June 26, 2020 • 58 mins
How did WikiLeaks get started? What is the purpose of WikiLeaks? What are some of the controversies WikiLeaks has been in?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. It is time for
another classic episode of tech Stuff. This one originally published
on June two thousand thirteen, that would have been my birthday.
(00:28):
This is called the Wiki Leaks story, and obviously it's
another one of those topics where I could do a
full update, probably a full redo of this episode, but
it's always interesting to go back and listen to how
the show has evolved over the years. So let's listen
to the Wiki Leaks story. Also, real quick, before we
get into this, I do want to give a brief
(00:49):
trigger warning. It's it's a light trigger warning. Really. UM.
Julianna sound being UM, one of the so called founders
of Wiki Leaks, has been brought up on some rape
charges and so there will be a non graphic discussion
of that later on in the podcast. UM. If that
is the kind of thing that you would rather avoid hearing,
than perhaps you would like to uh skip the rest
(01:09):
of this episode now. Spoiler alert, both Lauren and myself
and and with our particular political views. Feel that no
one in this story really comes out being a complete hero.
It's it's it's just it's humans being humans, which means
it's complex. It's complex and gets kind of messy. Yeah,
so we're gonna get messy. But before we get messy,
(01:30):
let's just clear things up a little bit, let's talk
about what wiki leaks is. Now. First of all, the
name wiki gives you this sense that it has this
sort of collaborative, open structure that allows people to come
in and add things and tweak things. Not so much.
They trined that early on in the timeline of wiki leaks,
but eventually moved away from it. The name has stuck, however, right,
(01:53):
and I think that I think that really what they
wanted to do was um it was used, was used
that that easy reading format of wikis without you know,
and then they decided to really close down the part
where hey, anyone can edit it, because that's bad times
right right when you're talking about what it is WikiLeaks
is trying to do and uh and be yes, the
(02:14):
sourcing of information in order to remain um anonymous and pertinent. Yeah, yeah,
these are all things that make it. You know, if
you were to just open it up for what wiki
leaks does, it would just be a mess very quickly.
It also has created a lot of confusion among people
who are just casually following this or have just heard
about it, who think that wiki leaks has some sort
(02:35):
of connection to Wikipedia, which it does not know. The
Wikipedia and wiki leaks are not at all related. So
what is wiki leaks. Well, it's a not for profit organization,
and the purpose of wiki leaks is to publish information
that would normally not be available to the public. Right.
Normally normally be stuff that's either been classified or Yeah,
(02:58):
it could be trade secret stuff, it could be a
corporate uh, communications that normally would not be available to
anyone outside a certain group of people within that corporation. Really,
it's any information that would be of public interest but
is not publicly available. And in fact, WikiLeaks go so
far as to say that the organization does not want
(03:21):
anything that's been published elsewhere. That's not the purpose for WikiLeaks.
They also make pains to say that they do not
solicit any kind of information or files. They accept it,
but they don't solicit, which is an important distinction they
have to make so that they yeah, because otherwise they
could start getting charges about being a spy or or
(03:44):
trying to bribe officials or people and who have access
to to classified information to then share it. If they
merely accepted donations of information, that absolves them of of
some of that responsible kind of technically, yeah, and just
at least prints a better picture of them, right as
(04:06):
far as it makes it more difficult to make a
case against them, doesn't necessarily mean that a case would
not be made against them and it wouldn't be successful.
But anyway, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves now. Um.
According to Columbia University's Journalism School, I read this, there
was a very long article about wiki leaks and its
(04:27):
association with the Guardian newspaper was a newspaper in the UK,
and uh. In fact, there was quite a strong relationship
between the two for a while until an event that
we will discuss later. Yeah, yeah, that will come important later.
But according to that particular article, it said that Julian Assange,
(04:48):
who is often referred to as a founder, founder or
or at the very least the spokesperson for wiki leaks,
he's certainly the most identifiable personality associated with figurehead. If
if nothing else. Yeah. Yeah, and that gets complicated too,
and we'll explain that in a bit. But according to
this article, he registered the domain name back in However,
(05:12):
every other source I could find, two thousand six was
the earliest that it was actually um registered. This is
another part that makes talking about wiki leaks challenging in
that there's a lot of misinformation about the site itself,
not just about all the shenanigans that went on both
within wiki Leaks and surrounding Wiki Leaks, but just when
(05:37):
it really got started. Right, And part of the problem
we should mention now is that a lot of the
information out there about wiki leaks comes from either Juliana
Sounds himself or other other personalities that have been involved
with the organization and have left it violently and bitterly. Yeah,
and so so all of all of this is uh
(05:57):
not necessarily it's difficult to track down the exact truth. Yeah,
there's a lot of subjectivity here. I mean, everyone involved
has their own agenda and uh, and that doesn't it
doesn't necessarily align with the organization stated mission, right right,
So this is this is what makes this complicated. Now,
what is that stated mission? Well, the whole idea here
(06:17):
is that what Wiki leaks is trying to do is
make available information that the public that that that you know,
the organization feels the public should have access to but
otherwise would not because of the secrecy of either governmental
or corporate organizations or even just other organizations in general,
and that it's an attempt to make these organizations more transparent. Right.
(06:41):
They cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UM, in
particular Article nineteen UM, which which just says that that
everyone has the right to freedom, freedom of opinion and
expression right and that they should be able to pursue
information regardless of frontiers, which is kind of like saying,
you know, a person in in say China, who otherwise
(07:04):
might not have access to certain information completely has the
universal right to that, even if the Chinese government says
they don't. So in other words, it's kind of this
idea that everyone has this right regardless of what your
government says. Well, this is the United Nations that has
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it's not like
this is somehow legally binding for all right, Right, it's
(07:27):
it's a very nice idea. Yeah, it's it's an ideal, Right,
it's not so much legal wording. It's it's saying ideally,
we would say all people have the right to these expectations,
and one of them would be this right to freedom
of expression. Now, depending on where you are in the world,
your right to freedom of expression maybe fairly generous or
(07:48):
it might be really restrictive. In the United States, we
like to think that we have the freedom of speech,
but there are certain limitations. I mean, obviously, if you
are using that freedom of speech to inflict harm upon
someone and it is completely unjustified, and you know, you
could be taken to court for things things like library um.
You know, the whole there's the whole argument about you
(08:10):
can't yell fire in a crowded theater because it could
cause people You're you're right, or freedom of expression does
not override someone else's right to safety safety right, or
at least the expectation of safety. Um. And so there
are a lot of complications here. But even in the
United States, you know, it's fairly wide open. People will
argue as to how wide open it is because of
(08:31):
their own personal views. If you go to someplace like
the United Kingdom, there rights of free speech are are
more narrow. There are very specific laws that prevent newspapers,
for example, from violating secrecy agreements. So something like The
Guardian had to make some really tough decisions when they
(08:54):
got information from Wiki leaks onto whether or not to
publish it, because it could result in some junctions from
the government, So that gets really complex as well. Anyway,
Wiki Leaks essentially says, we don't subscribe to any of
these regional concepts. We subscribe to this universal concept and
(09:15):
that's what it's all about. And so they try to
provide the material that journalists can use to tell the
stories that otherwise would be untold. Right. Um Assassa said
in in one interview with Time that this organization practices
civil obedience. It tries to make the world more civil
and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in
(09:36):
the opposite direction. So it's kind of funny to call
it civil obedience considering that, uh, you know that they
are directly disobeying. Yes, they're being disobedient by by very nature.
But it's it's all an argument about who has the
power and responsibility. If you have a lot of you know,
as as Uncle Ben would say, with great power comes
(09:58):
great responsibility. That's that's one of those little cliche sayings,
but there is truth to that. It's very true that
if you are a governmental agency or a corporation that
has a lot of power, then there is a certain
expectation that you will use that power in a responsible
way and not do it in such a way that
you are going to violate people's rights, right. You know.
(10:22):
At the same time, frequently information is withheld by by governments,
in particular because because of of of measures of national security,
because they're trying to protect you know, either their their
military interests or their scientific interests, or or you know,
the people and the research that go into making that
country a safe place to be, right. So there is
(10:43):
a very delicate balance here, right. I mean, you could
argue that there are there's certain information that's out there
that it's good that it's secret because that means that
the people who are doing valuable work, and it may
be valuable work that in no way is violent towards
any other person. It may be completely humanitarian work that
their lives could be in jeopardy if the information were
(11:05):
made public, and that is something that you know needs
to be taken into consideration. Now, the what wicked Leaks
would say is, on the other hand, you also have
these instances where UH agencies or the military or a
corporation are behaving in an unethical or corrupt or illegal manner,
and without this information becoming public, they can never be
(11:27):
held accountable for that. And so if they you know,
this transparency gives accountability to those agencies. And in fact,
they go so far as to say it's the media's
role to to reveal this kind of information to the public,
to to make the public informed enough to be good citizens, right,
because this is that that big relationship. You know, we
often think of the government as being this kind of
(11:48):
separate entity that is UH in some cases we think
of as sort of that big brother Orwellian idea of
this this other that dictates what we do. But in reality,
at least in in you can argue to watch it, right.
You know, they're definitely fringe theories about how much your
your average citizen does or doesn't have power over over
(12:10):
these these things. But but but saying that, you know,
if we take democracy in the United States for what
it's supposed to be, if we assume that that in
fact is the case, then what Wiki Leak's role is
to tell the public, Hey, this is what your officials
are up to, and if you don't approve of that,
you need to be aware of it so that you
can the next time voting comes around, behave in a
(12:33):
way that that allows you to get the right people
in charge, assuming of course, that the right people are
the ones who are running for office. That's that's a
different political discussion. That's the whole other, whole other canne worms. Honestly,
I'm I'm probably coming across is really cynical. I'm actually
not that cynical. I'm just aware of a lot of cynicism.
(12:54):
So it's one of those things where you kind of
dance around it. Anyway. Well, yeah, and you know, the
thing is that I read one thing about how the
US Information Security Oversight Office reported that um, the number
of new secrets designated as such by the government rose
from nine and so so partially what this has to
(13:17):
do with is the way that governments are processing information
and um and releasing it to the public right and
and to be fair, I mean, the Albama administration in
the United States specifically said that one of its cornerstones
was going to be transparency, and so in a way
you can think of the media in general and wiki
leaks in particular in this case, trying to hold them
(13:39):
accountable for that claim saying you said you're going to
be transparent. Here are all these things that have not
been reported? What is your stance on this? Absolutely? And
so I mean, you know, I can't disagree with that motivation.
I think that that's very important. I think that any
nation where you have a free pet press, that presses
job to keep an eye and make sure that things
(14:02):
are not being uh, that people are not behaving in
an unethical manner or taking advantage of a situation, and
if they are, that that's reported. I think that's very important.
It's a key role in journalism, and it's something that
some people would say has really been slipping from journalism
over the last couple of decades. Again, I'm not a journalists,
(14:23):
so I'm not going to comment on that. Well, that's
that's another you know, there's also a lot of ideas
about out there about how entertainment based the journalism industry
is these days. Yes, yeah, the whole idea of of
the the commercialization of journalism. Uh well, anyway, Wiki leaks
does have some policies that try to guide the organization
(14:44):
and how it behaves. One of those is that that
they do sometimes delay or remove some details in stories
in order to protect people from immediate harm, especially either
current victims of of harm somewhere or the whistleblowers who
are hoarding this information right. And then on top of that,
they also try to make sure that every single leaked
(15:08):
report that they receive, which by the way, they they've
set up an electronic dropbox, that's their preferred method of
receiving information is electronically, and that this dropbox is encrypted
so that again in theory, you wouldn't be able to
trace the origin of that other than being able to
see that this is original source material, but it's not
(15:29):
tied to any particular person. So the electronic dropbox is
supposed to be a secure way of getting files two
wiki leaks, and they have said that they would also
receive files or documents in other forms, like including through
the mail, but they preferred not to because that kind
of stuff can be intercepted and securities and questions, and
(15:49):
also also if they have a physical mailing address, that
makes it more difficult for them to uh avoid entanglements,
all right, So anyway, they they do refer to their
electronic drop boxes being the preferred method, and they say
that everything they get they use traditional investigative journalism techniques
as well as more modern technology based methods to verify
(16:13):
that that information is in fact, accurate and true, and
that it really is from a verifiable source, right, that
the documents are actually from wherever the person the anonymous
source says they're from. So if an anonymous source drops
off a enormous file that is supposed to contain all
these documents from the Department of Justice in the United States,
(16:34):
for example, they would go through and try to verify
that those were in fact d o J documents and
not just someone using some logos or whatever to fabricate something. Right.
This is through a largely volunteer based system they've they've
reported and again you know, these numbers are kind of
wibbly wobbly, but um they reported having up to eight
hundred volunteer members, mostly mostly journalists, I think, helping helping
(16:59):
them out with stuff like this, right, and some of
those volunteers have a lot of stuff to say about
wiki leaks, but again we'll cover that probably in the
second half. I think of this of this episode, so
they their policies to verify everything to keep it secure,
and then once they verified it, the next step is
deciding on when to publish this information. And wiki leaks
(17:23):
has done uh well, They've done their own journalism. They've
had their own journalists right stories that were based off
of the documents that they had found. That I think
you mentioned earlier that that part of what wiki leaks
holds very DearS that they want to publish original material.
They don't want to republish anything, and and that's and
so yes, so um so actually doing writing an investigation,
(17:45):
it's a big part of that. They also will partner
with existing media outlets, although there's been sort of a
contentious relationship between wiki leaks and several high profile newspapers
UH in multiple nation and part of that I think
has to do with the sana's personal handling of situations.
(18:06):
But anyway, they they their goal is to have stories
written about the information they have, because it's kind of
like if you were to walk into a laboratory that's
doing scientific experiments and you see the experiment going on,
but you can't really necessarily make any meaningful conclusion based
on that. You need to have the report written up
(18:26):
where you can see what the actual methodology was, what
the results were, and what the conclusions are. That's what
is digestible to the average person. Same thing with these
wiki leaks reports. It's usually the raw material is something
that they hand over to journalists and the journalists and
up rutting the stories, and then the raw material is
(18:47):
published along with the story, so that way complete transparency
that they're really going for, right that way, so that
you can check their sources exactly exactly. Like if if
Lauren reads the story and then you know, she reads
onejournalists perspective on that story and they're the way that
they have taken this information and then communicated it, she
can then go to the the source material, read the
(19:10):
source material and see if her own interpretation of that
source material is aligned with what the journalists said. Because remember,
no matter what, we're all humans, so we all view
things through our own kind of lens in the world,
and we try and be as you know, a journalists
tried to be as objective as possible, at least most
people journalists try. That's the hypothetical ideal. Yeah, So, but
(19:33):
it's it's you know, there's no way to ever truly
attain that sure, and and and in some of these
cases they the Assange and and other folks at Wiki
leaks have admitted to wanting to market some of these
bigger releases, uh, to to really get things into the
public eye. Right, I don't I haven't personally read any
(19:56):
any ill intent to change details, but it just to
bring the most important details to the forefront, because they
are a political organization, right and when you look at it,
you're you're talking about sometimes they're getting files that are enormous.
They're talking about pages and pages and pages of documentation.
It's like like over over three hundred thousand documents and
(20:17):
ago that that's you know, obviously way too much for
anyone to just wade through beginning to end and find
the nuggets that are meaningful, because a lot of this
stuff has information that's not really um, you know, important
in the grand scheme of things. It might have been
important for a very specific purpose, but you know, beyond that,
it doesn't really matter so much. So well, we'll mention
(20:40):
a few examples of stuff like that a little bit later. Yeah,
So they you know, this is this is their basic
purpose and their basic approach. To go into more detail,
we'll have to kind of look at the timeline and
discuss what had happened throughout the history of wiki leaks,
which course is still in existence today. I don't mean
to suggest that history is over, but it is. It
(21:03):
is a continuing story. But um, but most of the
most of the action within wiki leaks was going on
around Yeah, that's when the big, big stuff was going on,
although it's played a part in other stories since then,
and of course before then too. Hey, guys, Jonathan from here,
we're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright,
(21:31):
so we've had an overview of what wiki leaks is,
what its purposes, what you know, role it's it's ideally
would fill within the world of journalism and transparency and accountability.
Let's talk a little bit about the timeline. So it
was around two thousand six that Wiki leaks began to coalesce,
and it was officially launched in two thousand seven, right
(21:53):
either December two thousand six or early two thousand seven. Yeah,
it's right around the anyway. The first publications were coming
out in in December of two thousand and six. But
most folks just say that are The official launch where
we've had a thing was in early two thousand seven, right,
And and I did want to mention that this is
coming on the heels of in two thousand five, the
(22:14):
commission that had been investigating the nine eleven terrorists attacks
here in the United States had found that that poor
information sharing was a huge failure of the government in
the in the lead up to the attacks, of of
of preventing this sort of thing from happening, and and
that that had led to internally a lot of reorganization
(22:35):
of how information is shared in between different departments department. Yeah,
this this is something that we see in all levels
of organization where you have multiple departments and then the
communication between departments, sometimes the communication within a department tends
to get bogged down by red tape. And uh, you know,
you see this all the time. Like if you ever
(22:55):
read any stories about uh police investigation that spanned multiple jurisdictions,
that's always part of the story is how complicated it
was to get the cooperation of one police office versus another.
And if their federal investigators, then that adds another layer
of complexity. And it was it wasn't until around that
(23:16):
time that um, I think that a lot of agencies
had been kind of resisting going digital just because of
the ease of flow of information, which isn't really considered
a good thing when you're trying to keep things secret.
Um And but but it was after after two five
after that report from that commission, that things started going
going online. And the first story that wiki leaks partnered
(23:37):
with The Guardian on was for around August thirty one,
two thousand seven. It was a story about the alleged
corruption of Daniel arap Moi, the former president of Kenya,
and it was a leaked report. The Kenyan government had
elected to keep this report secret, and UH, someone leaked
the information to wiki leaks. Wiki leaks then approached the Guardian,
(23:59):
and the Guardian was very cautious about this kind of relationship.
It was one of those things where they saw the
value in what WikiLeaks was doing. WikiLeaks was setting itself
up to be a completely independent safe house of information
leaked information. UH. The idea being that of course anyone
who would submit to it would remain anonymous, WikiLeaks would
(24:20):
not point the finger at anybody, and that that information
could then get to some sort of outlet that could
communicate it to the wider world. So this was the
first attempt of The Guardian and WikiLeaks to work together.
From the story I read from Columbia University, it really
did sound like Julian Assange was a big part of
this early early on, and that that was both a
(24:45):
good thing in the early days and turned into a
complicated thing as time went on. Um from what I understand,
he can he can have an effect on people, uh
and make them feel like they're not really being listened to.
He's frequently described as being a very um dynamic personality.
That's a very generous way of putting it. Uh. Yeah,
(25:08):
people who have taught to him have had some pretty
contentious things to say about him. I've never met the man,
so I know nothing about him personally, nor have I
had any interactions with him. But just going from what
other people said, it seems like he seems he seems
very intense. Yeah, he can be a handful, yes, um uh.
This The Wiki Leaks would later be presented with an
(25:30):
award from Musty International um On behalf of the Kenyan
folks who leaked this information. Um uh. Now that's one
of the awards that Wiki Leaks has won Wiki leaks
of course, you know it's it is very controversial, but
there are organizations that have recognized its role in UH
in uncovering corruption and even going so far as to
(25:54):
UH giving enough information so that authorities could end up
pursuing and correcting problems UM or that people could end
up going out and voting what would what some would
call a corrupt administration out of power. This is, of course,
you know, on a global scale, not not limited to
just one country. In February of two eight, a wiki
(26:18):
leaks report along with The Guardian, exposed a Swiss bank
called Julius Bear for money laundering UH and UH that
ended up getting Wiki leaks hit with one of their
first major lawsuits, which is not something unusual for the organization.
They've been hit with many of them. Right. Also in
(26:38):
two thousand eight, they posted a bunch of scientologies secret
membership manuals. Yeah. Uh. And it's funny because there's there
are some stories that talk about how wiki leaks expected
certain things to get a lot more attention than what
they what it actually did, and that these manuals were
that was one of the things they thought that a
(26:59):
lot more attention would be devoted to the scientology manuals
than what actually happened. And that's another reason why wiki
leaks was looking to partner with various newspapers around the world,
because they were discovering that trying to direct people to
wiki leaks to find out about the information was tricky.
Anyone who makes a website learns pretty quickly it's hard
(27:21):
to get folks to go to your website. It is
folks need to want to go to your website, you
can't really make them go. So uh, you know, if
WikiLeaks was going to fulfill its mission and being this
this uh depository of secret information that could then be
used by journalists, they determined that they had to reach
out to more journalists to make that happen. Um. The
(27:44):
next thing I have is November two thousand nine. Do
you have anything before that? Okay? That's when they published
a comprehensive list of text pager messages that were sent
during September eleventh, two thousand one, which of course was
the date of the terrorist attacks that that that ended
thousands of lives here in the United States. UM. And
they were criticized for this because a lot of those
(28:06):
text messages were just simple messages from between family members
or co workers to let people know that they were
all right, that they had um managed to to stay
clear of the impact zones and that sort of thing,
and that there was a real question of is this
actually newsworthy? Is this is this valuable information to publish?
(28:29):
Is this are is this getting a little too voyeuristic
into the personal tragedies that happened during this day and
and and there was a little bit of a question, um.
And this ties back into the scientology bit of whether
wiki leaks was was publishing things to get attention and
to be sensational um rather than mission right. Yeah, and
(28:51):
that's that's played wiki leaks throughout its history as well.
Like the again, the goal that it states seems very
noble and a journalistic sense, but the behavior of at
least some of the people in wiki leaks may have
been so is aligned quite with that. It seems it
seemed like you said, a little more sensationalists. And that
(29:11):
might not have ever been the intent of the people
in wiki leaks. It just maybe the impression that everyone
got from the way it was handled. Now, getting back
in one last little thing about these these text pager messages, Um,
was that Wiki Leaks said their response to the criticism
of is this actually newsworthy? Their response was, this helps
(29:32):
create a more complete picture of what happened on that day.
And I'm not I mean, yeah, it's more complete. I
just don't know that it's more relevant. Sure, sure I could.
I could. I could argue that one. You know that
that that could easily be argued either way. Yeah, but um,
but yeah, I did want to mention also in two
(29:53):
thousand nine, UM, that was the year that President Obama
signed the executive order requiring a whole bunch of people
who hold classified status here in the States um to
receive extra training on what actually needs classification and UM
and also forced people who who are creating these classified
(30:13):
documents to identify themselves on those documents. And again this
is that this is that effort for official transparency to say,
you know, let's not just blanket whitewash everything is classified,
because that just all that really does is engender a
spirit of distrust in the government to say, like, what,
why are they hiding this? What else do they have
(30:34):
to hide? And uh, And of course I mean this
is an ongoing story, stuff that we're finding out about now.
About things like clandestine surveillance, which are these are stories
that are breaking as we are recording this podcast in
early June two thousand thirteen. They are all these stories
about the n s A and surveillance and cell phones
and things like that. And some might even argue that
the things that happened with wiki leaks are what kind
(30:57):
of led to those policies, which is the antithesis of
what they were supposed to be doing. I think that
there's been a lot of that actually from from I
think a lot of governments have kind of cracked down
on openness in response to this sort of thing. Yeah
it's it's you know, and some might argue they're cracking
down on one side while really doubling down on the
(31:18):
shady stuff on the other side. So it's almost like
the Wilkie defense. Hey it's Chewbacca. So um yeah, I mean,
these is complicated issue. April that's when Assane goes to
the National Press Club in d C and shows a
video of a two thousand seven incident. Now, this is
the the most probably the most notorious wiki leaks really, yeah,
(31:44):
I mean there's been a lot of high profile ones,
but this one is like the defining one, I think,
and this is one that showed an incident in two
thousand seven in which UH two US Apache helicopter pilots
allegedly executed UH innocent people on the ground in Iraq,
including to Reuter's correspondence. The whole thing was caught on video,
(32:05):
and Assange called it collateral murder. That's what he named
the video. And again that seems very sensationalist. Now, at
the same time, the video itself really did portray a
horrific act. Yeah, and and I mean, and there's and
there's full audio in it, so there's this very chillingly
calm discussion of everything that they're doing and um and
(32:27):
and yeah, it's it's you. You can you can see.
I think at least eighteen people are killed during the
course of the video, and two of them were Reuters reporters,
right right. This had been a project that had been
going on since March of and had been they had
received these files and UH kind of went into a
frenzy of work in Iceland putting them together. It was
(32:48):
called Project B And and they knew that it was big. Yeah,
they knew it was big. And and again Assange was
trying to find a way to get more visibility for
wiki leaks. So part of that sensationalism was in fact
intended because it was meant to to get as much
press as possible. But also, I mean it was an
(33:09):
absolutely pressworthy release. Yes, I mean you know you can't. Yeah,
it was, I mean, I I was a legitimate It
was a completely legitimate story. It was something that needed
to be broken because it was you know, people needed
to be held accountable. Although it should be said that
the military never did charge those helicopter pilots with anything
illegal or the official statement was essentially that the people
(33:32):
were in an area where there was a suspected um
uh ambush that was going to attack US forces and
that the helicopter pilots acted responsibly. That's the official response.
So anyway, definitely was newsworthy. Uh. Again, it was the
handling of it that I think was sensational, not the
material itself, but that was again completely valid. Uh. On
(33:59):
the pen I gone arrested US Army Private Bradley Manning
on charges of downloading and then leaking thousands of classified
US documents, including this video, and uh, that's sort of
been the the video and and the handling of Bradley
Manning and and Bradley Manning's case have been this sort
(34:20):
of defining element to what Wiki Leaks is and the
way that it's portrayed in general. I mean, this story
is still ongoing to this day. Right. I believe that
the trial for Manning is going on right now as
we're recording this podcast. Yes, it is, although it apparently
it's going much more quickly than what they had originally planned.
They thought it was going to take it was gonna
(34:41):
be a three month trial, but apparently there moving through
witnesses much more quickly than they had previously thought. And uh,
and there were thousands of documents involved in this, not
just the video, right right. Uh. Wiki Leaks ended up
publishing over two fifty documents for Manning. He had downloaded
all of these diplomatic cables while he was at an
(35:03):
Iraq Army outpost between November two thousand nine. In April,
um reportedly having burned them to a c d R
labeled Lady Gaga and told told a Hacker friend that
he had them to Hacker turned him in, And apparently
that hacker has since felt a great deal of conflict
about that act. Uh. The charge, the main charge against
(35:26):
Bradley Manning is that he knowingly gave intelligence to the
enemy through indirect means. And uh because before he was
arrested and put on you know, put on trial, he
had obviously leaked these documents to wiki leaks, right, and
so the in the trial I can say this because
this was reported very recently as of the recording of
(35:47):
this podcast. Uh. The defense called the senior intelligence or
one senior intelligence analyst from Manning's unit. Her name is
Casey Fulton, and Fulton said that the unit received no
specific warning about sites visited by al Qaeda. She did
say that al Qaeda would visit sites like Facebook or
Google or even Google Maps to gather information, but she
(36:09):
did not mention Wiki leaks among them. And the defenses
case is saying that uh, that there this information went
directly to write well, that the al Qaeda was not
using wiki leaks specifically together information that that was not
Manning's intent. And in fact, the judge in the case
has said that the prosecution has to show that Manning
had actual knowledge that he was actually giving intelligence to
(36:33):
the enemy through a third party and intermediary or in
some other indirect way. And that the soldier must have
had quote a general evil intent unquote and to have
known he was dealing directly or indirectly with an enemy
of the United States in order for this particular charge
to hold. Now keep in mind this one charge out
of all the trial. So but it sounds to me
(36:57):
that it's a it's a really tough case to make,
you know, to prove the intent parts specifically, but improving
intent is one of those things that's uh, basically impossible.
So but doesn't mean that people don't do it or
don't don't achieve it now to say they also point
out that this is a military trial. It's different from
(37:19):
other trials in the United States. Typically in the United
States you have a trial with in front of a
jury of your peers. But in this case, it is
a judge that is overseeing the case and her word
is final at least unless you go through an appeals process.
But and you do not have exactly the same the
same rights to see what is a normal citizen in
a court of law. So getting back to two wiki
(37:40):
leaks back in UH July twenty, two thousand and ten,
so so Bradley Manning had been arrested By this point,
three news organizations released separate accounts of the war logs
gathered from Wiki Leaks regarding the war in Afghanistan. And
in August, UH, that's when another big introversial event in
(38:01):
the history of Wiki leaks in general and Julian Assange
in particular happens. Uh. Two former employees of Wiki leaks
filed rape charges against Julian Assange, and Assange has essentially
spent the rest of his life from that point evading
any extradition to Sweden to stand trial for this. All right, right,
these charges were brought up in Sweden. UM. The the
(38:22):
two women who have brought up the charges, their names
have not been revealed to the press. UM and UH.
In Sweden there are laws about using using condoms. If
partner tells you to use one and you do not,
then you can be brought up on what is called
a rape charge and and the technical definition I shall
leave up to other political parties. Yeah, hey guys, it's Jonathan.
(38:45):
I gotta run out and take a quick Wiki leaks,
so we're gonna take a break. At any rate, he
has been fighting x tradition since then, and at this
point he has actually um been a granted asylum from
(39:07):
by Ecuador. Ecuador has granted asansing. I'll tell them more
about that when we get a little further down. But yeah,
that whole the whole drama is a story in of itself.
But because again it's so hard to get to the
truth of the matter, there's just we actually talked about
doing an episode just about Julia Sange, but instead of
about wiki leaks. But the more we looked into it,
(39:27):
the more we realize that this there's no way to
verify half the information that's out there, right, you know,
as as I said at the beginning of the episode,
all of the information about Juliana Sang comes from either
a Sange himself m or from very close personal ex
compatriots who are pretty angry at him, right, So there
(39:48):
are a lot of biases, and neither of those sources
are really necessarily reliable. So the July you had the
uh the Afghanistan reports released. Now that was one third
of three big blocks of information that we're going to
be released that year. The other two were about the
(40:11):
Iraqi War, which that information came out in October, and
then there was a huge block of classified US diplomatic
cables and a cable is essentially a message. So these
were all these thousands and thousands of diplomatic messages that
came out in November. That was the trifecta of big,
(40:32):
big bombshell releases that came out in twenty that really
established what wiki leaks was all about. I think I
think there's in November were the ones are specifically from Manning. Yeah. Yeah,
And then in September twenty a little bit earlier, that's
when Daniel dom Scheidberg left Wiki leaks, right, that's when
he walked. He had joined in two thousand eight and
(40:52):
had become sort of a Songe's right hand man. Yeah,
he was kind of. He was specifically a spokesperson four
wiki leaks in your up, mainly in Germany, and he
had a major falling out with a Sange to the
point where it went from he and Assange sharing the
same ideals to both of them demonizing one another whenever
(41:12):
they had the opportunity to speak to the media. And
they were roommates somewhere in between there. So this is
like talking about that band you used to love and
then they broke up, and now no one has anything
good to say about each other. Multiplied by about a
billion right later later on, he would publish a book
called Inside WikiLeaks, My Time with Julian Assange at the
World's Most Dangerous Website. Yeah, he was not particularly complementary
(41:35):
of Osange in that book or in any of his interviews.
He left to try and his goal was to found
a competing leak side. He felt that wiki leaks had
lost sight of its ideals, that it was not following,
it was not behaving in a way that again was
aligned with its ideals. Perhaps he felt that it was
more sensationalized, the kind of way that we've been talking about.
(41:57):
How you know, that's always been my person anal impression,
but again that's a personal impression. Um. So he wanted
to found a company called open leaks that would be
essentially a competitor to wiki leaks. Uh, and he wanted
it to be more transparent than wiki leaks was. So
he didn't want to have these kind of deals with
(42:18):
various news organizations where it was almost exclusive, like a
partnership saying hey, I'm going to give you this information
and then you can run it and you know, we'll
we'll have this buddy buddy relationship. Just link back to
my site. Make sure you do that. If you link
back to my site, we're all good. He didn't want
to do any of that, but eventually he ended up
changing his tune for open leaks because it just didn't
(42:42):
go well. Part of it was that when he left,
one of the things he did was he copied about
thirty five hundred files and then deleted them from wiki
leaks's database, and he left with those files. Depending upon
whom you ask, he was either trying to partially sabotage
wiki leaks and establish open leaks by getting a jump
(43:06):
start with these files, or from his point of view,
he felt that what wiki leaks was doing was irresponsible
and endangering the information that was within these thirty files,
and he was only copying it so that that information
would remain safe until such time that he could return
those files to wiki leaks. This is why this gets
(43:26):
really complicated, because people get you know, they get a
little irritated at each other and they act out a bit.
So um Anyway, open leaks never really took off. It
ended up sort of transforming into more of a site
that's designed to teach other people how to set up
sites that that can accept and publish leaked material, so
(43:48):
it really did change quite a bit. So then we
had October and November where those other big releases came out.
In two thousand eleven, that's when Wiki leaks was hit
by a pretty hard blow, and it didn't have anything
to do with a lawsuit. This was a blockade, a
financial blockade. This was when several major financial companies, banks
(44:10):
and credit card companies all decided to end any transfer
of funds towards WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks existed solely upon uh submissions
of of monetary donations to the site. You know, people
were donating money in order for WikiLeaks to keep going.
This was essentially all those methods of transmission, saying we
(44:33):
are no longer allowing payments to go to WikiLeaks, so
even if you want to donate, there was no route
for you to go right. And it actually got to
a point where Assange said that Wiki leaks had burned
through of its assets UH and and that it wasn't
able to really regenerate them in any meaningful way because
(44:53):
this blockade was preventing payments to go to Wiki leaks. Absolutely.
And this was also going on at the same time
that um Or or a little bit before this, UH
servers had started withdrawing their services from Wiki leaks. Amazon
dumped them, every DNS had terminated their service, right it
got to a point where you know, you could still
(45:15):
get there. It was you know, they would have work
around so that people could still get to UH, to
wiki leaks, but it was a lot of that that
support was going away, and you know, there were theories
on all sides of this as well, saying there was
a conspiracy that these companies had been pressured by various
(45:35):
governments around the world to end any support so that
way Wiki leaks would essentially kind of starved to death,
that no one would be able to get there, that
it would no one would be able to financially support it,
and that it would have just go away and then hey,
no more problems with all this leaked information because no
one has any place for this leaked information to go.
(45:55):
So UH. Whether or not that's true, or if it
was just the company saying, you know, this is something
that is going to cause us problems and we just
don't want to be a part of it, and they
were independently coming to that decision, I don't know. I
guess if there was a leak about it, we'd find
out this was This was also around the same time
that that they had published in September of two, two
(46:15):
thousand eleven, they had published over two cables that did
not contain read actions, which means that that the sources
of this information and in some places victims names and etcetera,
had not been blacked out. Yeah. In other words, there
were names of individuals within these cables that someone who
(46:36):
is reading over this could then target, either politically or
literally target these these folks that are mentioned in these cables,
and so there were there's a lot of criticism leveled
against Wiki leaks and against Assange, saying that it was
being irresponsible and endangering people's lives. Assange has not been
the most um compassionate person in regards to this. He's
(46:59):
often said that, uh, his goal is to save innocent lives,
but if it endangers a few people because of the
information that's revealed in these in these cables, then that's
you know, that's acceptable. I'm paraphrasing. That's not exactly what
he said, but it's it's more or less the message
that has been given collateral murder. Yeah, it's yeah, that's
(47:19):
the problem is that the Lauren seems to feel that
this might be a little touch hypocritical, considering the uh,
the criticisms that WikiLeaks has levied against, you know, governments
and corporations, that WikiLeaks itself seems to be engaging in
the same sort of cavalier behavior towards people's safety. And
to be fair, it is absolutely not a parallel to
(47:39):
compare um, uh putting putting a source in hypothetical danger
of persecution versus an Apache pilot killing a child in
a car. That's that's different. Yeah, that's the obviously very
different things. But it does seem to suggest that there's
a little bit of hypocrisy going on. I don't disagree
with Lauren, is what I'm saying. UM. But but but
(48:01):
that's but that is that is my personal opinion and
UH and I apologize a little bit for injecting it. Um.
This this move did did create a great rift between
Wiki Leaks and UM. Several of those newspapers or or
reporting organizations that we had been talking about them being
in cahoots with earlier, The Guardian, the New York Times, UM,
a bunch of papers around the world. Der Spiegel was
(48:22):
another one. Yeah, it was actually uh and the way
that Assange was handling the relationship between Wiki Leaks and
these news organizations was starting to cheesse them off. Like
the Guardian had certain expectations, the New York Times had
certain expectations UH, and the Guardian had felt that the
New York Times was going to be able to report
(48:44):
on certain things which the Guardian actually wanted to have happened,
because again the Guardians in the UK and the secrecy
laws are such that there were there were these partnerships
between the Guardian and New York Times where New York
Times could publish some stuff that would possibly get the
Guardian into trouble but would still benefit the Guardian in
some way. So it was this this kind of weird
(49:05):
relationship that was going on. But then a sane got
essentially got ticked off at the New York Times for
the way that the New York Times handled its information.
Because one thing that the New York Times would do
is approached the government and say, hey, we receive these
cables and we plan on running with the story, but
we're letting you know ahead of time, whereas in the
UK that's generally not done. Generally in the UK they
(49:26):
run the story, so that put pressure on the Guardian
and also put pressure on a Sane And then as
Sane was apparently very much upset about this and wanted
to sever the relationship with The New York Times, but
the Guardians still wanted this relationship with the New York Times.
If this is starting to sound like the relationships in
middle school drama club, that's kind of what it comes
(49:46):
out to being, except the stakes are obviously way higher. Absolutely,
and uh yeah, they the newspapers five five global newspapers
bound up putting out a joint statement that said, um,
we deplored the decision of Wiki Leaks to pub which
the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk.
The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his and
his alone, right, yeah, because they all had the policy
(50:09):
of actually going through and very carefully uh redacting any
identifiable information to protect sources and to protect people who
could potentially become a victim of some agency. And uh
and you know that was an important part of their process,
to the point where you had people entire departments in
charge of reviewing every single cable to make certain that
(50:33):
all the stuff they published was going to be safe,
and so for this move to happen on wiki leaks
and meant that a lot of that work was just nullified.
And obviously that is a good reason to become upset. Well,
once you get into about May two thousand twelve, so
Assange had been fighting extradition attempts and he had been
(50:55):
living in London while Sweden authorities were trying to extradite
into Sweden. He had he had spent about a week
in jail in December on those um extradition charges. Yeah,
and he had for being released on bail, been in
and out of court trying to appeal extradition. And by
made two thousand twelve, the British Supreme Court, it had
(51:16):
gone all the way up to the British Supreme Court
said no, we're not going to prevent your extradition. You
are going to have to go to Sweden to stand trial.
That's when a sane then started to appeal to Ecuador
the embassy in the UK and actually saying will you
grant me asylum? And it was at a point where
he was in the he was staying in the embassy.
(51:37):
He had not officially been granted asylum by Ecuador, and
then there was going to be apparently a raid on
the Ecuador embassy in order to get a Sange out,
and that's when Ecuador said, we're giving you asylum. So
it's almost when it's possible that that that raid was
the precipitated Yeah, that was exactly the moment where the
(51:57):
Ecuador said, you know, we weren't going to but now
we totally are because now it's political. So it's still
very complicated issue, um and you know, guilt or innocence aside.
It's it's one of those stories that is really complicated
and tough to to kind of unwind and follow. So anyway,
Wiki leaks is still still a thing still around. It's
(52:20):
still you know, accepts leaked information. Uh. It has uncovered
lots of stories, not just with governments, but like we said,
with corporations, some of which have caused newspapers to get
into trouble for running the stories. Things like you know,
major corporations that may have fallen short on promises for
doing things like cleaning up a gasoline spill. There was
(52:42):
a specific example of that, um and it continues to
fulfill that role. Some argue that it's even possible that
the whole Assange story could just be a smoke and
mirrors for Wiki Leaks to continue doing what it does
without having to worry about some focus because there's this
fall guy. Right. Yeah, You've got this very flashbank kind
(53:04):
of person over here who's going like, look at me,
extradition charges. Yeah, and then they can continue doing their
their political political work. Right. So, uh, I doubt that
anything is that planned out because life is just complicated
and messy and it's tough to ever have a plan that,
like James bond Isshue be very impressed. But but you
(53:28):
know it's possible. You know, if they did do that,
then it's it's the stuff of movie legend. Speaking of
movie legends, there is a film being made well there
there there are two films that have been um in
production recently. One is a documentary that was just released
I believe Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets, right, and that
(53:52):
one focused both on a sang and on Manning correct
and uh and sort of it was supposed to be
in all awards and all kind of portrayal. And some
people say that his portrayal of Assange does give sort
of a warts and all approach. In fact, I think
you know, Assange definitely did not make that relationship a
sweet one because apparently he demanded outright that if Gimney
(54:18):
where to talk to Assange, you would cost him a
million bucks, and the documentary filmmaker, that's probably not the
best way to win that person over to your side. No, Yeah,
Assange has come out very vocally against this documentary, which
is funny because people other people have also on both sides,
have come down upon this documentary right and and some
(54:39):
some people are proponents of it. One uh former Wiki
Leaks employee in particular, James ball Um reported reported it
being a very accurate portrayal, like to the point that
it was deja bou seeing the film. Now, there are
some who say that Manning's portrayal was overly sympathetic. That
(54:59):
they do, you know, it's hard to say that that
it's unjustified, because you're talking about one person who may
very well have been acting in what he thought was
the right way to to expose what he saw as
unethical behavior. And there's no you know, there's no official
way of doing it and any hope of it being addressed.
(55:21):
And so he went outside the system in order to
try and have this done. That's that's kind of the
story that's being told. There are other people who say
it's more complicated than that, and that you know, it
wasn't truly altruistic motivations that had him do what he did.
But again, that's a really complicated story. When you're doing
a documentary film, you have to simplify things so that
you can and be so two hours long. And note
(55:46):
that was one of the criticisms I saw was that
it made uh Manning out to be more sympathetic than
than the person felt that he should be. Uh. I
think it's really hard to say that you can't feel
sympathy for someone who's being held for a military trial
that doesn't have the same same protections as a criminal
(56:07):
or civil case would in a normal court of law.
But you know, again, I don't know, so we don't
know the guy, don't know all the details. So uh,
you know that will play out and the judge will
come to a decision. So the other one is, um,
it's it's a fictional film, or I mean fictional, it's
a biopic maybe Barnaby cumberbund In it a cumber Batch
(56:35):
right right, I'm sorry, John Harrison. Is that John Harrison? Um?
This This film is called The Fifth Est State. It's
being directed by Bill Condon, UM, and it is slated
to be released on October eleven. UM and uh. Cumber
Batch has said that Assange directly asked him to not
do the film, UM, calling it a massive propaganda attack. Yeah,
(57:00):
then maybe it is. I haven't seen it. I don't know.
We'll have to wait here. But if you want to
see some really cool pictures of Benedict Comberbatch looking intense
with bleach bleach hair, um, those are on the internet.
And that wraps up this episode, this classic episode of
tech Stuff, the Wiki leaks story. Like I said, we
(57:21):
probably need to go back and revisit this one. A
lot has happened with Wiki leaks, a lot of ups
and downs with that story. So I'll probably do a
follow up, maybe a full redo. We'll see. But if
you guys have suggestions for topics I should cover on
tech Stuff, reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter.
The handle it both is tech stuff hs W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(57:48):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows e
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. It is time for
another classic episode of tech Stuff. This one originally published
on June two thousand thirteen, that would have been my birthday.
(00:28):
This is called the Wiki Leaks story, and obviously it's
another one of those topics where I could do a
full update, probably a full redo of this episode, but
it's always interesting to go back and listen to how
the show has evolved over the years. So let's listen
to the Wiki Leaks story. Also, real quick, before we
get into this, I do want to give a brief
(00:49):
trigger warning. It's it's a light trigger warning. Really. UM.
Julianna sound being UM, one of the so called founders
of Wiki Leaks, has been brought up on some rape
charges and so there will be a non graphic discussion
of that later on in the podcast. UM. If that
is the kind of thing that you would rather avoid hearing,
than perhaps you would like to uh skip the rest
(01:09):
of this episode now. Spoiler alert, both Lauren and myself
and and with our particular political views. Feel that no
one in this story really comes out being a complete hero.
It's it's it's just it's humans being humans, which means
it's complex. It's complex and gets kind of messy. Yeah,
so we're gonna get messy. But before we get messy,
(01:30):
let's just clear things up a little bit, let's talk
about what wiki leaks is. Now. First of all, the
name wiki gives you this sense that it has this
sort of collaborative, open structure that allows people to come
in and add things and tweak things. Not so much.
They trined that early on in the timeline of wiki leaks,
but eventually moved away from it. The name has stuck, however, right,
(01:53):
and I think that I think that really what they
wanted to do was um it was used, was used
that that easy reading format of wikis without you know,
and then they decided to really close down the part
where hey, anyone can edit it, because that's bad times
right right when you're talking about what it is WikiLeaks
is trying to do and uh and be yes, the
(02:14):
sourcing of information in order to remain um anonymous and pertinent. Yeah, yeah,
these are all things that make it. You know, if
you were to just open it up for what wiki
leaks does, it would just be a mess very quickly.
It also has created a lot of confusion among people
who are just casually following this or have just heard
about it, who think that wiki leaks has some sort
(02:35):
of connection to Wikipedia, which it does not know. The
Wikipedia and wiki leaks are not at all related. So
what is wiki leaks. Well, it's a not for profit organization,
and the purpose of wiki leaks is to publish information
that would normally not be available to the public. Right.
Normally normally be stuff that's either been classified or Yeah,
(02:58):
it could be trade secret stuff, it could be a
corporate uh, communications that normally would not be available to
anyone outside a certain group of people within that corporation. Really,
it's any information that would be of public interest but
is not publicly available. And in fact, WikiLeaks go so
far as to say that the organization does not want
(03:21):
anything that's been published elsewhere. That's not the purpose for WikiLeaks.
They also make pains to say that they do not
solicit any kind of information or files. They accept it,
but they don't solicit, which is an important distinction they
have to make so that they yeah, because otherwise they
could start getting charges about being a spy or or
(03:44):
trying to bribe officials or people and who have access
to to classified information to then share it. If they
merely accepted donations of information, that absolves them of of
some of that responsible kind of technically, yeah, and just
at least prints a better picture of them, right as
(04:06):
far as it makes it more difficult to make a
case against them, doesn't necessarily mean that a case would
not be made against them and it wouldn't be successful.
But anyway, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves now. Um.
According to Columbia University's Journalism School, I read this, there
was a very long article about wiki leaks and its
(04:27):
association with the Guardian newspaper was a newspaper in the UK,
and uh. In fact, there was quite a strong relationship
between the two for a while until an event that
we will discuss later. Yeah, yeah, that will come important later.
But according to that particular article, it said that Julian Assange,
(04:48):
who is often referred to as a founder, founder or
or at the very least the spokesperson for wiki leaks,
he's certainly the most identifiable personality associated with figurehead. If
if nothing else. Yeah. Yeah, and that gets complicated too,
and we'll explain that in a bit. But according to
this article, he registered the domain name back in However,
(05:12):
every other source I could find, two thousand six was
the earliest that it was actually um registered. This is
another part that makes talking about wiki leaks challenging in
that there's a lot of misinformation about the site itself,
not just about all the shenanigans that went on both
within wiki Leaks and surrounding Wiki Leaks, but just when
(05:37):
it really got started. Right, And part of the problem
we should mention now is that a lot of the
information out there about wiki leaks comes from either Juliana
Sounds himself or other other personalities that have been involved
with the organization and have left it violently and bitterly. Yeah,
and so so all of all of this is uh
(05:57):
not necessarily it's difficult to track down the exact truth. Yeah,
there's a lot of subjectivity here. I mean, everyone involved
has their own agenda and uh, and that doesn't it
doesn't necessarily align with the organization stated mission, right right,
So this is this is what makes this complicated. Now,
what is that stated mission? Well, the whole idea here
(06:17):
is that what Wiki leaks is trying to do is
make available information that the public that that that you know,
the organization feels the public should have access to but
otherwise would not because of the secrecy of either governmental
or corporate organizations or even just other organizations in general,
and that it's an attempt to make these organizations more transparent. Right.
(06:41):
They cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UM, in
particular Article nineteen UM, which which just says that that
everyone has the right to freedom, freedom of opinion and
expression right and that they should be able to pursue
information regardless of frontiers, which is kind of like saying,
you know, a person in in say China, who otherwise
(07:04):
might not have access to certain information completely has the
universal right to that, even if the Chinese government says
they don't. So in other words, it's kind of this
idea that everyone has this right regardless of what your
government says. Well, this is the United Nations that has
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it's not like
this is somehow legally binding for all right, Right, it's
(07:27):
it's a very nice idea. Yeah, it's it's an ideal, Right,
it's not so much legal wording. It's it's saying ideally,
we would say all people have the right to these expectations,
and one of them would be this right to freedom
of expression. Now, depending on where you are in the world,
your right to freedom of expression maybe fairly generous or
(07:48):
it might be really restrictive. In the United States, we
like to think that we have the freedom of speech,
but there are certain limitations. I mean, obviously, if you
are using that freedom of speech to inflict harm upon
someone and it is completely unjustified, and you know, you
could be taken to court for things things like library um.
You know, the whole there's the whole argument about you
(08:10):
can't yell fire in a crowded theater because it could
cause people You're you're right, or freedom of expression does
not override someone else's right to safety safety right, or
at least the expectation of safety. Um. And so there
are a lot of complications here. But even in the
United States, you know, it's fairly wide open. People will
argue as to how wide open it is because of
(08:31):
their own personal views. If you go to someplace like
the United Kingdom, there rights of free speech are are
more narrow. There are very specific laws that prevent newspapers,
for example, from violating secrecy agreements. So something like The
Guardian had to make some really tough decisions when they
(08:54):
got information from Wiki leaks onto whether or not to
publish it, because it could result in some junctions from
the government, So that gets really complex as well. Anyway,
Wiki Leaks essentially says, we don't subscribe to any of
these regional concepts. We subscribe to this universal concept and
(09:15):
that's what it's all about. And so they try to
provide the material that journalists can use to tell the
stories that otherwise would be untold. Right. Um Assassa said
in in one interview with Time that this organization practices
civil obedience. It tries to make the world more civil
and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in
(09:36):
the opposite direction. So it's kind of funny to call
it civil obedience considering that, uh, you know that they
are directly disobeying. Yes, they're being disobedient by by very nature.
But it's it's all an argument about who has the
power and responsibility. If you have a lot of you know,
as as Uncle Ben would say, with great power comes
(09:58):
great responsibility. That's that's one of those little cliche sayings,
but there is truth to that. It's very true that
if you are a governmental agency or a corporation that
has a lot of power, then there is a certain
expectation that you will use that power in a responsible
way and not do it in such a way that
you are going to violate people's rights, right. You know.
(10:22):
At the same time, frequently information is withheld by by governments,
in particular because because of of of measures of national security,
because they're trying to protect you know, either their their
military interests or their scientific interests, or or you know,
the people and the research that go into making that
country a safe place to be, right. So there is
(10:43):
a very delicate balance here, right. I mean, you could
argue that there are there's certain information that's out there
that it's good that it's secret because that means that
the people who are doing valuable work, and it may
be valuable work that in no way is violent towards
any other person. It may be completely humanitarian work that
their lives could be in jeopardy if the information were
(11:05):
made public, and that is something that you know needs
to be taken into consideration. Now, the what wicked Leaks
would say is, on the other hand, you also have
these instances where UH agencies or the military or a
corporation are behaving in an unethical or corrupt or illegal manner,
and without this information becoming public, they can never be
(11:27):
held accountable for that. And so if they you know,
this transparency gives accountability to those agencies. And in fact,
they go so far as to say it's the media's
role to to reveal this kind of information to the public,
to to make the public informed enough to be good citizens, right,
because this is that that big relationship. You know, we
often think of the government as being this kind of
(11:48):
separate entity that is UH in some cases we think
of as sort of that big brother Orwellian idea of
this this other that dictates what we do. But in reality,
at least in in you can argue to watch it, right.
You know, they're definitely fringe theories about how much your
your average citizen does or doesn't have power over over
(12:10):
these these things. But but but saying that, you know,
if we take democracy in the United States for what
it's supposed to be, if we assume that that in
fact is the case, then what Wiki Leak's role is
to tell the public, Hey, this is what your officials
are up to, and if you don't approve of that,
you need to be aware of it so that you
can the next time voting comes around, behave in a
(12:33):
way that that allows you to get the right people
in charge, assuming of course, that the right people are
the ones who are running for office. That's that's a
different political discussion. That's the whole other, whole other canne worms. Honestly,
I'm I'm probably coming across is really cynical. I'm actually
not that cynical. I'm just aware of a lot of cynicism.
(12:54):
So it's one of those things where you kind of
dance around it. Anyway. Well, yeah, and you know, the
thing is that I read one thing about how the
US Information Security Oversight Office reported that um, the number
of new secrets designated as such by the government rose
from nine and so so partially what this has to
(13:17):
do with is the way that governments are processing information
and um and releasing it to the public right and
and to be fair, I mean, the Albama administration in
the United States specifically said that one of its cornerstones
was going to be transparency, and so in a way
you can think of the media in general and wiki
leaks in particular in this case, trying to hold them
(13:39):
accountable for that claim saying you said you're going to
be transparent. Here are all these things that have not
been reported? What is your stance on this? Absolutely? And
so I mean, you know, I can't disagree with that motivation.
I think that that's very important. I think that any
nation where you have a free pet press, that presses
job to keep an eye and make sure that things
(14:02):
are not being uh, that people are not behaving in
an unethical manner or taking advantage of a situation, and
if they are, that that's reported. I think that's very important.
It's a key role in journalism, and it's something that
some people would say has really been slipping from journalism
over the last couple of decades. Again, I'm not a journalists,
(14:23):
so I'm not going to comment on that. Well, that's
that's another you know, there's also a lot of ideas
about out there about how entertainment based the journalism industry
is these days. Yes, yeah, the whole idea of of
the the commercialization of journalism. Uh well, anyway, Wiki leaks
does have some policies that try to guide the organization
(14:44):
and how it behaves. One of those is that that
they do sometimes delay or remove some details in stories
in order to protect people from immediate harm, especially either
current victims of of harm somewhere or the whistleblowers who
are hoarding this information right. And then on top of that,
they also try to make sure that every single leaked
(15:08):
report that they receive, which by the way, they they've
set up an electronic dropbox, that's their preferred method of
receiving information is electronically, and that this dropbox is encrypted
so that again in theory, you wouldn't be able to
trace the origin of that other than being able to
see that this is original source material, but it's not
(15:29):
tied to any particular person. So the electronic dropbox is
supposed to be a secure way of getting files two
wiki leaks, and they have said that they would also
receive files or documents in other forms, like including through
the mail, but they preferred not to because that kind
of stuff can be intercepted and securities and questions, and
(15:49):
also also if they have a physical mailing address, that
makes it more difficult for them to uh avoid entanglements,
all right, So anyway, they they do refer to their
electronic drop boxes being the preferred method, and they say
that everything they get they use traditional investigative journalism techniques
as well as more modern technology based methods to verify
(16:13):
that that information is in fact, accurate and true, and
that it really is from a verifiable source, right, that
the documents are actually from wherever the person the anonymous
source says they're from. So if an anonymous source drops
off a enormous file that is supposed to contain all
these documents from the Department of Justice in the United States,
(16:34):
for example, they would go through and try to verify
that those were in fact d o J documents and
not just someone using some logos or whatever to fabricate something. Right.
This is through a largely volunteer based system they've they've
reported and again you know, these numbers are kind of
wibbly wobbly, but um they reported having up to eight
hundred volunteer members, mostly mostly journalists, I think, helping helping
(16:59):
them out with stuff like this, right, and some of
those volunteers have a lot of stuff to say about
wiki leaks, but again we'll cover that probably in the
second half. I think of this of this episode, so
they their policies to verify everything to keep it secure,
and then once they verified it, the next step is
deciding on when to publish this information. And wiki leaks
(17:23):
has done uh well, They've done their own journalism. They've
had their own journalists right stories that were based off
of the documents that they had found. That I think
you mentioned earlier that that part of what wiki leaks
holds very DearS that they want to publish original material.
They don't want to republish anything, and and that's and
so yes, so um so actually doing writing an investigation,
(17:45):
it's a big part of that. They also will partner
with existing media outlets, although there's been sort of a
contentious relationship between wiki leaks and several high profile newspapers
UH in multiple nation and part of that I think
has to do with the sana's personal handling of situations.
(18:06):
But anyway, they they their goal is to have stories
written about the information they have, because it's kind of
like if you were to walk into a laboratory that's
doing scientific experiments and you see the experiment going on,
but you can't really necessarily make any meaningful conclusion based
on that. You need to have the report written up
(18:26):
where you can see what the actual methodology was, what
the results were, and what the conclusions are. That's what
is digestible to the average person. Same thing with these
wiki leaks reports. It's usually the raw material is something
that they hand over to journalists and the journalists and
up rutting the stories, and then the raw material is
(18:47):
published along with the story, so that way complete transparency
that they're really going for, right that way, so that
you can check their sources exactly exactly. Like if if
Lauren reads the story and then you know, she reads
onejournalists perspective on that story and they're the way that
they have taken this information and then communicated it, she
can then go to the the source material, read the
(19:10):
source material and see if her own interpretation of that
source material is aligned with what the journalists said. Because remember,
no matter what, we're all humans, so we all view
things through our own kind of lens in the world,
and we try and be as you know, a journalists
tried to be as objective as possible, at least most
people journalists try. That's the hypothetical ideal. Yeah, So, but
(19:33):
it's it's you know, there's no way to ever truly
attain that sure, and and and in some of these
cases they the Assange and and other folks at Wiki
leaks have admitted to wanting to market some of these
bigger releases, uh, to to really get things into the
public eye. Right, I don't I haven't personally read any
(19:56):
any ill intent to change details, but it just to
bring the most important details to the forefront, because they
are a political organization, right and when you look at it,
you're you're talking about sometimes they're getting files that are enormous.
They're talking about pages and pages and pages of documentation.
It's like like over over three hundred thousand documents and
(20:17):
ago that that's you know, obviously way too much for
anyone to just wade through beginning to end and find
the nuggets that are meaningful, because a lot of this
stuff has information that's not really um, you know, important
in the grand scheme of things. It might have been
important for a very specific purpose, but you know, beyond that,
it doesn't really matter so much. So well, we'll mention
(20:40):
a few examples of stuff like that a little bit later. Yeah,
So they you know, this is this is their basic
purpose and their basic approach. To go into more detail,
we'll have to kind of look at the timeline and
discuss what had happened throughout the history of wiki leaks,
which course is still in existence today. I don't mean
to suggest that history is over, but it is. It
(21:03):
is a continuing story. But um, but most of the
most of the action within wiki leaks was going on
around Yeah, that's when the big, big stuff was going on,
although it's played a part in other stories since then,
and of course before then too. Hey, guys, Jonathan from here,
we're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright,
(21:31):
so we've had an overview of what wiki leaks is,
what its purposes, what you know, role it's it's ideally
would fill within the world of journalism and transparency and accountability.
Let's talk a little bit about the timeline. So it
was around two thousand six that Wiki leaks began to coalesce,
and it was officially launched in two thousand seven, right
(21:53):
either December two thousand six or early two thousand seven. Yeah,
it's right around the anyway. The first publications were coming
out in in December of two thousand and six. But
most folks just say that are The official launch where
we've had a thing was in early two thousand seven, right,
And and I did want to mention that this is
coming on the heels of in two thousand five, the
(22:14):
commission that had been investigating the nine eleven terrorists attacks
here in the United States had found that that poor
information sharing was a huge failure of the government in
the in the lead up to the attacks, of of
of preventing this sort of thing from happening, and and
that that had led to internally a lot of reorganization
(22:35):
of how information is shared in between different departments department. Yeah,
this this is something that we see in all levels
of organization where you have multiple departments and then the
communication between departments, sometimes the communication within a department tends
to get bogged down by red tape. And uh, you know,
you see this all the time. Like if you ever
(22:55):
read any stories about uh police investigation that spanned multiple jurisdictions,
that's always part of the story is how complicated it
was to get the cooperation of one police office versus another.
And if their federal investigators, then that adds another layer
of complexity. And it was it wasn't until around that
(23:16):
time that um, I think that a lot of agencies
had been kind of resisting going digital just because of
the ease of flow of information, which isn't really considered
a good thing when you're trying to keep things secret.
Um And but but it was after after two five
after that report from that commission, that things started going
going online. And the first story that wiki leaks partnered
(23:37):
with The Guardian on was for around August thirty one,
two thousand seven. It was a story about the alleged
corruption of Daniel arap Moi, the former president of Kenya,
and it was a leaked report. The Kenyan government had
elected to keep this report secret, and UH, someone leaked
the information to wiki leaks. Wiki leaks then approached the Guardian,
(23:59):
and the Guardian was very cautious about this kind of relationship.
It was one of those things where they saw the
value in what WikiLeaks was doing. WikiLeaks was setting itself
up to be a completely independent safe house of information
leaked information. UH. The idea being that of course anyone
who would submit to it would remain anonymous, WikiLeaks would
(24:20):
not point the finger at anybody, and that that information
could then get to some sort of outlet that could
communicate it to the wider world. So this was the
first attempt of The Guardian and WikiLeaks to work together.
From the story I read from Columbia University, it really
did sound like Julian Assange was a big part of
this early early on, and that that was both a
(24:45):
good thing in the early days and turned into a
complicated thing as time went on. Um from what I understand,
he can he can have an effect on people, uh
and make them feel like they're not really being listened to.
He's frequently described as being a very um dynamic personality.
That's a very generous way of putting it. Uh. Yeah,
(25:08):
people who have taught to him have had some pretty
contentious things to say about him. I've never met the man,
so I know nothing about him personally, nor have I
had any interactions with him. But just going from what
other people said, it seems like he seems he seems
very intense. Yeah, he can be a handful, yes, um uh.
This The Wiki Leaks would later be presented with an
(25:30):
award from Musty International um On behalf of the Kenyan
folks who leaked this information. Um uh. Now that's one
of the awards that Wiki Leaks has won Wiki leaks
of course, you know it's it is very controversial, but
there are organizations that have recognized its role in UH
in uncovering corruption and even going so far as to
(25:54):
UH giving enough information so that authorities could end up
pursuing and correcting problems UM or that people could end
up going out and voting what would what some would
call a corrupt administration out of power. This is, of course,
you know, on a global scale, not not limited to
just one country. In February of two eight, a wiki
(26:18):
leaks report along with The Guardian, exposed a Swiss bank
called Julius Bear for money laundering UH and UH that
ended up getting Wiki leaks hit with one of their
first major lawsuits, which is not something unusual for the organization.
They've been hit with many of them. Right. Also in
(26:38):
two thousand eight, they posted a bunch of scientologies secret
membership manuals. Yeah. Uh. And it's funny because there's there
are some stories that talk about how wiki leaks expected
certain things to get a lot more attention than what
they what it actually did, and that these manuals were
that was one of the things they thought that a
(26:59):
lot more attention would be devoted to the scientology manuals
than what actually happened. And that's another reason why wiki
leaks was looking to partner with various newspapers around the world,
because they were discovering that trying to direct people to
wiki leaks to find out about the information was tricky.
Anyone who makes a website learns pretty quickly it's hard
(27:21):
to get folks to go to your website. It is
folks need to want to go to your website, you
can't really make them go. So uh, you know, if
WikiLeaks was going to fulfill its mission and being this
this uh depository of secret information that could then be
used by journalists, they determined that they had to reach
out to more journalists to make that happen. Um. The
(27:44):
next thing I have is November two thousand nine. Do
you have anything before that? Okay? That's when they published
a comprehensive list of text pager messages that were sent
during September eleventh, two thousand one, which of course was
the date of the terrorist attacks that that that ended
thousands of lives here in the United States. UM. And
they were criticized for this because a lot of those
(28:06):
text messages were just simple messages from between family members
or co workers to let people know that they were
all right, that they had um managed to to stay
clear of the impact zones and that sort of thing,
and that there was a real question of is this
actually newsworthy? Is this is this valuable information to publish?
(28:29):
Is this are is this getting a little too voyeuristic
into the personal tragedies that happened during this day and
and and there was a little bit of a question, um.
And this ties back into the scientology bit of whether
wiki leaks was was publishing things to get attention and
to be sensational um rather than mission right. Yeah, and
(28:51):
that's that's played wiki leaks throughout its history as well.
Like the again, the goal that it states seems very
noble and a journalistic sense, but the behavior of at
least some of the people in wiki leaks may have
been so is aligned quite with that. It seems it
seemed like you said, a little more sensationalists. And that
(29:11):
might not have ever been the intent of the people
in wiki leaks. It just maybe the impression that everyone
got from the way it was handled. Now, getting back
in one last little thing about these these text pager messages, Um,
was that Wiki Leaks said their response to the criticism
of is this actually newsworthy? Their response was, this helps
(29:32):
create a more complete picture of what happened on that day.
And I'm not I mean, yeah, it's more complete. I
just don't know that it's more relevant. Sure, sure I could.
I could. I could argue that one. You know that
that that could easily be argued either way. Yeah, but um,
but yeah, I did want to mention also in two
(29:53):
thousand nine, UM, that was the year that President Obama
signed the executive order requiring a whole bunch of people
who hold classified status here in the States um to
receive extra training on what actually needs classification and UM
and also forced people who who are creating these classified
(30:13):
documents to identify themselves on those documents. And again this
is that this is that effort for official transparency to say,
you know, let's not just blanket whitewash everything is classified,
because that just all that really does is engender a
spirit of distrust in the government to say, like, what,
why are they hiding this? What else do they have
(30:34):
to hide? And uh, And of course I mean this
is an ongoing story, stuff that we're finding out about now.
About things like clandestine surveillance, which are these are stories
that are breaking as we are recording this podcast in
early June two thousand thirteen. They are all these stories
about the n s A and surveillance and cell phones
and things like that. And some might even argue that
the things that happened with wiki leaks are what kind
(30:57):
of led to those policies, which is the antithesis of
what they were supposed to be doing. I think that
there's been a lot of that actually from from I
think a lot of governments have kind of cracked down
on openness in response to this sort of thing. Yeah
it's it's you know, and some might argue they're cracking
down on one side while really doubling down on the
(31:18):
shady stuff on the other side. So it's almost like
the Wilkie defense. Hey it's Chewbacca. So um yeah, I mean,
these is complicated issue. April that's when Assane goes to
the National Press Club in d C and shows a
video of a two thousand seven incident. Now, this is
the the most probably the most notorious wiki leaks really, yeah,
(31:44):
I mean there's been a lot of high profile ones,
but this one is like the defining one, I think,
and this is one that showed an incident in two
thousand seven in which UH two US Apache helicopter pilots
allegedly executed UH innocent people on the ground in Iraq,
including to Reuter's correspondence. The whole thing was caught on video,
(32:05):
and Assange called it collateral murder. That's what he named
the video. And again that seems very sensationalist. Now, at
the same time, the video itself really did portray a
horrific act. Yeah, and and I mean, and there's and
there's full audio in it, so there's this very chillingly
calm discussion of everything that they're doing and um and
(32:27):
and yeah, it's it's you. You can you can see.
I think at least eighteen people are killed during the
course of the video, and two of them were Reuters reporters,
right right. This had been a project that had been
going on since March of and had been they had
received these files and UH kind of went into a
frenzy of work in Iceland putting them together. It was
(32:48):
called Project B And and they knew that it was big. Yeah,
they knew it was big. And and again Assange was
trying to find a way to get more visibility for
wiki leaks. So part of that sensationalism was in fact
intended because it was meant to to get as much
press as possible. But also, I mean it was an
(33:09):
absolutely pressworthy release. Yes, I mean you know you can't. Yeah,
it was, I mean, I I was a legitimate It
was a completely legitimate story. It was something that needed
to be broken because it was you know, people needed
to be held accountable. Although it should be said that
the military never did charge those helicopter pilots with anything
illegal or the official statement was essentially that the people
(33:32):
were in an area where there was a suspected um
uh ambush that was going to attack US forces and
that the helicopter pilots acted responsibly. That's the official response.
So anyway, definitely was newsworthy. Uh. Again, it was the
handling of it that I think was sensational, not the
material itself, but that was again completely valid. Uh. On
(33:59):
the pen I gone arrested US Army Private Bradley Manning
on charges of downloading and then leaking thousands of classified
US documents, including this video, and uh, that's sort of
been the the video and and the handling of Bradley
Manning and and Bradley Manning's case have been this sort
(34:20):
of defining element to what Wiki Leaks is and the
way that it's portrayed in general. I mean, this story
is still ongoing to this day. Right. I believe that
the trial for Manning is going on right now as
we're recording this podcast. Yes, it is, although it apparently
it's going much more quickly than what they had originally planned.
They thought it was going to take it was gonna
(34:41):
be a three month trial, but apparently there moving through
witnesses much more quickly than they had previously thought. And uh,
and there were thousands of documents involved in this, not
just the video, right right. Uh. Wiki Leaks ended up
publishing over two fifty documents for Manning. He had downloaded
all of these diplomatic cables while he was at an
(35:03):
Iraq Army outpost between November two thousand nine. In April,
um reportedly having burned them to a c d R
labeled Lady Gaga and told told a Hacker friend that
he had them to Hacker turned him in, And apparently
that hacker has since felt a great deal of conflict
about that act. Uh. The charge, the main charge against
(35:26):
Bradley Manning is that he knowingly gave intelligence to the
enemy through indirect means. And uh because before he was
arrested and put on you know, put on trial, he
had obviously leaked these documents to wiki leaks, right, and
so the in the trial I can say this because
this was reported very recently as of the recording of
(35:47):
this podcast. Uh. The defense called the senior intelligence or
one senior intelligence analyst from Manning's unit. Her name is
Casey Fulton, and Fulton said that the unit received no
specific warning about sites visited by al Qaeda. She did
say that al Qaeda would visit sites like Facebook or
Google or even Google Maps to gather information, but she
(36:09):
did not mention Wiki leaks among them. And the defenses
case is saying that uh, that there this information went
directly to write well, that the al Qaeda was not
using wiki leaks specifically together information that that was not
Manning's intent. And in fact, the judge in the case
has said that the prosecution has to show that Manning
had actual knowledge that he was actually giving intelligence to
(36:33):
the enemy through a third party and intermediary or in
some other indirect way. And that the soldier must have
had quote a general evil intent unquote and to have
known he was dealing directly or indirectly with an enemy
of the United States in order for this particular charge
to hold. Now keep in mind this one charge out
of all the trial. So but it sounds to me
(36:57):
that it's a it's a really tough case to make,
you know, to prove the intent parts specifically, but improving
intent is one of those things that's uh, basically impossible.
So but doesn't mean that people don't do it or
don't don't achieve it now to say they also point
out that this is a military trial. It's different from
(37:19):
other trials in the United States. Typically in the United
States you have a trial with in front of a
jury of your peers. But in this case, it is
a judge that is overseeing the case and her word
is final at least unless you go through an appeals process.
But and you do not have exactly the same the
same rights to see what is a normal citizen in
a court of law. So getting back to two wiki
(37:40):
leaks back in UH July twenty, two thousand and ten,
so so Bradley Manning had been arrested By this point,
three news organizations released separate accounts of the war logs
gathered from Wiki Leaks regarding the war in Afghanistan. And
in August, UH, that's when another big introversial event in
(38:01):
the history of Wiki leaks in general and Julian Assange
in particular happens. Uh. Two former employees of Wiki leaks
filed rape charges against Julian Assange, and Assange has essentially
spent the rest of his life from that point evading
any extradition to Sweden to stand trial for this. All right, right,
these charges were brought up in Sweden. UM. The the
(38:22):
two women who have brought up the charges, their names
have not been revealed to the press. UM and UH.
In Sweden there are laws about using using condoms. If
partner tells you to use one and you do not,
then you can be brought up on what is called
a rape charge and and the technical definition I shall
leave up to other political parties. Yeah, hey guys, it's Jonathan.
(38:45):
I gotta run out and take a quick Wiki leaks,
so we're gonna take a break. At any rate, he
has been fighting x tradition since then, and at this
point he has actually um been a granted asylum from
(39:07):
by Ecuador. Ecuador has granted asansing. I'll tell them more
about that when we get a little further down. But yeah,
that whole the whole drama is a story in of itself.
But because again it's so hard to get to the
truth of the matter, there's just we actually talked about
doing an episode just about Julia Sange, but instead of
about wiki leaks. But the more we looked into it,
(39:27):
the more we realize that this there's no way to
verify half the information that's out there, right, you know,
as as I said at the beginning of the episode,
all of the information about Juliana Sang comes from either
a Sange himself m or from very close personal ex
compatriots who are pretty angry at him, right, So there
(39:48):
are a lot of biases, and neither of those sources
are really necessarily reliable. So the July you had the
uh the Afghanistan reports released. Now that was one third
of three big blocks of information that we're going to
be released that year. The other two were about the
(40:11):
Iraqi War, which that information came out in October, and
then there was a huge block of classified US diplomatic
cables and a cable is essentially a message. So these
were all these thousands and thousands of diplomatic messages that
came out in November. That was the trifecta of big,
(40:32):
big bombshell releases that came out in twenty that really
established what wiki leaks was all about. I think I
think there's in November were the ones are specifically from Manning. Yeah. Yeah,
And then in September twenty a little bit earlier, that's
when Daniel dom Scheidberg left Wiki leaks, right, that's when
he walked. He had joined in two thousand eight and
(40:52):
had become sort of a Songe's right hand man. Yeah,
he was kind of. He was specifically a spokesperson four
wiki leaks in your up, mainly in Germany, and he
had a major falling out with a Sange to the
point where it went from he and Assange sharing the
same ideals to both of them demonizing one another whenever
(41:12):
they had the opportunity to speak to the media. And
they were roommates somewhere in between there. So this is
like talking about that band you used to love and
then they broke up, and now no one has anything
good to say about each other. Multiplied by about a
billion right later later on, he would publish a book
called Inside WikiLeaks, My Time with Julian Assange at the
World's Most Dangerous Website. Yeah, he was not particularly complementary
(41:35):
of Osange in that book or in any of his interviews.
He left to try and his goal was to found
a competing leak side. He felt that wiki leaks had
lost sight of its ideals, that it was not following,
it was not behaving in a way that again was
aligned with its ideals. Perhaps he felt that it was
more sensationalized, the kind of way that we've been talking about.
(41:57):
How you know, that's always been my person anal impression,
but again that's a personal impression. Um. So he wanted
to found a company called open leaks that would be
essentially a competitor to wiki leaks. Uh, and he wanted
it to be more transparent than wiki leaks was. So
he didn't want to have these kind of deals with
(42:18):
various news organizations where it was almost exclusive, like a
partnership saying hey, I'm going to give you this information
and then you can run it and you know, we'll
we'll have this buddy buddy relationship. Just link back to
my site. Make sure you do that. If you link
back to my site, we're all good. He didn't want
to do any of that, but eventually he ended up
changing his tune for open leaks because it just didn't
(42:42):
go well. Part of it was that when he left,
one of the things he did was he copied about
thirty five hundred files and then deleted them from wiki
leaks's database, and he left with those files. Depending upon
whom you ask, he was either trying to partially sabotage
wiki leaks and establish open leaks by getting a jump
(43:06):
start with these files, or from his point of view,
he felt that what wiki leaks was doing was irresponsible
and endangering the information that was within these thirty files,
and he was only copying it so that that information
would remain safe until such time that he could return
those files to wiki leaks. This is why this gets
(43:26):
really complicated, because people get you know, they get a
little irritated at each other and they act out a bit.
So um Anyway, open leaks never really took off. It
ended up sort of transforming into more of a site
that's designed to teach other people how to set up
sites that that can accept and publish leaked material, so
(43:48):
it really did change quite a bit. So then we
had October and November where those other big releases came out.
In two thousand eleven, that's when Wiki leaks was hit
by a pretty hard blow, and it didn't have anything
to do with a lawsuit. This was a blockade, a
financial blockade. This was when several major financial companies, banks
(44:10):
and credit card companies all decided to end any transfer
of funds towards WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks existed solely upon uh submissions
of of monetary donations to the site. You know, people
were donating money in order for WikiLeaks to keep going.
This was essentially all those methods of transmission, saying we
(44:33):
are no longer allowing payments to go to WikiLeaks, so
even if you want to donate, there was no route
for you to go right. And it actually got to
a point where Assange said that Wiki leaks had burned
through of its assets UH and and that it wasn't
able to really regenerate them in any meaningful way because
(44:53):
this blockade was preventing payments to go to Wiki leaks. Absolutely.
And this was also going on at the same time
that um Or or a little bit before this, UH
servers had started withdrawing their services from Wiki leaks. Amazon
dumped them, every DNS had terminated their service, right it
got to a point where you know, you could still
(45:15):
get there. It was you know, they would have work
around so that people could still get to UH, to
wiki leaks, but it was a lot of that that
support was going away, and you know, there were theories
on all sides of this as well, saying there was
a conspiracy that these companies had been pressured by various
(45:35):
governments around the world to end any support so that
way Wiki leaks would essentially kind of starved to death,
that no one would be able to get there, that
it would no one would be able to financially support it,
and that it would have just go away and then hey,
no more problems with all this leaked information because no
one has any place for this leaked information to go.
(45:55):
So UH. Whether or not that's true, or if it
was just the company saying, you know, this is something
that is going to cause us problems and we just
don't want to be a part of it, and they
were independently coming to that decision, I don't know. I
guess if there was a leak about it, we'd find
out this was This was also around the same time
that that they had published in September of two, two
(46:15):
thousand eleven, they had published over two cables that did
not contain read actions, which means that that the sources
of this information and in some places victims names and etcetera,
had not been blacked out. Yeah. In other words, there
were names of individuals within these cables that someone who
(46:36):
is reading over this could then target, either politically or
literally target these these folks that are mentioned in these cables,
and so there were there's a lot of criticism leveled
against Wiki leaks and against Assange, saying that it was
being irresponsible and endangering people's lives. Assange has not been
the most um compassionate person in regards to this. He's
(46:59):
often said that, uh, his goal is to save innocent lives,
but if it endangers a few people because of the
information that's revealed in these in these cables, then that's
you know, that's acceptable. I'm paraphrasing. That's not exactly what
he said, but it's it's more or less the message
that has been given collateral murder. Yeah, it's yeah, that's
(47:19):
the problem is that the Lauren seems to feel that
this might be a little touch hypocritical, considering the uh,
the criticisms that WikiLeaks has levied against, you know, governments
and corporations, that WikiLeaks itself seems to be engaging in
the same sort of cavalier behavior towards people's safety. And
to be fair, it is absolutely not a parallel to
(47:39):
compare um, uh putting putting a source in hypothetical danger
of persecution versus an Apache pilot killing a child in
a car. That's that's different. Yeah, that's the obviously very
different things. But it does seem to suggest that there's
a little bit of hypocrisy going on. I don't disagree
with Lauren, is what I'm saying. UM. But but but
(48:01):
that's but that is that is my personal opinion and
UH and I apologize a little bit for injecting it. Um.
This this move did did create a great rift between
Wiki Leaks and UM. Several of those newspapers or or
reporting organizations that we had been talking about them being
in cahoots with earlier, The Guardian, the New York Times, UM,
a bunch of papers around the world. Der Spiegel was
(48:22):
another one. Yeah, it was actually uh and the way
that Assange was handling the relationship between Wiki Leaks and
these news organizations was starting to cheesse them off. Like
the Guardian had certain expectations, the New York Times had
certain expectations UH, and the Guardian had felt that the
New York Times was going to be able to report
(48:44):
on certain things which the Guardian actually wanted to have happened,
because again the Guardians in the UK and the secrecy
laws are such that there were there were these partnerships
between the Guardian and New York Times where New York
Times could publish some stuff that would possibly get the
Guardian into trouble but would still benefit the Guardian in
some way. So it was this this kind of weird
(49:05):
relationship that was going on. But then a sane got
essentially got ticked off at the New York Times for
the way that the New York Times handled its information.
Because one thing that the New York Times would do
is approached the government and say, hey, we receive these
cables and we plan on running with the story, but
we're letting you know ahead of time, whereas in the
UK that's generally not done. Generally in the UK they
(49:26):
run the story, so that put pressure on the Guardian
and also put pressure on a Sane And then as
Sane was apparently very much upset about this and wanted
to sever the relationship with The New York Times, but
the Guardians still wanted this relationship with the New York Times.
If this is starting to sound like the relationships in
middle school drama club, that's kind of what it comes
(49:46):
out to being, except the stakes are obviously way higher. Absolutely,
and uh yeah, they the newspapers five five global newspapers
bound up putting out a joint statement that said, um,
we deplored the decision of Wiki Leaks to pub which
the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk.
The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his and
his alone, right, yeah, because they all had the policy
(50:09):
of actually going through and very carefully uh redacting any
identifiable information to protect sources and to protect people who
could potentially become a victim of some agency. And uh
and you know that was an important part of their process,
to the point where you had people entire departments in
charge of reviewing every single cable to make certain that
(50:33):
all the stuff they published was going to be safe,
and so for this move to happen on wiki leaks
and meant that a lot of that work was just nullified.
And obviously that is a good reason to become upset. Well,
once you get into about May two thousand twelve, so
Assange had been fighting extradition attempts and he had been
(50:55):
living in London while Sweden authorities were trying to extradite
into Sweden. He had he had spent about a week
in jail in December on those um extradition charges. Yeah,
and he had for being released on bail, been in
and out of court trying to appeal extradition. And by
made two thousand twelve, the British Supreme Court, it had
(51:16):
gone all the way up to the British Supreme Court
said no, we're not going to prevent your extradition. You
are going to have to go to Sweden to stand trial.
That's when a sane then started to appeal to Ecuador
the embassy in the UK and actually saying will you
grant me asylum? And it was at a point where
he was in the he was staying in the embassy.
(51:37):
He had not officially been granted asylum by Ecuador, and
then there was going to be apparently a raid on
the Ecuador embassy in order to get a Sange out,
and that's when Ecuador said, we're giving you asylum. So
it's almost when it's possible that that that raid was
the precipitated Yeah, that was exactly the moment where the
(51:57):
Ecuador said, you know, we weren't going to but now
we totally are because now it's political. So it's still
very complicated issue, um and you know, guilt or innocence aside.
It's it's one of those stories that is really complicated
and tough to to kind of unwind and follow. So anyway,
Wiki leaks is still still a thing still around. It's
(52:20):
still you know, accepts leaked information. Uh. It has uncovered
lots of stories, not just with governments, but like we said,
with corporations, some of which have caused newspapers to get
into trouble for running the stories. Things like you know,
major corporations that may have fallen short on promises for
doing things like cleaning up a gasoline spill. There was
(52:42):
a specific example of that, um and it continues to
fulfill that role. Some argue that it's even possible that
the whole Assange story could just be a smoke and
mirrors for Wiki Leaks to continue doing what it does
without having to worry about some focus because there's this
fall guy. Right. Yeah, You've got this very flashbank kind
(53:04):
of person over here who's going like, look at me,
extradition charges. Yeah, and then they can continue doing their
their political political work. Right. So, uh, I doubt that
anything is that planned out because life is just complicated
and messy and it's tough to ever have a plan that,
like James bond Isshue be very impressed. But but you
(53:28):
know it's possible. You know, if they did do that,
then it's it's the stuff of movie legend. Speaking of
movie legends, there is a film being made well there
there there are two films that have been um in
production recently. One is a documentary that was just released
I believe Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets, right, and that
(53:52):
one focused both on a sang and on Manning correct
and uh and sort of it was supposed to be
in all awards and all kind of portrayal. And some
people say that his portrayal of Assange does give sort
of a warts and all approach. In fact, I think
you know, Assange definitely did not make that relationship a
sweet one because apparently he demanded outright that if Gimney
(54:18):
where to talk to Assange, you would cost him a
million bucks, and the documentary filmmaker, that's probably not the
best way to win that person over to your side. No, Yeah,
Assange has come out very vocally against this documentary, which
is funny because people other people have also on both sides,
have come down upon this documentary right and and some
(54:39):
some people are proponents of it. One uh former Wiki
Leaks employee in particular, James ball Um reported reported it
being a very accurate portrayal, like to the point that
it was deja bou seeing the film. Now, there are
some who say that Manning's portrayal was overly sympathetic. That
(54:59):
they do, you know, it's hard to say that that
it's unjustified, because you're talking about one person who may
very well have been acting in what he thought was
the right way to to expose what he saw as
unethical behavior. And there's no you know, there's no official
way of doing it and any hope of it being addressed.
(55:21):
And so he went outside the system in order to
try and have this done. That's that's kind of the
story that's being told. There are other people who say
it's more complicated than that, and that you know, it
wasn't truly altruistic motivations that had him do what he did.
But again, that's a really complicated story. When you're doing
a documentary film, you have to simplify things so that
you can and be so two hours long. And note
(55:46):
that was one of the criticisms I saw was that
it made uh Manning out to be more sympathetic than
than the person felt that he should be. Uh. I
think it's really hard to say that you can't feel
sympathy for someone who's being held for a military trial
that doesn't have the same same protections as a criminal
(56:07):
or civil case would in a normal court of law.
But you know, again, I don't know, so we don't
know the guy, don't know all the details. So uh,
you know that will play out and the judge will
come to a decision. So the other one is, um,
it's it's a fictional film, or I mean fictional, it's
a biopic maybe Barnaby cumberbund In it a cumber Batch
(56:35):
right right, I'm sorry, John Harrison. Is that John Harrison? Um?
This This film is called The Fifth Est State. It's
being directed by Bill Condon, UM, and it is slated
to be released on October eleven. UM and uh. Cumber
Batch has said that Assange directly asked him to not
do the film, UM, calling it a massive propaganda attack. Yeah,
(57:00):
then maybe it is. I haven't seen it. I don't know.
We'll have to wait here. But if you want to
see some really cool pictures of Benedict Comberbatch looking intense
with bleach bleach hair, um, those are on the internet.
And that wraps up this episode, this classic episode of
tech Stuff, the Wiki leaks story. Like I said, we
(57:21):
probably need to go back and revisit this one. A
lot has happened with Wiki leaks, a lot of ups
and downs with that story. So I'll probably do a
follow up, maybe a full redo. We'll see. But if
you guys have suggestions for topics I should cover on
tech Stuff, reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter.
The handle it both is tech stuff hs W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(57:48):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows e
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
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Karah Preiss
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