A Thought on Wikileaks

Shanice Hrouda

If you’ve heard of Wikileaks, for many people it will be because of a recent film: Fifth Estate , featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, aka our beloved Sherlock Holmes as Julian Assange. Hollywood did their job, but they failed to hold to the true purpose of the organization- honesty.

WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organization officially launched in 2007. Their goal is to bring news and information to the public, provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to journalists via an electronic drop box.

They consider one of their most important activities to be publishing original source material alongside their news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. WikiLeaks has sustained and triumphed against legal and political attacks designed to silence the publishing organisation, their journalists and their anonymous sources. The broader principle on which their work is based are the defense of freedom of speech and media publishing, principles derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The organization has broken stories on subjects from corruption and climate to the suppression of free speech and a free press. Generally, I would take little to no notice of a group that operates with anonymous sources and drop boxes, but the financial blockade on the group makes me pause. Since December 7th 2010, an arbitrary financial blockade was imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. The attack destroyed 95% of their revenue, and yet they continue with their work. It makes me wonder, why so much effort to silence a group of voices? What is it that this group is doing that makes large corporations want them to stop? Food for thought.
Take a look at their site, and see what you think.

http://wikileaks.org/About.html

2 thoughts on “A Thought on Wikileaks”

I recently did research and wrote a paper on the activist group called Anonymous that started the Wikileaks origination and find it fascinating. I think your dead on about the fact that the government wouldn’t have to put pressure on organizations to sabotage the site unless they saw it as a threat. I believe that most the information submitted to the site is legitimate and I think it is a powerful tool that people can use to get their voice back and reveal realities of the government that would otherwise not be available to the public.