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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.
