Wikileaks (http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks) is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. 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. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
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.
Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to stronger scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency can provide. Wikileaks provides a forum for the entire global community to relentlessly examine any document for its credibility, plausibility, veracity and validity. Communities can interpret leaked documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document comes from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community and diaspora can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document arrives from Iran, the entire Farsi community can analyze it and put it in context. Sample analyses are available here.
In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.
We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their government honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government. That is why the time has come for an anonymous global avenue for disseminating documents the public should see.
Volunteer to help. Almost everyone can be of some assistance.
What is Wikileaks? How does Wikileaks operate?
Wikileaks is an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. It combines the protection and anonymity of cutting-edge cryptographic technologies with the transparency and simplicity of a wiki interface.
Wikileaks looks like Wikipedia. Anybody can post comments to it. No technical knowledge is required. Whistleblowers can post documents anonymously and untraceably. Users can publicly discuss documents and analyze their credibility and veracity. Users can discuss the latest material, read and write explanatory articles on leaks along with background material and context. The political relevance of documents and their veracity can be revealed by a cast of thousands.
Wikileaks incorporates advanced cryptographic technologies to ensure anonymity and untraceability. Those who provide leaked information may face severe risks, whether of political repercussions, legal sanctions or physical violence. Accordingly, sophisticated cryptographic and postal techniques are used to minimize the risks that anonymous sources face.
For the technically minded, Wikileaks integrates technologies including modified versions of MediaWiki, OpenSSL, FreeNet, Tor, PGP and software of our own design.
Wikileaks information is distributed across many jurisdictions, organizations and individuals. Once a document is leaked it is essentially impossible to censor.
Why "wikify" leaking?
Principled leaking has changed the course of history for the better; it can alter the course of history in the present; it can lead us to a better future.
Consider Daniel Ellsberg, working within the US government during the Vietnam War. He comes into contact with the Pentagon Papers, a meticulously kept record of military and strategic planning throughout the war. Those papers reveal the depths to which the US government has sunk in deceiving the population about the war. Yet the public and the media know nothing of this urgent and shocking information. Indeed, secrecy laws are being used to keep the public ignorant of gross dishonesty practiced by their government. In spite of those secrecy laws and at great personal risk, Ellsberg manages to disseminate the Pentagon papers to journalists and to the world. Despite criminal charges against Ellsberg, eventually dropped, the release of the Pentagon papers shocks the world, exposes the government, and helps to shorten the war and save thousands of lives.
The power of principled leaking to embarrass governments, corporations and institutions is amply demonstrated through recent history. The public scrutiny of otherwise unaccountable and secretive institutions forces them to consider the ethical implications of their actions. Which official will chance a secret, corrupt transaction when the public is likely to find out? What repressive plan will be carried out when it is revealed to the citizenry, not just of its own country, but the world? When the risks of embarrassment and discovery increase, the tables are turned against conspiracy, corruption, exploitation and oppression. Open government answers injustice rather than causing it. Open government exposes and undoes corruption. Open governance is the most effective method of promoting good governance.
Today, with authoritarian governments in power around much of the world, increasing authoritarian tendencies in democratic governments, and increasing amounts of power vested in unaccountable corporations, the need for openness and transparency is greater than ever.
Wikileaks is a tool to satisfy that need.
Wikileaks reduces the risks of truth tellers and improves the analysis and dissemination of leaked documents.
Wikileaks provides simple and straightforward means for anonymous and untraceable leaking of documents.
At the same time, Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide: the scrutiny of a worldwide community of informed wiki editors.
In place of a couple of academic specialists, Wikileaks provides a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility, plausibility, veracity and validity. The global community is able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document is leaked from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document is leaked from Somalia, the entire Somali refugee community can analyze it and put it in context.
In an important sense, Wikileaks is the first intelligence agency of the people. Better principled and less parochial than any governmental intelligence agency, it is able to be more accurate and relevant. It has no commercial or national interests at heart; its only interest is the revelation of the truth. Unlike the covert activities of state intelligence agencies, Wikileaks relies upon the power of overt fact to enable and empower citizens to bring feared and corrupt governments and corporations to justice.
Wikileaks will aid every government official, every bureaucrat, and every corporate worker, who becomes privy to embarrassing information that the institution wants to hide but the public needs to know. What conscience cannot contain, and institutional secrecy unjustly conceals, Wikileaks can broadcast to the world.
Wikileaks will be the forum for the ethical defection and exposure of unaccountable and abusive power to the people.
Who is behind Wikileaks?
Wikileaks was founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.
Our public Advisory Board, which is still in formation, includes courageous journalists, representatives from refugee communities, ethics and anti-corruption campaigners, including a former national head of Transparency International, human rights campaigners, lawyers and cryptographers.
There are currently over 1,200 registered volunteers, but we need more people involved at an organizational level.
What is your relationship to Wikipedia?
For legal reasons, Wikileaks has no formal relationship to Wikipedia. However both employ the same wiki interface and technology. Both share the same radically democratic philosophy which holds that allowing anyone to be an author or editor leads to a vast and accurate collective intelligence and knowledge. Both place their trust in an informed community of citizens. What Wikipedia is to the encyclopedia, Wikileaks is to leaks.
Wikipedia provides a positive example on which Wikileaks is based. The success of Wikipedia in providing accurate and up-to-date information has been stunning and surprising to many. Wikipedia shows that the collective wisdom of an informed community of users may produce massive volumes of accurate knowledge in a rapid, democratic and transparent manner. Wikileaks aims to harness this phenomenon to provide fast and accurate dissemination, verification, analysis, interpretation and explanation of leaked documents, for the benefit of people all around the world.
What is Wikileaks’ present stage of development?
Wikileaks has developed a prototype which has been successful in testing, but there are still many demands to be met before we have the scale required for a full public deployment. We require additional funding, the support of further dissident communities, human rights groups, reporters and media representative bodies (as consumers of leaks), language regionalization, volunteer editors/analysts and server operators.
We have received over 1.2 million documents so far.
Anyone interested in helping us out with any of the above should contact us by email.
When will Wikileaks go live?
The extraordinary level of interest in the site has meant that in order to meet global demand our initial public deployment needs many times the capacity originally planned for.
Wikileaks has been running prototypes to a restricted audience but is still several months short of a full launch. This is because we need something that can scale well to an enormous audience. The level of scalability required has been made clear by the immense response to the leak of Wikileaks’ existence – and it’s taken us by surprise.
Wikileaks is a based on a very simple concept. However, there is lot of complicated technical work behind making that idea work.
Where is a sample document?
See our first analysis, based on a leaked document from China about the 2006 war in Somalia: Inside Somalia and the Union of Islamic Courts.
More generally, see Featured analyses for analyses, and for some sample leaks, see Leaked files.
Couldn’t mass leaking of documents be irresponsible?
- Aren’t some leaks deliberately false and misleading?
- Couldn’t leaking involve invasions of privacy?
Providing a forum for freely posting information involves the potential for abuse, but such exposure can be minimized. The simplest and most effective measure here is a worldwide community of informed users and editors who can scrutinize and discuss leaked documents.
On Wikipedia, posting of false material or other irresponsible posting or editing can be reversed by other users, and the results there have been extremely satisfying and reassuring. There is no reason to expect any different from Wikileaks. As discovered with Wikipedia, the collective wisdom of an informed community of users allows for rapid and accurate dissemination, verification and analysis.
Furthermore, as recent history shows, misleading leaks and misinformation already exist in the mainstream media, an obvious example being the lead-up to the Iraq war. Peddlers of misinformation will find themselves undone by Wikileaks, equipped as it is to scrutinize leaked documents in a way that no mainstream media outlet is capable of. A taste of what to expect is provided by this excellent unweaving of the British government’s politically motivated additions to an intelligence dossier on Iraq. The dossier was cited by Colin Powell in his address to the United Nations the same month to justify the pending US invasion of Iraq.
Wikileaks’ overarching goal is to provide a forum where embarrassing information can expose injustice. All our policies and practices will be formulated with this goal in mind.
Is Wikileaks concerned about any legal consequences?
Our roots are in dissident communities and our focus is on non-Western authoritarian regimes. Consequently we believe a politically motivated legal attack on us would be seen as a grave error in Western administrations. However, we are prepared, structurally and technically, to deal with all legal attacks. We design the software, and promote its human rights agenda, but the servers are run by anonymous volunteers. Because we have no commercial interest in the software, there is no need to restrict its distribution. In the very unlikely event that we were to face coercion to make the software censorship friendly, there are many others who will continue the work in other jurisdictions.
Is leaking ethical?
We favour and uphold ethical behavior in all circumstances. Where there is a lack of freedom and injustice is enshrined in law, there is a place for principled civil disobedience. Each person is an arbiter of justice in their own conscience. Where the simple act of distributing information may expose crime or embarrass a regime we recognize a right, indeed a duty, to perform that act. Such whistleblowing normally involves major personal risk. Like whistleblower protection laws in some jurisdictions, Wikileaks does much to reduce the risk.
We propose that authoritarian governments, oppressive institutions and corrupt corporations should be subject to the pressure, not merely of international diplomacy, freedom of information laws or even periodic elections, but of something far stronger — the consciences of the people within them.
Should the press really be free?
In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.
The ruling stated that "paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
It’s easy to perceive the connection between publication and the complaints people make about publication. But this generates a perception bias, because it overlooks the vastness of the invisible. It overlooks the unintended consequences of failing to publish and it overlooks all those who are emancipated by a climate of free speech. Such a climate is a motivating force for governments and corporations to act justly. If acting in a just manner is easier than acting in an unjust manner, most actions will be just.
Injustice concealed cannot be answered. Concealed plans for future injustice cannot be stopped until they are revealed by becoming a reality, which is too late. Administrative injustice, by definition affects many.
Government has ample avenues to restrict and abuse revelation, not limited to the full force of intelligence, law enforcement, and complicit media. Moves towards the democratization of revelation are strongly biased in favor of justice. Where democratized revelations are unjust they tend to affect isolated individuals, but where they are just, they affect systems of policy, planning and governance and through them the lives of all.
Europeans sometimes criticize the freedom of the press in the United States, pointing to a salacious mainstream media. But that is not democratized revelation, rather it is the discovery by accountants that is a lot cheaper to print celebratory gossip than it is to fund investigative journalists. Instead we point to the internet as a whole, which although not yet a vehicle of universal free revelation, is starting to approach it. Look at the resulting instances of, and momentum for, positive political change.
Wikileaks reveals, but is not limited to revelation. There are many existing avenues on the internet for revelation. What does not exist is a social movement emblazoning the virtues of ethical leaking. What does not exist is a universal, safe and easy means for leaking. What does not exist is a way to turn raw leaks into politically influential knowledge through the revolutionary collaborative analysis pioneered by wikipedia.
Sufficient leaking will bring down many administrations that rely on concealing reality from their peoples. Daniel Ellsberg calls for it. Everyone knows it. We’re doing it.
Why are the Wikileaks founders anonymous?
Most people who are involved with Wikileaks are not anonymous, however, the founders (and obviously our sources) remain anonymous. Our reasons are:
- Some of us are refugees from repressive countries with families still in those countries.
- Some of us are journalists who may be banned from entering these countries for work if our affiliation was known.
Additionally, given that some must be anonymous for reasons outside of their control, an imbalance of representation and exposure is threatened unless all founders remain anonymous. Furthermore, the effort to encourage anonymous sources to release material to the public is enhanced by an ability to empathise via solidarity in anonymity. Anonymity also demonstrates motivation by goals higher than reputation seeking.
Is Wikileaks, as an organization, centralized?
We are regionalizing in an effort to establish a world-wide ethical leaking movement. Regional groups are forming in many countries (see Contact).
Our goal is to build full spectrum of support ranging from business to activists.
While we committed to keep publishing under all circumstances, we will be as open as possible in our policies and practices. The founders have the final say, but this will mainly effect founding documents like the one you are reading now.
Does Wikileaks support corporate whistleblowers?
It is increasingly obvious that corporate fraud must be effectively addressed. In the US, employees account for most revelations of fraud, followed by industry regulators, media, auditors and, finally, the SEC. Whistleblowers account for around half of all exposures of fraud.
Corporate corruption comes in many forms. The number of employees and turnover of some corporations exceeds the population and GDP of some nation states. When comparing countries, after observations of population size and GDP, it is usual to compare the system of government, the major power groupings and the civic freedoms available to their populations. Such comparisons can also be illuminating in the case of corporations.
Considering corporations as analogous to a nation state reveals the following properties:
- The right to vote does not exist except for share holders (analogous to land owners) and even there voting power is in proportion to ownership.
- All power issues from a central committee.
- There is no balancing division of power. There is no fourth estate. There are no juries and innocence is not presumed.
- Failure to submit to any order may result in instant exile.
- There is no freedom of speech.
- There is no right of association. Even love between men and women is forbidden without approval.
- The economy is centrally planned.
- There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.
- The society is heavily regulated, to the degree many employees are told when, where and how many times a day they can go to the toilet.
- There is little transparency and freedom of information is unimaginable.
- Internal opposition groups are blackbanned, surveilled and/or marginalized whenever and wherever possible.
While having a GDP and population comparable to Belgium, Denmark or New Zealand, most corporations have nothing like their quality of civic freedoms and protections. Internally, some mirror the most pernicious aspects of the 1960s Soviet system. This is even more striking when the regional civic laws the company operates under are weak (such as in West Papua or South Korea); there, the character of these corporate tyrannies is unobscured by their surroundings.
Wikileaks endeavors to civilize corporations by exposing uncivil plans and behavior. Just like a country, a corrupt or unethical corporation is a menace to all inside and outside it.
Could oppressive regimes potentially come to face legal consequences as a result of evidence posted on Wikileaks?
The laws and immunities that are applied in national and international courts, committees and other legal institutions vary, and we can’t comment on them in particular. The probative value of documents posted on WikiLeaks in a court of law is a question for courts to decide.
While a secure chain of custody cannot be established for anonymous leaks, these leaks can lead to successful court cases. In many cases, it is easier for journalists or investigators to confirm the existence of a known document through official channels (such as an FOI law or legal discovery) than it is to find this information when starting from nothing. Having the title, author or relevant page numbers of an important document can accelerate an investigation, even if the content itself has not been confirmed. In this way, even unverified information is an enabling jump-off point for media, civil society or official investigations.
Is Wikileaks accessible across the globe or do oppressive regimes in certain countries block the site?
The Chinese government actively attempts to block all traffic to Wikileaks. Not merely http://wikileaks.org but any address with "wikileaks" in it. For instance, http://wikileaks.org.nz.
So far encrypted connections bypass this blockade.
We also have many thousands of Cover Domains, such as https://destiny.mooo.com or https://ljsf.org and you may write to us or ask around for others. Please try to make sure that the cryptographic certificate says "wikileaks.org" (you should get a warning using most browsers).
In addition you can use Tor or Psyphon to connect to the site, but note that the default urls for these sites are also currently filtered by the Chinese government.
We have additional ideas to make bypassing the Chinese firewall easier which we hope to integrate at a later stage.
Does Wikileaks.org have any discreet "cover names"?
In many countries with poor press protections, people can not be seen to be emailing or otherwise communicating with wikileaks.org. To give people greater comfort in communicating with us without downloading additional software, we have a number of cover-domains. For instance, instead of mailing someone@wikileaks.org, you can email someone@destiny.mooo.com (one of our public cover names).
We have a great many cover domains now, some of the "Wikileaks" variety such as http://wikileaks.de/, but we want to build up our list of good cover domains. For instance, chem.harvard.edu, or london.ibm.com are good cover names, because they are easily recognizable in a non-Wikileaks-related role. Other discreet cover names include http://ljsf.org/ and http://destiny.mooo.com – these two are public light-cover names.
However, name scalpers (or Chinese agents?) have been registering every Wikileaks-related thing they can think of, not just domain names, but even names such as http://wikileaks.blogspot.com, in order to prevent Wikileaks using them or to extort money if we want to use them.
If you can create a sub-domain NS record for a globally recognized institution, or can speak to someone who can, please contact us.
If you have an opportunity, you can help us by registering any Wikileaks-related names you can think of, e.g., domains in your country, blogs, pages on social networking sites, and sending the details to us. (If you have time, you might even put something on them!)
Can I start a Facebook, Orkut, Livejournal, Blog etc. about Wikileaks?
Please do. Wikileak’s needs independent sites to show their support, not only to potential whistleblowers but also to those who do not support press freedoms in and would try to shut us down or persecute our sources. By having a strong, visible support base across many communities, not only amoung journalists and dissidents, we are made strong.
Is anonymity completely protected by the site?
Whistleblowers can face a great many risks, depending on their position, the nature of the information and other circumstances. Powerful institutions may use whatever methods are available to them to withhold damaging information, whether by legal means, political pressure or physical violence. The risk cannot be entirely removed (for instance, a government may know who had access to a document in the first place) but it can be lessened. Posting CD’s in the mail combined with advanced cryptographic technology can help to make communications on and off the internet effectively anonymous and untraceable. Wikileaks applauds the courage of those who blow the whistle on injustice, and seeks to reduce the risks they face.
Our servers are distributed over multiple international jurisdictions and do not keep logs. Hence these logs can not be seized. Without specialized global internet traffic analysis, multiple parts of our organization and volunteers must conspire with each other to strip submitters of their anonymity.
However, we will also provide instructions on how to submit material to us, by post and from netcafés and wireless hotspots, so even if Wikileaks is infiltrated by a government intelligence agency submitters can not be traced.
How does Wikileaks test document authenticity?
Wikileaks believes that best way to determine if a document is authentic is to open it up for analysis to the broader community – and particularly the community of interest around the document. So for example, let’s say a Wikileaks’ document reveals human rights abuses and it is purportedly from a regional Chinese government. Some of the best people to analyze the document’s veracity are the local dissident community, human rights groups and regional experts (such as academics). They may be particularly interested in this sort of document. But of course Wikileaks will be open for anyone to comment.
It is envisaged that people will be able to comment on the original document, in the way you can with a wiki. When someone else comes along to look at the document, he or she will be able to see both the original document and the comments and analysis that have been appended to it in different places.
To some degree, there is a trade-off between censorship and guaranteeing authenticity. Wikileaks could run a site almost guaranteeing authenticity, but then we would censor out a lot of information that might be very likely to be true – and very much in the public interest to reveal. The world audience is intelligent enough to make up its own mind.
Journalists and governments are often duped by forged documents. It is hard for most reporters to outsmart the skill of intelligence agency frauds. Wikileaks, by bringing the collective wisdoms and experiences of thousands to politically important documents will unmask frauds like never before.
Wikileaks is an excellent source for journalists, both of original documents and of analysis and comment. Wikileaks will make it easier for quality journalists to do their job of getting important information out to the community. Getting the original documents out there will also be very helpful to academics, particularly historians.
Wikileaks has 1.2 million documents?
- Where are they from?
- How did people know to leak them to you?
- How many are really groundbreaking as oppose to mundane?
- Where are they? I can’t seem to find them on the site?
Wikileaks is unable to comment on specific sources, since we do not collect this information. All we can say is that journalist and dissident communities report successfully using the network.
Some documents that Wikileaks leaks in future will no doubt seem mundane to some people, but interesting to others. A lot of people don’t bother to read the business pages of the daily paper, yet the section is still important enough for the paper to publish it every day.
One of the areas Wikileaks is currently working on is how to structure ethically leaked information into meaningful, easy to access classifications. Do you break it down by country? By language? By subject? We want it to be reader friendly so obviously this is important to get right as a sort of foundation lattice for incoming information to be attached to.
Wikileaks needs make sure catagorization and analysis systems are robust and encompassing of material in multiple formats, languages and content. We’re trickling new material into the wiki as old material is analyzed, expanding our knowledge of what types of catagorization and automation are needed and what kind of organizational processes are needed to motivate and support analysis.
As each analysis nears completion we will trickle in more material. We’ll need many thousands of active analysts to transform extensive source material into something journalists can use easily. We do not require that every source document is analyzed, but it is important to get the framework right so political impact is strong.
How do you measure the authenticity of any document?
Wikileaks does not pass judgement on the authenticity of documents. That’s up to the readers, editors and communities to do.
How can Wikileaks provide more exacting scrutiny than many organizations?
The scrutiny will come from the world community’s ability to see the original document online, and then analyze and comment on it next to the document.
This will be of great assistance to journalists. It’s hard for a journalist to be an expert in all areas they cover. The comments attaching to documents online will provide instant sources for the journalist’s comment as well as analyses to consider.
Are you at all worried that Wikileaks might become a tool for propagandists?
Every day the media publishes the press releases of governments, companies and other vested interests without changing a line. And they often do this without telling readers what is happening.
In many liberal democracies, the present sequence of events is that people get their news about public affairs by politicians, for example, releasing a statement that is carefully crafted for the media (certainly no assurance against propaganda here). The media, which is supposed to be independent then choose to write stories based on the public statement.
Wikileaks is completely neutral because it is simply a conduit for the original document and does not pretend to be the author of the propaganda of a vested interest. But it further increases transparency in that those who make comments and contribute analysis make this readily available with the document but clearly distinguished from it.
Wikileaks will publish original documents that were never crafted to be media statements. The newsworthiness of that will be in the eye of the beholder rather than in eye of the public figure and the journalist.
The potential of Wikileaks is mass uncensored news. It may be more cumbersome than an online newspaper (or not, if you know what you’re looking for!) but it’s hard to imagine it being more propagandist than most of the media today.
Have you made any modifications to Tor to ensure security? If so, what are they?
Wikileaks can’t discuss details of security matters because we want to do everything possible to help lower the risk of sources being identified. It suffices to say that anonymity for sources is a critical part of the design criteria.
Our modifications are reviewed by experts. At a later stage these reviews may be made public.
Because sources who are of very substantial political or intelligence interest may have their computers bugged or their homes fitted with hidden video cameras or other surveillance technology, we suggest very high-risk leaks are done out of the home.
For the strongest anonymity we use a combination of postal and electronic techniques.
Is Wikileaks a CIA front?
Wikileaks is not a front for the CIA, MI6, FSB or any other agency. Quite the opposite actually. It’s a global group of people with long standing dedication to the idea of improved transparency in institutions, especially government. We think better transparency is at the heart of less corruption and better democracies. By definition spy agencies want to hide information. We want to get it out to the public.
Is Wikileaks blocked by the Chinese government?
Yes, since January 2007. We consider this a sign that we can do good work. We were slowly establishing our work and organization, but in response authoritarian elements in the Chinese government moved to censor us, exposing their contempt for basic human rights their fear of the truth.
We have a number of ways around the block, some of which are very easy. See Internet Censorship for more information.
When and how was the idea for Wikileaks first formed?
It began with an online dialogue between activists in different parts of the globe. The overwhelming concern of these people was that a great deal of human suffering (through lack of food, healthcare, education and other essentials) stems from government resources being diverted through corruption of governance. This is particularly true in non-democratic and repressive regimes. The founding people behind Wikileaks thought long and hard about how this problem could be fixed, and particularly about how information technologies could amplify the fix on a world wide scale.
It’s interesting to note that one online commentator accused us of being naive in our high level goals. This is effectively praise to us. It takes a little bit of naivety in order to jump in and do something that otherwise looks impossible. Many great advances in science, technology and culture have a touch of naivety at their inception.
We’re reminded of Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP, the world’s first free and freely available encryption software for the masses. At the start of the 1990s when PGP was released, encryption was really only the realm of spy agencies. Governments classified it as a weapon. There was a huge outcry when Zimmerman dared to release this "dangerous" technology for the average person to use.
Fast forward a decade and a half: virtually everyone on the net uses encryption all the time, for everything from secure ordering, online banking to sending private love letters. The somewhat naive vision of a lone computer programmer in Boulder, Colorado, was at the heart of an extremely sensible and practical global revolution in privacy technologies.
Wikileaks may be at the heart of another global revolution – in better accountability by governments and other institutions. We think this document leaking technology will effectively raise standards around the globe. We expect it to encourage citizens aware of consequentially unethical behavior to don the hat of brave whistleblower, even if they have never done so before.
Do users simply type keywords, such as "Ahmadinejad" into a search box?
That Wikipedia-style system is efficient and known by millions. Wikileaks wants to make it as easy as possible for average people to jump right in and use the Wikileaks site. That’s why we are using something very close to the tried and true formula set up by Wikipedia. We hope to make the system very easy to use for non-technical journalists.
Are there comments for each document, evaluating its content and authenticity?
Where comments have been made, the reader is able to clearly see what are comments (and comments on comments), and to differentiate these from the primary leaked documents. See the "Talk page" at the top of each article for its comments.
What guarantees can you give that revelations won’t be traced?
Our submission system is very strong, but some whistleblowers may be traced through the usual investigative focus on those with means, motive and opportunity.
Tracing at-home (as opposed to netcafé) submissions through Wikileaks’ internet submission system would require a pre-existing conspiracy between many Wikileaks programmers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation or specialized ubiquitous traffic analysis. But this is only part of our full submission system.
For foolproof anonymity and bulk leaks, we provide the postal addresses of eminent persons in various countries who have volunteered to receive encrypted CDs and DVD’s from whistleblowers and upload the contents to our servers. Any return address can be used and we are developing easy-to-use software to encrypt the CDs. Neither postal interceptors nor these eminent persons can decode the encrypted submissions. (This protects facilitator and sender alike!)
Are you going to use Tor, like New Scientist mentioned?
Tor was critically mentioned in New Scientist. What New Scientist did not divulge is that the person they quoted, Ben Laurie, is one of our advisory board experts! We use a number of different technologies, including a modified version of Tor and for the highest levels of anonymity, postal drops. Arguments against Tor, rarely themselves cogent, are unlikely to be relevant to Wikileaks.
How many steps are there between my submission and publication?
For online submissions, all a whistleblower needs to do is upload the document and specify the language, country and industry of origin.
The documents go into queue to obscure the date and time of the upload. Internally the document is distributed to backup servers immediately.
However, just like a file uploaded to Wikipedia, unless other people care enough to link it into to rest of the tree of Wikileaks information, very few will come across it. In this manner only those documents the world finds to be of significance are prominent; those it finds irrelevant are available, but unseen, until perhaps one day they take on an unexpected poignancy.
What is the difference between public and private leaking?
People with access and motive can disclose information privately, typically to malicious interests, or they can disclose it publicly so everyone knows what is going on. Public disclosure can lead to reform and grants a right of reply. Public disclosure gives a warning that that the information has been disclosed. Public disclosure augments justice.
Private leaking is often used to facilitate corruption. For instance, for over a decade during the latter part of the cold war, the head of CIA counter-intelligence, Adrich Ames, privately leaked identifying information about Soviet double agents and informers to the KGB. Between 10 and 20 people were killed or imprisoned as a result. Had Ames disclosed the information publicly, these people would have taken appropriate defensive measures in the first instance. In addition, the CIA would have been encouraged to improve not only its behaviour, but also its operational security and the treatment of its employees.
Why do you say anonymity is not all or nothing?
The Chinese communist party’s firewall blocks 90% of traffic for 90% of people. That’s all they need to stay in power and it works because it takes a little effort (not too much) to bypass the firewall. Turning that example on its head, we want to protect 90% of truth tellers without any additional configuration, because that’s enough to bring down many corrupt regimes. Then for the remaining 10% of truth tellers who are at high risk we have more sophisticated techniques, which require installing software, using a netcafé, or posting CD’s etc. (a barrier to entry for this 10%).
We don’t force everyone to use time consuming methods that are capable of withstanding the National Security Agency, rather we let truth tellers choose their own balance of risks and opportunities depending on their circumstances.
Why is Wikileaks so important?
This year, malaria will kill over one million people, over 80% of which will be children. Great Britain used to have malaria. In North America, malaria was epidemic and there are still a handful of infections each year. In Africa malaria kills over 100 people per hour. In Russia, amidst the corruption of the 1990s, malaria re-established itself. What is the difference between these cases? We know how to prevent malaria. The science is universal. The difference is good governance. Put another way, bad government, through malaria alone, will bring the deaths of seven jumbo-jets full of children in the next 24 hours. A children’s 9-11 every day. #_note-0">[1]
Good government doesn’t sit on its hands while children die. Good government answers the sufferings of its people.
Is the answer to global warming new technology, reducing the carbon economy or something else? Good government can find out and deploy the answer. In surveying the world see we that nearly everything we cherish depends on good government — be it political, economic or academic freedoms, food supply, health, education & research, the environment, stability, equality, peace and happiness — all are dependent on good government. #_note-1">[2]
Political history and the current state of humanity shows that the first requirement of good government is open government.
Open government is strongly correlated to quality of life#_note-2">[3] . Open government answers injustice rather than causing it. Plans by an open government which are corrupt, cause injustice or do not alleviate suffering are revealed and so opposed before implementation. If unjust plans can not reach implementation then government can only be a force for justice!
There can be no democracy without open government and a free press. It is only when the people know the true plans and behavior of government can they meaningfully choose to support them. Historically, the most resilient forms of democracy are those where publication and revelation are protected. Where that protection does not exist, it is our mission to provide it.
Wikileaks is the strongest way we have of generating the true democracy and good governance on which all mankind’s dreams depend.
Notes
- #_ref-0">↑ Malaria once prevailed throughout the United States and southern Canada (Bruce-Chwatt, 1988). As recently as 1890, the census recorded more than 7,000 malaria deaths per 100,000 people across the American South and more than 1,000 malaria deaths per 100,000 people in states such as Michigan and Illinois. It is important to note that diagnoses and reporting did not meet today’s standards. By 1930, malaria had been controlled in the northern and western United States and generally caused fewer than 25 deaths per 100,000 people in the South. In 1970, the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Advisory Panel on Malaria recommended that the United States be included in the WHO official register of areas where malaria had been eradicated. In Canada, vivax malaria became widespread at the end of the 18th century, when refugees from the southern United States settled in large numbers as far north as "the Huron" in the aftermath of the American War of Independence. Malaria was further spread with the building of the Rideau Canal (1826-1832) (Duncan, 1996). By the middle of the 19th century, malaria extended as far north as 50°N. In 1873, the great malarious district of western Ontario was only a fraction of a large endemic area, extending between Ontario and the state of Michigan.
- #_ref-1">↑ Every significant decision from a declaration of war, to vaccination programs for children, from pervasive Chinese censorship to the oppression of the Tibetan people, from incentives for investment to taxes on candy, from oil exploration rights to the protection of fur seals, from American hostages in Iran to torture in Guantanamo Bay, from the path of a highway to pollution controls, from medical research to breast cancer screening programs, from media diversity to local content provisions, from the funding of science to the ethical treatment of kittens, from the temperature of milk pasteurization to what drugs are legal, from the power of unions to the type of ingredients listed on a packet of potato chips is function of governance.
- #_ref-2">↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders
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