world’s most powerful governments.
In his face could still be seen traces of the sweet natured, sensitive little boy his Sunshine Coast-based mother has described and, smiling, the Queensland born 39 year old leaned into the microphone.
“They say I enjoy crushing bastards and. Yes, that’s part of my motivation,” Assange said.
“For some reason, the White House finds that offensive.”
Today, the founder if whistle blowing website WikiLeaks and the man on whom the world’s spotlight is focused, sits is a grey tracksuit in one of western Europe’s biggest prsions.
This week he was remanded in custody of rape, sexual assault and unlawful coercion stemming from alleged  non-consensual sex without a condom with two women in Sweden.
Assange’s imprisonment, after he handed himself in, was met with relief in the US, where authorities were angered by his website’s release of embarrassing diplomatic cables last week.
The man who kicked the hornets’ nest had been silences they thought.
“I hadn’t heard that but it sounds like good news to me,” US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on being told of Assange’s arrest.
But while Assange grows restless behind bars – he has already complained about the “boring” daytime television and his request to be reunited with his own laptop has been denied – a global groundswell of support has grown.
The strongest act of revenge is coming from a group of ”hacktivists”  known as Anomymous, which temporariiy shut down the websites of US and Swedish corporations this week.
The group also froze the websites of credit-card companies Visa and Mastercard,n which had cancelled financial donations to WikiLeaks.
Post Finance – the Swiss bank that froze Assange’s private account – was disabled too, as was the Swedish prosecution office and the Swedish lawyers representing the two  women who claim  to have been sexually assaulted by Assange.
The Anonymous group’s spokesman, known only as Coldblood, told reports they had not met Assange and were not connected to his organization but felt the need to defend him.
“If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then government will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with,” Coldblood said.
In Brisbane on Thursday, some 300 protestors took to the streets in anger at Assange’s imprisonment.
Protests in London were due to be held today.
More than 35,000 people have joined a Facebook group to support Assange, with calls for all members to donate to his legal fund, while around 28,000 Australians have signed a letter to US President BARACK Obama supporting him.
In an open letter published yesterday, prominent supports, including Australia documentary film maker John Pilger, Minty Python member Terry Jones, English actress Miriam Margolyes and author Iain Banks, call for his immediate release from jail
Assange’s unusually harsh imprisonment for allegedly ignoring two women’s  requests to use contraception has caused this sudden swell of skepticism and fury.
Many believe it is a flimsy excuse to keep Assange, who was placed on Interpol’s most wanted list, within reach of the US Justice Department so it can prosecute him under the Espionage Act.
Even while he is hailed by the public as a champion of transparency, to the governments of Australia and the US he remains a menace. To them he is not an innocent messenger but an anti-government terrorist who wants to harm the US and governments across the world.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard labeled WikiLeaks’s activities illegal but, despite calls for her to do so, has failed to outline any Australian law that Assange has broken.
Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland also has stood by his condemnation of Assange, while arch-conservative US politician Sarah Palin called him an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.”
How did the tousled-haired boy in overalls grow up to become an Andy Warhol-esque hero of the people.
“Hr can seem – with his spectral white hair, pa8iled skin, cool eyes, and expansive forehead – like a rail thin being who has rocketed to Earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth,” The New Yorker wrote in June.
Born in Townsville in 1971, Assange has described his childhood as “pretty Tom Sawyer”’ filled with horseriding, building rafts and fishing.
I was, however, far from Idyllic. By the age od 14, his family had moved 37 times, living everywhere from Magnetic Island to Byron Bay. It set the scene for his future nomadic life.
The young boy was home schooled, sporadically educated by university professors and even taught himself in hours spent alone in council libraries.
But his life changed when his mother’s abusive boyfriend tried to gain custody of Assange’s half brother in order to submit him to religious sect The Family.
His mother and her young family “disappeared”, constantly moving, never leaving a trail.
But at the age of 16, in 1987, Assange got a computer and modem and his life was suddenly transformed.
He embraced the random problem-solving and solace if life as a computer hacker.
“We were bright sensitive kinds who didn’t fit the dominant subculture and fiercely castigated those who did as irredeemable boneheads,” he wrote of himself and a teenage friend.
He was arrested in the early 1990’sw for hacking into the computer system of a major Canadian telecommunications company, but avoided a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
A brief spell in hospital for depression soon followed, as well as time spent living rough in the Dandenong Ranges National Park in Victoria and a stint motorcycling across Vietnam.
While working towards a physics degree at the University of Melbourne in 2006, He founded WikiLeaks.
It was a site for anyone wishing to “reveal illegal or immoral behavior in their own governments and corporations” he wrote at the time of the site’s launch.
“ I am the one who9 takes that risk,” he said prophetically, explaining his role at WikiLeaks while addressing the Frontline club last monthly. “As a consequence, I also get a lot of undue credit. I also get all the criticism.”
His original WikiLeaks mandate was to9 “make the news, not be the news”.
But that seems to have backfired, with Assange now a household name around the world.
“Is is weird?” an audience member asked him of his new celebrity status.
“No,” Assange shrugged.” Actually, I find it quite boring.”
Lucy Marne is The Courier-Mail’s European correspondent

Dear Friend,

Sarah Palin wants Julian Assange hunted as a terrorist.1 She's among a swelling chorus of American politicians calling for the arrest - and even the death - of the Australian citizen who runs WikiLeaks. It's a shame that real terrorists, the kind we should be focusing our attention on, don't show up at British Police stations with their lawyers, as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange did yesterday.

Here in Australia, Prime Minister Gillard pre-emptively judged Mr. Assange "illegal," even as the Attorney General confirmed that no Australian nor international crime by WikiLeaks has been identified.2

The death penalty? Judgment before trial? This isn't the kind of justice system we have in Australia. If our Government won't stand up for the rights of Australian citizens, let's do it ourselves.

We're printing ads in The Washington Times and The New York Times with the statement our Government should have made, signed by as many Australians as possible. Will you add your name to the signatories, and invite your friends to join too?

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/Wikileaks

The statement:Dear President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder:

We, as Australians, condemn calls for violence, including assassination, against Australian citizen and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, or for him to be labeled a terrorist, enemy combatant or be treated outside the ordinary course of justice in any way.

As Thomas Jefferson said, "information is the currency of democracy."3 Publishing leaked information in collaboration with major news outlets, as Wikileaks and Mr. Assange have done, is not a terrorist act.

Australia and the United States are the strongest of allies. Our soldiers serve side by side and we've experienced, and condemned, the consequences of terrorism together. To label WikiLeaks a terrorist organisation is an insult to those Australians and Americans who have lost their lives to acts of terrorism and to terrorist forces.

If WikiLeaks or their staff have broken international or national laws, let that case be heard in a just and fair court of law. At the moment, no such charges have been brought.

We are writing as Australians to say what our Government should have said: that all Australian citizens deserve to be free from persecution, threats of violence and detention without charge, especially from our friend and ally, the United States.

We call upon you to stand up for our shared democratic principles of the presumption of innocence and freedom of information.We're printing this statement in The Washington Times and The New York Times early next week - and the more Australians sign, the more powerful the message will be. Please add your name by clicking below, and forward this message to friends and family:

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/WikiLeaks

What has started with WikiLeaks being branded as terrorists won't end there.

In fact, just yesterday U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, Chair of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, said thatThe New York Times should also be investigated under the U.S. Espionage Act for publishing a number of the diplomatic cables leaked to WikiLeaks.4 We can help stop such plans in their tracks, by showing how they are affecting the image of the US in the eyes of their staunchest friends and allies.

Click here to sign the statement before it's published in The New York Times and Washington Times.

Thanks for being part of this,
The GetUp team

---

1 Beckford, M., 'Sarah Palin: hunt WikiLeaks founder like al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders', The Telegraph, 30 November 2010.

2 Oakes, L., 'Oakes: Gillard gushes over US leaks', Perth Now, 4 December 2010.

3 The quote is widely attributed to Jefferson, but some now dispute whether he actually said it. We know, at least, that he said "knowledge is power," even if Francis Bacon did say it first.

4 Savage, C., 'U.S. prosecuters study WikiLeaks prosecution', The New York Times, 7 December 2010.



Julian Assange from Jail to Masion






Former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks. Photo: Jacky Ghossein

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Assange gets bail but still locked up (01:12)
British judge grants bail to WikiLeaks founder under strict monitoring conditions, but he remains in jail as Sweden appeals the ruling.

Assange will never receive a fair trial: Hicks
Cameron Atfield
December 15, 2010

Hicks answers the tough questions
Former terrorism suspect David Hicks has come out in support of jailed freedom-of-speech campaigner Julian Assange, saying he feared for Mr Assange's safety should he end up in American hands.
Mr Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks website, has been returned to London's notorious Wandsworth prison despite winning bail from a British Court.
He will be held there for another 48 hours while Swedish prosecutors, who want to extradite him to Sweden to face allegations of sex crimes, mount a High Court appeal against the decision.
Supporters of Mr Assange, including his lawyer, have claimed the charges are politically motivated after the release of thousands of secret diplomatic cables, causing embarrassment for several governments.
Yesterday, Mr Hicks told Fairfax Radio he was concerned about what might happen to Mr Assange if he was extradited to the United States.
"He will never receive a fair trial," he said.
"We have already established that it's a political decision rather than a legal one. It's important that our governments are held to account for any war crimes they may be involved in and that is why the work of WikiLeaks is so important."
Mr Hicks spent six years at Guantanamo Bay, the US-run prison camp in Cuba, before he returned home to Australia to serve nine months at Adelaide's Yatala jail.
He was convicted by a US military commission of "providing material support for terrorism".
Mr Hicks said he believed future WikiLeaks releases could contain information about his incarceration.
"I will watch with interest in more leaks released because I have heard that they might contain information about my treatment in Guantanamo and the political interference in my case," he said.
"I just hope the Australian government doesn't abandon him like they did to me."
WikiLeaks: Julian Assange sex assault court case branded a 'show trial'
The Swedish authorities are turning the sexual assault case against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, into a "show trial", his lawyers claimed.

Mark Stephens attacked the decision by the Swedish authorities to appeal against a judge's ruling to grant the 39 year-old Australian bail.
He said their decision was now a "'persecution" rather than a prosecution and was politically motivated.
He accused the authorities of stopping at nothing to have the Wikileaks founder behind bars, a claim they denied.

 

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is refused bail
15 Dec 2010
WikiLeaks: summary of the latest disclosures
15 Dec 2010
Julian Assange: is 'Wikileaker' on a crusade or an ego trip?
15 Dec 2010
Julian Assange: Jemima Khan comes to aid of Wikileaks founder in Swedish extradition fight
15 Dec 2010
Julian Assange: 'don't shoot the messenger'
15 Dec 2010

Julian Assange: 'don't shoot the messenger'
Governments around the world must not "shoot the messenger" by attacking disclosures by WikiLeaks, Julian Assange said on Tuesday.
Julian Assange says his whistle-blowing website deserves protection and has not cost a single life despite the claims of critics

The former computer hacker said his whistle-blowing website deserves protection and has not cost a single life despite the claims of critics.
Writing for The Australian newspaper, Mr Assange quoted its founder, Rupert Murdoch, as once saying the truth will inevitably win over secrecy.
He said: "Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public."
Mr Assange said WikiLeaks has coined "scientific journalism" that allows readers to study the original evidence for themselves.
He added: "Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest.
"WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption."
The campaigner denied he is anti-war, but said Governments must tell the truth about their reasons for fighting.
He claimed the United States, supported by its "acolytes", has attacked WikiLeaks instead of other media groups because it is "young and small".
Branding the website "underdogs", he accused Australia Prime Minister Julia Gillard of "disgraceful pandering" to the Americans.
He said: "The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings."
Mr Assange highlighted some of the most high-profile revelations made by his website over the last week.
He added: "The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth."

In news
  
The WikiLeaks bunker
  
WikiLeaks: 10 greatest scoops
  
WikiLeaks: do they have a right to privacy?
  
The key WikiLeaks revelations
  
Why law is powerless to stop WikiLeaks

 

WikiLeaks 'will continue releasing documents'
15 Dec 2010

 
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is driven into Westminster Magistrates Court in London Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA
WikiLeaks 'will continue releasing documents'
WikiLeaks has pledged to continue releasing confidential documents after Julian Assange, the website's founder and chief, arrived at court for an extradition hearing.
Wednesday 15 December 2010

Richard Edwards and Nick Collins 2:53PM GMT 07 Dec 2010
Mr Assange handed himself over to police in central London on Tuesday morning after a warrant was issued for his arrest on rape charges.
But ahead of his first court appearance a spokesman for the website insisted the arrest would not prevent the planned release of further cables on Tuesday evening.
The spokesman wrote on Twitter: "Today's actions against our editor-in-chief Julian Assange won't affect our operations: we will release more cables tonight as normal."

The 39-year-old Australian was due to appear before a district judge at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on Tuesday afternoon, where his lawyers were expected to fight extradition proceedings.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Officers from the Metropolitan Police Extradition Unit have this morning arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape.
"Assange is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court today."
Supporters of Assange were told to protest against censorship outside the Horseferry Road court house on several websites.
His arrest came after an Australian newspaper published an editorial written by Assange, in which he urged governments around the world not to "shoot the messenger".
He wrote: "Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest."
He accused the Australian government and prime minister Julia Gillard of "disgraceful pandering" to the Americans, adding: "The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings."
Mr Assange has not been seen publicly for 31 days, since an appearance in Geneva, and was believed to have been in hiding in the south-east of England as the latest tranche of WikiLeaks material was released.
A European Arrest Warrant was issued by the Swedish last month but could not be acted upon because it did not contain sufficient information for the British authorities. A spokesman for Marianne Ny, the Swedish prosecutor, said the extra details were sent last week.
Police processed the warrant yesterday and arrangements were made with Mark Stephens, Mr Assange’s British lawyer, for the Wikileaks founder to attend a central London police station.
Mr Stephens said his client was keen to discover what allegations he was facing so he could clear his name.
"It's about time we got to the end of the day and we got some truth, justice and rule of law," he said.
"Julian Assange has been the one in hot pursuit to vindicate himself to clear his good name.
"He has been trying to meet with her (the Swedish prosecutor) to find out what the allegations are he has to face and also the evidence against him, which he still hasn't seen."
The 39-year-old Australian has been under intense pressure since the release of thousands of secret documents in recent weeks.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, spokesman for WikiLeaks, said Mr Assange had been forced to keep a low profile after several threats on his life.
Sweden’s Supreme Court upheld a court order to detain Mr Assange for questioning on suspicion of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion” after he appealed against two lower court rulings. He denies the allegations.
His details were also added to Interpol’s most wanted website, alerting police forces around the world.
Mr Stephens said he would fight any bid to extradite his client. He added that Mr Assange “has been trying to meet with the Swedish prosecutor since August this year”.
Mr Assange’s troubles deepened when his Swiss bank account was shut down after it was found he had given a false address. Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, said: “The Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process.”
Mr Assange had allegedly told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident.
News of his potential arrest came as WikiLeaks was criticised for publishing details of hundreds of sites around the world that could be targeted in terrorist attacks.
Among the British sites listed are a transatlantic undersea cable landing in Cornwall; naval and motoring engineering firm MacTaggart Scott, based in the small Scottish town of Loanhead; and BAE Systems sites, including one in Preston, Lancashire.
The revelations prompted Sir Peter Ricketts, David Cameron’s national security adviser, to order a review of computer security across all government departments.
Julian Assange: Jemima Khan comes to aid of Wikileaks founder in Swedish extradition fight
Jemima Khan appeared in court to lend her support to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as he was put behind bars over sexual allegations originating from Sweden.
By Andrew Hough, and Caroline Gammell  07 Dec 2010

Khan, the socialite and charity worker, offered to provide a £20,000 surety to prevent the 39-year-old Australian from being remanded in custody in Britain over the claims.
Swedish officials want him extradited to answer questions over the alleged rape of one woman and molestation of another while he was in Stockholm this summer.
Mr Assange, who was also supported in court by film director Ken Loach and four others, has repeatedly denied the claims.

The 36-year-old former wife of Imran Khan said she would pay “whatever sum was required” to ensure he was granted bail.
However, a district judge at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court decided he was too much of risk as it emerged that there was no record him ever arriving in Britain.
During Tuesday's hearing he was accompanied by officials from the Australian High Commission after asking for consular assistance.
Outside court, Khan said: “I am not here to make any kind of judgement on the Julian Assange as an individual as I do not know him and I have never met him.
“I am here because I believe in the principle of the human right to freedom of information and our right to be told the truth.”
Mr Assange’s supporters believe his arrest is a political stunt to detract from the revelations being made on a daily basis on the Wikileaks website.
Geoffrey Robertson QC, a prominent Australian human rights barrister who was a defending lawyer at the Brighton Bombing trial in the mid 1980s, has reportedly agreed to act for Mr Assange in future hearings.
The former computer hacker claims he had received several death threats since the secret documents were published and that someone had called for the kidnap of his 20-year-old son in Australia.

Julian Assange in British prison on rape charge
08 Dec 2010
Julian Assange: Extradition case involving Wikileaks founder could last many months
08 Dec 2010
Julian Assange: question of consent
08 Dec 2010
Julian Assange: 'don't shoot the messenger'
07 Dec 2010
The Scarlet Pimpernel of cyberspace
07 Dec 2010
US Attorney General taking 'significant' action
07 Dec 2010

 

Julian Assange: is 'Wikileaker' on a crusade or an ego trip?
Julian Assange, the man who published the Afghan war files on his Wikileaks website, is unlikely to be chastened by Admiral Mike Mullen’s claims that he might now have “blood on his hands”.
Julian Assange outside court in Melbourne in 1995, where he was later convicted of hacking offences.

Julian Assange, pictured in London this week, relies on donations and the hospitality of wellwishers as he travels the globe.

WikiLeaks: summary of the latest disclosures
The latest round of WikiLeaks releases disclose more detail about the US's relationships with allies and foes across the globe. Here is a round-up of today’s headlines.

Britain
Prince Andrew criticised a variety of governments, including those of Britain and America, as corrupt, stupid and backward in a conversation with a US diplomat.
In his wave of “almost neuralgic patriotism”, the Duke also made the bizarre claim that British geography teachers are the best in the world.

Families of British servicemen killed in Sangin, Afghanistan have reacted furiously after it was claimed WikiLeaks would disclose dismissive remarks by US commanders on British efforts to secure the town.
The Welsh family of Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of handing the classified documents to WikiLeaks, have flown to America but been prevented from visiting him in prison.
The internet has been rife with speculation about which former Labour minister was labelled “a bit of a hound dog” with women by an American official.
David Cameron was seen as “lightweight” by Barack Obama after the first meeting between the two leaders, leaked files will show.
Prince Charles does not command the same respect as the Queen, according to a senior Commonwealth official.
International
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, dismissed claims that Arab countries had asked the US to attack his country as a deliberate attempt by the US to destabilise the Middle East.
Released Guantánamo Bay prisoners should have electronic tagging devices implanted so that they can be followed by security officials, the King of Saudi Arabia suggested to a White House official.
Silvio Berlusconi responded to leaked claims by American diplomats that he has a penchant for “wild parties” by claiming he only throws parties in a “proper, dignified and elegant way”.
One of the more unlikely stories to surface from the leaked documents was that of a 77-year-old American dentist who fled Iran on horseback after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
American officials suspect that North Korea has been secretly aiding Iran in its attempts to build nuclear weapons under the auspices of the Chinese government.
Colonel Gaddafi was believed to be very close to a “voluptuous” Ukrainian nurse who followed him everywhere he went, a US cable claimed.
An exile from Iran was living in London when he was targeted in an assassination plot by an Iranian agent, who was later arrested in America.
Hillary Clinton asked US diplomats in Argentina about the mental health of President Cristina Kirchner and questioned whether she was using medication to help her “calm down”.
The White House has told federal agencies to tighten security around the US military computer network following the leaking of classified information.
China would support a unified Korea controlled from Seoul because it believes the North is behaving like a “spoiled child”, documents show.
Sarah Palin has accused Barack Obama of taking insufficient action to prevent the release of the latest batch of WikiLeaks files.
The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, could die within months from terminal cancer, an Iranian informant told American officials.
Angela Merkel is the only leader “man” enough to lead the European Union, according to American cables.
The United Nations has angrily hit back at American “interference” after learning that Hillary Clinton ordered what amounted to an espionage campaign on its senior officials.
Julian Assange
The WikiLeaks founder is in hiding after an international warrant was issued for his arrest on rape allegations.
Assange’s next target will be the banking sector, with one American bank in particular to suffer from his next revelations, which he compared to the Enron scandal.
Assange has accused Barack Obama of attempting to smother the freedom of the press.
A criminal investigation is underway into how the latest batch of documents was made public, and Barack Obama could take legal action against Mr Assange.

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