WikiLeaks: Overview

Introduction

The website WikiLeaks was founded in Switzerland in 2007 by computer programmer and media activist Julian Assange. WikiLeaks' mission is to promote transparency and accountability by governments around the world by publishing documents that demonstrate questionable, unethical, and even illegal behavior in important matters such as war, economics, corruption, diplomacy, and ecology. WikiLeaks states that it does not procure these documents itself; it only publishes documents given to it by (usually anonymous) sources.

WikiLeaks has been criticized by governments, organizations, and individuals concerned about the national security issues raised by the publication of sensitive and potentially embarrassing documents. WikiLeaks is given some legal protection because of its status as a media organization, but governments around the world have continued to search for legal justifications for shutting the site down.

Understanding the Discussion

Espionage: The practice of using spies to obtain sensitive or other confidential information, often related to government or military activities. The primary law on espionage in the United States is the Espionage Act of 1917.

Extradition: A legal process whereby someone who is accused of a crime in one jurisdiction (country, state, etc.) is caught in another, and forced to return to the jurisdiction where the crime took place to face criminal charges.

Gag Order: An order that binds someone to not speak about a certain topic, similar to a very strict confidentiality agreement. One common type of gag order is when a judge orders a jury or the media to not speak about a case currently on trial, but it can also include a document signed by a private individual promising not to disclose certain information, such as corporate secrets.

Grand Jury: A closed-door legal proceeding in the United States in which a jury of between sixteen and twenty-three people (on the federal level) decides whether the government has enough evidence for a criminal case to go to trial. The proceeding itself is similar to a trial, but rather than giving a verdict at the end, the jury only decides whether the prosecution should officially file charges.

Whistleblower: Someone who reports wrongdoing on the part of a government agency or a company. Since whistleblowers often work for the agency or company whose actions they are exposing, there are a number of laws in place to protect whistleblowers against employer retaliation.

History

First appearing on the internet in 2006 (the website was officially launched in 2007), by the late 2010s WikiLeaks had allegedly published more than ten million classified documents from around the world. The organization receives submissions from anonymous sources, and then conducts research to confirm the validity of the documents before publishing them. Finally, staff journalists read the documents, synthesize the information into a news story, and determine when and how to release the information to the public. WikiLeaks prides itself on providing unbiased and unfiltered access to sensitive and classified information because it publishes the entire document alongside its news summary. It also claims to seek to minimize the harm done to national security and private interests, particularly when innocent people could suffer as a result of the disclosures. However, critics have accused the organization of timing its publications to garner as much publicity as possible, and of failing to redact (remove or black out) names or other identifying information from sensitive documents when sound ethics would suggest this be done.

Many of the published documents have been related to US-led military actions in the Middle East, including profiles of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; reports of poor conditions at the US-run prison in Fallujah, Iraq; and details of the US public relations strategy aimed at gaining support from Germany and France for the war in Afghanistan. Many of these documents reveal actions by the US military that violate national and international policies regarding conduct during war, and their release was a significant embarrassment for the United States. In 2007, a previously concealed military manual containing information about Guantanamo Bay's daily operations, including prisoner treatment practices, was released by WikiLeaks.

However, WikiLeaks does not limit itself to publishing information about the United States. In 2007, the organization released a report detailing the theft of billions of dollars in government money by the family of former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, who was voted out of office not long after this disclosure. WikiLeaks then took credit for providing the information the Kenyan people needed to demand significant changes in their government and leadership. WikiLeaks has also published documents from European governments, including documentation exposing corruption in European farm reform efforts and a secret report on the German private health insurance system.

WikiLeaks has also published numerous documents detailing plans by various governments and corporations to take down the site through legal tactics, political pressure, and even computer hacking. In February 2011, the site published a report traced to Bank of America that identified three data intelligence companies the bank allegedly hired to attack the WikiLeaks website and organization. The report outlines the proposed tactics, which include submitting fake documents to discredit WikiLeaks as an information source, using cyber attacks against the organization's technology infrastructure to try to find information on the identities of its sources, and planting false stories to raise concern over the security of the anonymous submission infrastructure.

This last point is an important element in the functioning of WikiLeaks, since nearly all the documents the organization releases have come from anonymous sources. The organization has provided, according to its website, a "high security anonymous drop box fortified by cutting-edge cryptographic information technologies" for document submissions, to ensure the anonymity and safety of its informants. If these informants had any reason to believe this security could be compromised, it might deter them from submitting the documents.

WikiLeaks' most sensational series of releases came in 2010: in July, it released over 90,000 military documents pertaining to the Afghan War; in October, it released nearly 400,000 documents related to the Iraq War; and in November, it began a phased release of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables dating from the late 1960s to 2010. The latter release was considered especially embarrassing, as the cables consisted of such content as honest perspectives on various international leaders as well as discussions of current issues such as terrorism. Many of the documents in all three of these releases were allegedly stolen by a young Army intelligence specialist, Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning), while on duty in Iraq. Manning was arrested in May 2010 on charges that included illegally disclosing classified information, computer fraud, and aiding the enemy. In July 2013 Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy, but in August she was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for providing information to WikiLeaks, the longest sentence ever handed down for a leaks case.

In December 2010, the international police organization Interpol issued a warrant for Assange's arrest, stemming from the alleged rape and sexual assault of two former WikiLeaks volunteers in Sweden in August 2010. The timing of these charges led many to wonder whether it was orchestrated by the United States and other national governments to prevent the release of further classified documents. Assange sought refuge in London, but the UK Supreme Court ruled to have him extradited to Sweden in 2012. After that ruling, Assange was granted asylum from Ecuador and began living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He alleged that forcing him to return to Sweden for trial would be a violation of his human rights due to the government's portrayal of him as a "public enemy" for publishing sensitive documents. He also feared extradition to the United States, should he leave the United Kingdom. In August 2015 Sweden dropped three allegations against Assange, but he still faced a rape allegation.

Following the leaks in 2010, the United States government began trying to determine whether any charges could be brought against Assange or WikiLeaks for publishing stolen government information. One of the difficulties in prosecuting Assange was that because he could be considered a journalist, his publication of this information could be protected in the United States by the First Amendment. While there are plenty of allegations that the material he published was obtained from its original source(s) by illegal means, traditionally journalists have been protected from prosecution for publishing such information as long as they did not participate in or facilitate the illegal activity. Nonetheless, some people believe the danger these leaks pose to various governments and their citizens, particularly in the United States, warranted finding some way to shut WikiLeaks down and punish Assange.

In May 2011, the United States opened a grand jury proceeding to determine whether Assange should be tried for espionage for releasing the stolen diplomatic cables to the public. Since Chelsea Manning, a US soldier, allegedly stole the documents, creating a list of charges against her was much more straightforward. However, since Assange was supposedly not directly involved in the illegal activity, it proved harder to determine whether any charges could be brought against him personally, or against WikiLeaks as an organization, for publishing the information.

Meanwhile, several former WikiLeaks employees and volunteers came forward with stories about restrictive gag orders they were allegedly pressured to sign by Assange. The employees criticized these gag orders on the grounds that it was both hypocritical and dangerous for WikiLeaks, itself a whistleblowing organization, to restrict the rights of whistleblowers to speak out about unethical or illegal behavior within the organization.

The official WikiLeaks website has occasionally been unavailable for legal or technological reasons; however, the site has had more than a thousand "mirrors," or websites that duplicate WikiLeaks content, around the world, with other servers hosting WikiLeaks documents to prevent them from being removed from the internet entirely. WikiLeaks' primary official servers have been located in Sweden and France, thus making it a matter of international law to attempt a shutdown or other attack. The documents already published by WikiLeaks are unlikely to ever disappear from the public domain, but the question has remained whether publication of classified government documents is a criminal offense, and whether prosecuting Julian Assange would prevent someone else from taking his place.

Into the mid-2010s, the United States failed to find a way to prosecute or stop WikiLeaks, and the organization continued to publish leaked documents putting the United States in compromising positions. Some of the most significant leaks during this period included documents from Edward Snowden that implicated that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on the leaders of several countries: Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; François Hollande, president of France (as well as France's two previous presidents); and a number of high-ranking Japanese officials. President Barack Obama was forced to apologize for the surveillance. In October 2015 WikiLeaks gained access to and released a series of emails from CIA director John Brennan's personal email account. The leaks did not reveal any damaging information but demonstrated how vulnerable even top agents can be.

In 2015 WikiLeaks made the jump from digital to print and published a book with Verso Books, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to the US Empire. The book offered an introduction by Assange, as well as a number of analytical essays by journalists and professors primarily about the 2010 and 2011 leaks.

WikiLeaks was central to another major controversy regarding the 2016 US presidential election. The site released several batches of hacked information related to the election, most of which concerned communications within the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who Assange himself repeatedly disparaged. One leak released emails sent by Clinton when she served as US secretary of state; the fact that she had used a private email server in that capacity became a key point of contention in the presidential campaign, and, according to many analysts, eroded public trust of Clinton. Later, WikiLeaks released hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), some of which suggested that group had undermined the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders in favor of Clinton. The resulting scandal led to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and further damaged the Democratic campaign. Yet another WikiLeaks release, the month before the election, provided emails from Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. This leak helped popularize several conspiracy theories regarding Clinton, Podesta, and other Democratic leaders.

WikiLeaks' apparent targeting of Clinton and the Democratic Party, and the absence of similar leaks regarding the Republicans or their candidate Donald Trump, led Clinton and others to argue that the site and Assange were purposefully seeking to influence the course of the US election. Assange denied such accusations, claiming that his organization simply released whatever it received and deemed important. However, mounting evidence that sophisticated Russian-based hackers, likely government sponsored, were behind the data leaks increased suspicion that WikiLeaks was being used to sway US politics. Experts disagreed as to whether Assange and his site played an active role in such an effort or were simply used by other powers, such as Russian intelligence services.

After Clinton narrowly lost the election to Trump in the electoral college despite winning the popular vote, attention to WikiLeaks' possible role in the outcome intensified. Ties between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and Trump's blatant dismissal of any hacking threat—even as US intelligence agencies warned strongly that interference had taken place—further heightened the controversy. President-Elect Trump then made comments in support of Assange, countering Republicans seeking to develop a bipartisan investigation into Russian hacking to influence US politics.

WikiLeaks Today

At the end of Obama's term in office, in January 2017, Assange agreed to go to the United States on the condition that Chelsea Manning be freed; Obama did commute Manning's sentence to time served, allowing her release in May 2017 after seven years in a men's military prison. In April 2017, CIA director Mike Pompeo concluded that the Justice Department could charge Assange because WikiLeaks had instructed Manning to acquire damaging intelligence on the United States and that First Amendment protections did not extend to Assange, a noncitizen.

The incoming Donald Trump administration faced a crisis of its own in March 2017, when WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA secretly hacked computers, mobile phones, and possibly even smart televisions and vehicles to surveil targets. The CIA reportedly found security vulnerabilities and, rather than report them to technology companies, used them to watch and listen to targets. Source code mentioned in the nine thousand CIA documents was mostly but not entirely redacted, which raised fears that other hackers might exploit the vulnerabilities to their own ends. The public also immediately questioned whether the CIA targeted only foreigners or US citizens as well, and technology firms confirmed that even encryption might not protect users if hardware were compromised. Administration officials launched an investigation of the source of the leak, referred to as "Vault 7," but did not confirm or deny the documents' authenticity. In 2021, Yahoo! News reported that, according to its investigation efforts, Pompeo and other agency as well as Trump administration officials had broached and even encouraged plans, in response to the especially significant data release of 2017, to abduct or kill Assange. Accused of serving as the source of the 2017 Vault 7 release and having been put on trial despite protestations of innocence, ex-CIA hacker Joshua Schulte was convicted in the summer of 2022 of charges related to giving the information to WikiLeaks.

In 2017, Assange's own private communications were leaked by the media, revealing that Assange had communicated with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that the elder Trump should contest the election results as rigged should he lose and asking Donald Trump Jr. to use his connections to secure Assange a post as Australian ambassador to the United States, among other missives. Later leaked correspondence between Assange and other WikiLeaks contributors confirmed that Assange had been strongly in favor of a Republican victory in the 2016 election since early 2015. This brought renewed scrutiny to WikiLeaks's actions leading up to the election.

In April 2019, Assange was arrested at London's Ecuadorian embassy after that country withdrew its offer of asylum. He was then ordered to serve a fifty-week sentence for having skipped bail. In June of that year, UK home secretary Sajid Javid signed a request for Assange to be extradited to the United States, which had indicted him on eighteen charges, some under the Espionage Act. While support for Assange personally had waned by this time, his arrest and possible extradition raised concerns about the implications for freedom of speech if he were to be convicted for what many considered a form of journalism. A British lower court judge, arguing that the prison system in the United States would negatively impact Assange's already weakened mental health, ruled in January 2021 that he should not be extradited. However, following guarantees from the administration of President Joe Biden that Assange would not be placed at any of the highest-security prisons, a high court judge decided late that year to allow the extradition. Granted the ability to appeal based on the argument that those guarantees had come so late in the judicial process, Assange brought his case to the UK Supreme Court, which rejected his appeal in March 2022. By early July, with an extradition approval signed by the UK's home secretary, Assange had filed a high court appeal.

• These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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