Wikileaks
Kyle Ignatius
Staff Reporter

In 2006, a new website called WikiLeaks was founded by a group of journalists, mathematicians, and Chinese dissidents. WikiLeaks is a non-profit organization that publishes private, secret, and classified information. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as the director.

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

WikiLeaks has published numerous leaks that have been very detrimental to several different governments including the United States. In April 2010, they posted a video of a 2007 incident in which Iraqi journalists and civilians were killed by US forces. In July of the same year they released a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the war in Afghanistan. Then in October the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq “War Logs.”

“Due to the confidential nature of the information that WikiLeaks has been leaking it is no surprise that governments are so opposed to the site,” stated senior Danny Vitas.  Multiple governments have recently tried to expunge it from their servers. The Peoples Republic of China has blocked all access to site with WikiLeaks in its URL since 2007.  

On March 24, 2009, the home of Theodore Reppe, the registrant of the German WikiLeaks domain name,  was raided by the German government after the site posted confidential information about the German government.  

In the United States WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the United States Library of Congress.  The U.S Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Justice Department are considering pressing criminal charges on Assange on the grounds that they encouraged the theft of government property.

In 2010, Assange was named the Time’s Person of the Year, also the New York City Daily News listed WikiLeaks among websites that could completely change the news.  

In Australia, where WikiLeaks was founded,  high profile media officials in Australia including editors of multiple major Australian newspapers and the news directors of the country’s three commercial TV networks wrote  in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, “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, ” the letter concluded.