WikiLeaks is an organization dedicated to publishing secret government and business material on the Internet. The name WikiLeaks is formed from two words: wiki and leaks. A wiki is a website that allows multiple people to create and edit content (text and images). A leak is the publication or disclosure of secret information without permission. WikiLeaks began in 2006 as a wiki for publishing leaked information. In 2010, the site changed from a wiki to a more traditional publishing model. People give documents to WikiLeaks, and workers within the organization post those documents to the site. WikiLeaks uses mostly volunteers and has no permanent office. The organization is funded by donations.
Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, founded WikiLeaks as an expression of his political ideas. He believes that publishing secrets can force governments and corporations to become more open and just. In the early days of the organization, Assange traveled from country to country to work on WikiLeaks. He built teams of volunteers to carry out projects.
Postings on WikiLeaks have included video of a United States Army helicopter in Iraq opening fire on and killing civilians in 2007, during the Iraq War. WikiLeaks published logs written by soldiers during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The organization has also published secret, electronic communications known as cables from the U.S. Department of State. WikiLeaks has given certain newspapers, including The Guardian and The New York Times, exclusive access to some documents before posting them on the Internet. When the State Department cables appeared on the WikiLeaks site, for example, The New York Times published explanations of the cables at the same time.
After the leak of the U.S. State Department communications in 2010, a number of United States companies stopped doing business with WikiLeaks. For example, MasterCard and PayPal began refusing to process donations made to the organization. WikiLeaks supporters struck back with computer attacks against websites that refused service to the organization. In 2011, WikiLeaks was again criticized over the State Department cables after a file that contained all of the unedited versions of the cables became available to the public on the Internet. These unedited files included the names of informants (people who gave information) who were living under dangerous governments.
WikiLeaks and Assange have struggled since 2010. In late 2010, while Assange was living in the United Kingdom, Swedish authorities issued a warrant for his arrest over a rape claim during a visit to Sweden. Assange denied the accusation and no formal charge was filed. In 2012, the British Supreme Court ruled that Assange be extradited (handed over) to Sweden for questioning. Soon after, Assange sought and was granted asylum (safe shelter) in Ecuador’s embassy in London. He remained inside the embassy for several years. Ecuador has no extradition treaty with Sweden, but Assange did not attempt to travel to Ecuador because British authorities had the right to arrest him if he left the embassy grounds. Assange feared that Sweden would extradite him to the United States, where he could face charges for leaking top-secret government documents. In late 2016, Swedish authorities visited the Ecuadorean embassy in London to question Assange about the rape claim. Based on their findings, Swedish prosecutors decided in May of 2017 to close the investigation. British police still had a warrant to arrest Assange on the minor charge of failing to surrender to a court, so he remained at the embassy.
Also in 2010, important members of the WikiLeaks team left the organization. These members disagreed with Assange’s management style and with his policies on protecting people named in leaked documents published by WikiLeaks. Two of the people who left WikiLeaks, the German Internet activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg and the Icelandic computer programmer Herbert Snorrason, launched a new site, OpenLeaks, in early 2011. OpenLeaks allowed individuals to submit leaked documents to its site. Instead of publishing the documents, however, OpenLeaks turned them over to media organizations for publication.
WikiLeaks temporarily suspended operations in October 2011, when a number of banks and financial institutions refused to process donations to the organization. According to Assange, WikiLeaks’s revenues dropped by 95 percent in 2011 because of these financial bans. Since then, however, the organization has continued to publish millions of secret documents and communications from a number of governments and corporations. In 2016, for example, the group released nearly 20,000 internal e-mails hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC’s) servers just before the start of the Democratic National Convention. The e-mails revealed the DNC’s apparent lack of neutrality in its support of the candidates seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States.
Such sites as WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks created debate in democratic nations. Some people believe that having secret government activities known to the public helps make governments more accountable for their actions. These people believe that the free speech found on such sites as WikiLeaks and OpenLeaks leads to better government. Others believe that government security and diplomacy require secrecy. They feel that the actions of these sites are dangerous and illegal.
See also Assange, Julian; Manning, Chelsea Elizabeth.
