WEBVTT

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It's been reported that WikiLeaks has released more classified documents

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than the rest of the world's media combined. Can that possibly be true?

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Yeah, "can it possibly be true", it's a worry isn't it ?

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That the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job

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that a little group of activists is able to release

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more of that type of information than the rest of the world has combined.

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[Soldiers voices during the war in Irak]

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Come on, fire !

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Good evening, there's a secret file from the Irak war...

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...the internet platform "Wikileaks"...

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... the internet website "Wikileaks" published ...

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WikiLeaks have made public the most extensive,

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classified, military and diplomatic material ever.

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What they've released is challenging and provoking governments

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with skeletons in the cupboards all over the world.

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We should condemn the disclosure of any classified information

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by individuals and organizations.

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The people who are in power will not give that power away freely,

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that is just unfortunately a fact of nature.

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The defense department demands that WikiLeaks return immediately

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all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly

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from the department of defense databases or records.

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It's only now that the true story behind the development of this closed organization

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is coming to light,

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but while the world is discussing whether Assange is a rapist or a saint,

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WikiLeaks continue to persue their own political agenda.

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Every release we do of material has a second message and that is:

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« we set examples. If you engage in immoral, in unjust behavior,

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it will be found out, it will be revealed and you will suffer the consequences. ».

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What we have here is a new breed of rebel, I.T. guerrillas without a national base,

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student digs, coffee bars and server rooms, these are their command and control centers spread all over the world

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and the battle has already started.

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The general in charge of 120 advanced intelligence agency personnel

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targeting this institution and its products.

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- WikiRebels -

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WikiLeaks have become a global force to be reckoned with in record time.

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It may not be easy to grasp at first, but the release of classified information

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n'est qu'un petit pas dans une bataille politique et idéologique à long terme.

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and that leaking classified information is a weapon and not a means unto itself.

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The public has a right to know materials

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and the historical record has a right to have materials of diplomatic, political, ethnic or historical significance.

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If something is interfering with that process, we will undo it.

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He's been called The Scarlet Pimpernel of the computer age.

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If one were to judge him on his looks alone, you could call him a chameleon given the frequency

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of his change of hair styles during the six months we've been following WikiLeaks.

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But if you look under the surface you'll soon discover that Julian Assange

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has been revolting against the powers that be for a long time.

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As a teenager in Australia he called himself "Mendax" and got a name for himself as a highly skilled hacker.

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By the age of 21 he found himself in court pleading guilty to some 20 different charges of hacking.

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Yeah, I mean we had a back door in the US military security coordination centre.

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This is the peak security body controlling Milnet, the US military internet.

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We had total control of this for two years.

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The US space agency, NASA is one of the victims of the computer hacking syndicate.

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American investigators including the FBI contacted Australian authorities with their suspicions.

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The court was told the man even tampered with the police investigation into hacking of the ANU.

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The judge seeing Assange as just an inquisitive young man,

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fined him a symbolic sum and released him,

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however the trial added further fuel to Assange's feelings

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about the importance of unrestricted information.

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Together with some friends he sets up one of Australia's first internet suppliers

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and gives people with politically sensitive viewpoints a platform from which to publish their opinions.

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But when one of his customers publishes secret Scientology manuals,

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this prompts aggressive efforts to censor him.

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one of the lawyers for scientology in California sent me letters trying to attack us

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and they ended up hiring a private investigator to try and track me down,

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who did manage to get hold of my silent telephone line

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and called me up and just as a sort of threatening maneuver,

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I ended up tracking down how they did that.

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Those efforts to censor the site strengthen his conviction that something

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has to be done against those withholding important information from the public at large.

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What the problem was,

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they needed to use more actions

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that created positive reform effect,

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more actions that would adjust and corrective

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to injustice.

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Assange sees disclosures as a preventative instrument,

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it warns those involved in morally questionable or criminal acts that

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they'll be found out and will have to face consequences.

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I understood the significance of disclosures for quite some time,

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I mean I registered [wiki]leaks.org in 1999.

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In 2006, Assange and a group of like-minded people

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start building up a special internet service WikiLeaks.org,

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exclusively for people wishing to blow the whistle on abuse of power.

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His fellow conspirators comprised of hackers and mathematicians,

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they're located around the world

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and communicate via a restricted mailing list.

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From this platform they start defining their thoughts of building up a worldwide movement

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to mass publicize classified information.

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They affirm that this is the most cost effective political weapon

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and that they intend to place a new star on the political firmament of man.

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Any reform that is large scale must be based upon information because,

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what else can spread other than viruses only information can spread

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and achieve large scale reform.

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Inspired by Wikipedia, WIkiLeaks distribute the leaked information

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to anonymous volunteers to check its authenticity

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and eliminate any traces of the senders identity.

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It turns out that the majority of the general public has neither the time,

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interest or resources to analyze WikiLeaks' material

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but there are professionals to turn to.

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In 2006 we hoped that the general public would write analysis articles,

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collaboratively,

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and ... this was not at all true.

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WikiLeaks had come to the conclusion that media are the only channels

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that have the resources and motivation required to create a real impact.

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In 2007, WikiLeaks in association with the British daily newspaper, The Guardian,

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published evidence of former president Daniel rap Moi

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having embezzled massive sums from Kenyan state funds.

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Shortly after that they release a report about the Kenyan police's use of death patrols.

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This disclosure causes a great stir,

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but as an organization, WikiLeaks continue to remain unknown to the general public,

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however the word spreads among activists far and wide on the net,

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eventually reaching the german "Chaos Computer Club",

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the biggest and oldest club for hackers in the world.

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I heard about it in late 2007 from a couple of friends.

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I started reading a bit more

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but I started to understand the value of such a project to society.

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The political engaged chaos computer club has been fighting a long-term battle for free access to information.

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One of its members, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, is quick to recognize

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the common ground between his view of society and that of Wikileaks.

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He quits his job as a computer consultant

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so as to devote all of his to the new organization.

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The question is the attitude.

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What attitude do you have to society ?

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Do you, do you look at what there is

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and you accept that as god given,

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or do you see society as something

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where you identify a problem and you find a creative solution for that problem.

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So it is a matter of are you a spectator

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or are you actively participating in ... in society.

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The computer club has put the skills of some of the sharpest hacking talents in the world at Wikileaks disposal.

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What's needed now is a physical haven.

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Hackers linked to the swedish file-sharing site Pirate Bay have what they need.

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Considerable technical skills in a place where freedom of speech is unusually free.

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A lot of the countries of today's world do not have really strong laws for the media anymore.

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But.. a few countries like for instance Belgium, also the United States with the 1st amendement,

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and especially for example Sweden have very strong laws protecting the media

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and the work of investigative or general journalists.

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So, from our perspective this is something, if there's any Swedes here, you have to make sure that your country

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is really one the strongholds of freedom of information.

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Sweden has an enviable, although far from perfect record in protecting publications.

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It has a practical record within the past few years

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of protecting internet publications against censorship.

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And it's precisely Sweden's unique freedom of speech laws that prompts Wikileaks

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to locate their main site in this unpretentious basement, in one of Stockolms inner suburbs.

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At first they wanted to tunnel traffic through us,

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to bypass IP bans in places that don't like Wikileaks. But later they put a server here.

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PRQ offer their customers total secrecy.

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Their systems prevent anyone from eavesdropping either Wikileaks chat pages or finding out who send what to who.

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We provide anonymity services, VPN tunnels.

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A client connects to our server and downloads information.

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If anyone at the information's source tries to trace them,

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they can only get to us, and we don't disclose who was using that IP number.

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PRQ have a track record of being the hardest ISP you can find in the world.

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There's just no one else that bothers less about lawyers

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harassing them about content they're hosting.

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And it's just the attitute that, let's say, works very well with what Wikileaks was set out to do.

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One reason why Wikileaks need PRQ

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is that their operations are protected by Swedens strict freedom of expression laws.

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Laws which PRQ exploit to the full.

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We accept anything that is legal under Swedish law,

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regardless of how objectionable it is.

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We don't make moral judgements.

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This is a ticking information bomb, instead of conventional weapons.

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Hopefully this information can somehow

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stop some conventional weapons.

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And we aren't talking about any old information.

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It's from these servers, at PRQ, that Wikileaks has, for example, made public

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a manual from the United States Guantanamo bay detention center.

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A military manual leaked on the Internet, is revealing details of the way terror suspects

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are being treated at the US naval base at Guantanamo bay in Cuba.

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It tells of the use of solitary confinement and humiliation to break down the detainees mentally.

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Human Rights Groups have for years been asking the US administration

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for access to this manual.

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If you censor important material of this type, we're not just gonna criticize you.

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We're gonna take the material you're trying to censor,

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and we're going to spray it all over the world.

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And we're gonna stick in our archives in a way that it's never going to disappear,

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encourage everyone to get copies of it.

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Wikileaks battle against censorship knows no geographical frontiers.

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The next step is to publish an internal report commissioned by the multinational trading company Trafigura,

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who are alleged to have dumped toxic waste in the Ivory Coast

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that caused tens of thousands of people to seek medical care.

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The Guardian newspaper was going to produce a big story on this.

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And as a result, they were gagged.

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The company obtained a secret order, in court, to gag all the press in UK

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from reporting anything related to the content of that report and ... the fact that they had been gagged.

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In the US, hackers discover that the republican presidential candidate "Sarah Palin"

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is apparently bypassing US transparency laws by using a private email account

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to conduct government business.