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After just two years the sites made public over a million secret documents.
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But WikiLeaks as an organization continues to be largely shrouded in secrecy.
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Only Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg appear in public, the latter under the pseudonym Schmitt.
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Okay, Hello everybody my name is Daniel Schmitt, this is Julian Assange,
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we're here to make a short presentation about the WikiLeaks project.
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According to The National, which is something that we are kind of proud of...
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This is one of our last quotes. The National has said that
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we have produced more spooks in our short existance than the Washington Post in the last 30 years.
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Their publication activities soon lead to counter-attacks,
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when WikiLeaks released lists of censored websites,
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internet service providers in a number of countries including
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Thailand, China, and Iran shut them down.
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The more sensitive the material they publish,
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the more often WikiLeaks becomes the object of lawsuits and threats.
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Wikileaks now attracts the attention of the US Intelligence,
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who in a classified report, claim the site is a threat to national security,
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and suggest ways of shutting it down.
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Priority is put on finding the individuals leaking the information.
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The U.S. Intelligence however only managed to keep the report secret a short while
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before it is leaked to WikiLeaks.
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It now becomes obvious that WikiLeaks need to find
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more and safer havens from which they can publish their information.
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A sequence of events now starts on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic,
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which, while it leads to more censorship efforts,
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would also create new opportunities for WikiLeaks.
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October came, October 2008, and the Icelandic banking system imploded,
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it lost 17/18th of its mass over the course of about a week or two,
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it was essentially one bank per week went bankrupt.
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WikiLeaks obtained material that show how Icelandic catastrophic bank system collapses
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were partly due to cronyism or favoritsm, careless and secretiveness.
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When this highly detailed document is put out on the net,
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the bank launches a counter-attack.
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Well, the first time I ever heard of WikiLeaks was beginning August 2009.
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I was waking up to a report on (TV) when I got a tip that
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this website had an important document, just posted online.
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The document was the high exposure loanbook for the failed Kaupthing bank.
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It was essentially "all of the regulators had been delerict in their duties,
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all of the bankers had been lying about the actual state of affairs."
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The bank's management react in panic to the revelations,
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and in a desperate move, force the Icelandic judiciary
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to resort to extreme measures.
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I was the first one to actually break that story,
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but the bank reacted in a manner that was quite interesting.
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This is the news, Saturday August 1 -
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but not all the news we meant to tell.
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They got a gag order on the state television,
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actually the first and only one in the history of Iceland state news department.
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It's all there for everyone to read on www.wikileaks.org.
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The leak lays bare the disastrous effects
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of the cronyism inheriant in Iceland.
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We had failed as a country because we had not been sharing the information that we needed.
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We were in the middle of an information famine.
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That sort of.... eventually lead to this...
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lets just get the WikiLeaks people here, and when they were here,
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we just went 'hmm, ok, is there anything you want us to do?',
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and obviously there was.
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Host : Welcome to this program.
Julian : Thank you
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Host : You mentioned to me, a dream, that we, in Iceland,
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should become a vanguard of publishing freedom.
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Julian : Absolutely, absolutely...
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And they were presenting this idea which they call Switzerland of Banks,
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which was basically to take the tax haven model
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and transform it to the transparency haven model.
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Why doesn't Iceland become the center for publishing in the world?
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Because it's going to be...
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Julian and I, we were just throwing that idea out,
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just declaring on national television that we thought
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this was the next business model for Iceland, so that felt pretty weird.
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Then realizing that the next day that everyone wanted to talk about it.
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Iceland has seen some of the problems that happens
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when society becomes too secret.
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WikiLeaks gave us the nudge that we needed.
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We had had this idea but we didn't know what to do with it,
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and they came and told us. And that is an incredible valueable thing.
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WikiLeaks now teams up with Icelandic activists and parlimentarians
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and together drew up a proposal that would transform Iceland
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into a haven for journalism.
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Herbert and I, [Inaudible], and Julian Assange,
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the five of us sat in this hotel room for about four or five hours
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and wrote the entire proposal, from scratch.
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The proposal is adopted unanimously by Iceland's Parliament.
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Just getting a bill accepted in the Parliament is nearly impossible.
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And this is a huge victory for the Parliament, to have a proposal of this nature
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to pass through the Parliament with
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everybody saying yes.
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It's also a victory for Wikileaks, who are now
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not only using disclosures as a weapon, but also directly influencing freedom of expression laws.
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The entire hacker world behind Wikileaks is growing increasingly confident
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that their vision will lead to an improved society.
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I think people that are dealing with systems,
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and technologically oriented people are dealing with systems,
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they understand systems pretty well.
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If you look at society, that's just yet another system,
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people involved with Wikileaks are exactly the same as Nean and the other people who are fighting this fight,
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and they are information activists first and foremost.
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They believe in the power of information, and power of knowledge,
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and the importance of allowing everybody to have both laws.
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Perhaps it's similar convictions that prompt a young former american hacker
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to make one of the most crucial decisions of his life.
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Bradley Manning, serving as an intelligence analyst for the US army in Iraq in early 2010 has,
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just like millions of other Americans in the military or civil service,
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access to a massive database of classified information.
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He discovers indications of crime and corruption
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and tells another hacker, Adrian Lamo about it.
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[Chat on a screen]
Manning : If you had free access to classified network,
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and you saw incredible things, awful things what would you do ?
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Lamo : Depends. What are the particulars ?
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Manning : Well, it was forwarded to Wikileaks.
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Manning : To a crazy white haired dude.
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Manning : I've made a huge mess.
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Manning writes that he sent hundreds of thousands of military and diplomatic reports to Wikileaks,
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the biggest leak ever.
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[CHAT ON A SCREEN]
Manning : I can't believe what I am confessing to you.
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Lamo : What's your endgame plan then?
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Manning : God knows what happens now.
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Manning : Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms.
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Manning : Or maybe I am just young, naïve, and stupid.
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Manning puts his faith in Wikileaks.
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However, Lamo reports the chapter to the military.
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Manning now risks the fifty-two year jail sentence.
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Many of the facts are still unclear. One thing is certain : at this point in time,
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Wikileaks received documents for the same materials
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that Manning is charged of having leaked.
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We make a commitment to our sources
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that we will represent their material to the public
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to the best of our ability.
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And achieve maximum political impact for the risks that they take.
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Wikileaks are in possession of explosive material.
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Too big, in fact for them to handle alone.
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Assange decides to stake all of his resources in one move.
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We were sitting in a cafe and he flipped open his laptotp
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and told me "Well, you're going to see something interesting".
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I was quite shocked.
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This was something that I recognized instantly
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as extremely important and strong material.
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This is what the crew of an American attack helicopter see
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while out on patrol in Baghdad.
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See all those people standing down there?
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There's a group of men on the street below.
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Two of them work for the international news agency Reuters.
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The driver, Saeed Chmagh
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and the Cameraman, Namir Noor-Eldeen.
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What annoys me the most is when people abuse their power
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and harm innocents,
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and they didn't actually need to do it.
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- Hotel 26, this is Crazy Horse 18, have individuals with weapons.
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Request permission to engage.
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- Roger that, we have no personnel east of our position.
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For me, the person who sent it and put so much effort into trying to stop this war
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that at least, if this would be shown to people,
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that it might give people enough motivation to try to stop the next one.
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- Alright, clear to engage.
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- Roger, go ahead.
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- I can't get them now because they are behind that building.
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What shocked me with the video was the high resolution, the quality of it,
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the excessive use of force to shoot people with hollow thirty millimeter bullets
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that are designed to penetrate armored vehicles and techs
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basically shot to pieces.
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- Let me know when you get them.
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- Will do.
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- Light em all up.
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- Cmon, fire !
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[Machine Gun]
Keep shooting.
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[Machine Gun]
Keep shooting.
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[Machine Gun]
Keep shooting.
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[Machine Gun]
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Different people argue that it was right for the United State to be in Iraq,
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or wrong to be in Iraq,
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but nonetheless in this incident,
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even if you argue that it was right for the United States to be in Iraq,
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even if it was right for them to be in that suburb, at that time,
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with a helicopter,
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overlooking this wounded man crawling in the street.
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It was not helpful, for the United States,
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for that wounded crawling man to be shot.
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We got one guy crawling around down there
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The Reuters employee, Saeed Chmagh has been seriously wounded.
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- He's getting up.
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- Does he have a weapons on his hands?
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- No I don't see one yet.
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It's very important to offer a voice to the voiceless.
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Nobody really believes the people on the ground
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when they're trying to tell what war crimes are ocurring and that happen to the people there.
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So I offered to help with this in any way possible.
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- Dispatcher, Crazy horse, we have indivduals going to the scene,
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possibly picking up bodies and weapons.
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- We need to stop that [inaudible] down there!!!
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- Picking up the wounded.
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- Requesting permission to engage.
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- Command, what to shoot?
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A father driving his children to school catches sight of the injured man
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and stops to help him.
