August
04
A project of the Sunshine Press, WikiLeaks serves as an
anonymous global venue for the dissemination of documents for public
viewing. A self-described “public service,” the site is designed to
utilize the combined technology of the Internet and cryptology to
provide protection for individuals, such as whistleblowers, journalists
and activists, who wish to communicate sensitive materials to the
public. The website is based on the premise that “transparency in
government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and
stronger democracies,” and that access to information is necessary to
this end. According to its site, “WikiLeaks accepts classified,
censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or
ethical significance. WikiLeaks does not accept rumour, opinion or other
kinds of first hand reporting or material that is already publicly
available.” Under the rationale of “principled leaking, “Wikileaks in
turn distributes the information across multiple jurisdictions,
organizations and individuals with the accompanying claim that, “once a
document is published it is essentially impossible to censor.” The site
is supported by a network of defense lawyers who presumably rely on the
principle of freedom of the press. It is interesting to note that all
submissions made online are routed via Sweden and Belgium to benefit
from their journalist-source shield laws. All documents submitted to
WikiLeaks are tested for authenticity by various methods such as
forensic analysis, a review of means, motive and opportunity,
consideration of cost of forgery, contemplation of the nature of claims
made by the authoring organization, input from the collective wisdom and
expertise of interested users, and more. WikiLeaks asserts that they
have never made a mistake thus far. Source documents cannot be modified
or edited by users. Summaries of documents are written by WikiLeaks
staff, occasionally in collaboration with the submitter. The site is
careful to note that “all staff who deal with sources are accredited
journalists,” and “all submissions establish a journalist-source
relationship.” Although blocked by the Chinese government, WikiLeaks
suggests a number of ways around this block to their users. Their
technological expertise also enables them to boast that none of their
thousand of WikiLeaks sources have been exposed to date. Several
suggestions for how to protect one’s identity are included on the site.
The site is available in 15 languages and includes a search feature that
queries both titles and summaries of documents. Materials may be
sorted and browsed by country, region, language or year. Documents are
available in various electronic formats, and the size of the document is
always noted. Users may follow WikiLeaks via RSS, Twitter, Facebook,
etc. With the exception of its presentation style, WikiLeaks is
unrelated to the website Wikipedia.
Review from:
InSITE, a Current Awareness Service of Cornell Law Library