This week, the website WikiLeaks.org released half-a-million pager messages sent on 9/11. It wasn’t the first time the site has generated comment or controversy. The two-year-old WikiLeaks has rapidly made a name for itself by posting, often anonymously, secret documents and classified reports. It also posted the e-mails (which were either hacked or leaked) of research scientists from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University, who in private messages undermined global warming data. Here, editor JULIAN ASSANGE explains the site’s philosophy …
To chart a new direction for our civilization, and ourselves, we must first know how our governments, our institutions and our corporations actually behave.
It is the public record that defines who we are, who we have been, and — in so far as we can change our destiny at all — what we shall become. Because all our lives are now economically and politically intertwined, it belongs to no one man and no one nation. It is the common thread from which human civilization is woven. Its integrity is the basic limitation on the quality of our life. It is the ground on which all decisions involving the national will, up to and including war, are made.
Historically it has been the press that has created the most important part of the public record. But I believe in a new balancing estate, a new age of journalistic integrity, and a new form of civic courage — based, like our best science, not on backroom whispers and selective quotations, but on documented evidence, from Tehran to Washington, about how powerful organizations actually behave. Only then can we chart a course to reform.
When journalists deny their readers the primary source material on which their most important stories are based, they not only deny our children an important part of their rightful political heritage, they deny themselves integrity, and the long-term good will of a public which cannot hold them to account. The media must once again become the champion of the public record, and through it the champion of all.
Our hopes are not just a dream. Although less than two years old, under-resourced and with most of our work yet to be done, WikiLeaks has triggered reforms across the world. We have exposed hundreds of state assassinations, billions laundered by banks and corrupt politicians, and everywhere, censorship and the depravities of war. Material that would not generally have otherwise been uncovered and which has, after its entry into the public record, led to substantial reforms, including the dissolution of two national governments, two new national constitutions, bills before the US Congress and many lawsuits, including one that ultimately lead tothe compensation to over 30,000 Africans affected by toxic waste dumping.
In Kenya, we released a suppressed private intelligence report that exposed over $3 billion of looting by the richest man in Kenya, former President Daniel Arap Moi, and other senior members of the serving Kenyan political class, who had laundered state funds across the world, into London and Swiss banks, Australian ranches — and property in New York. The report made front pages around the world, lead to a diplomatic incident with the UK, and swung the vote by 10% going into the December 28, 2007 election. None of the named politicians were re-elected and the constitution was extensively modified to create a new form of government with reduced power for the President and an executive Prime Minister.
We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly — in terms of human life and human rights. But with technological advances — the Internet, and cryptography — the risks of conveying important information can be lowered.
Although there is an attempt to sue us every week, by taking our role seriously, and using the best technological and legal protections in the world, and through the support of the media, civil rights groups and the general public, we have never lost a case, and never lost a source.
WIKILEAKS.org
* Whistleblower website created two years ago.
* Co-founded by convicted hacker Julian Assange, who pleaded guilty in 1996 to 24 counts of breaking into Australian government and telecommunications systems.
* Website has no headquarters, but accepts submissions through servers in Belgium and Sweden, where press “shield laws” are best.
* Registered as a non-profit in Australia. Staff of volunteer journalists; donations help fund site.
* A Swiss bank briefly got Wikileaks shut down after it revealed IDs of wealthy clients.