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Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks
An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
But for some reason the firehose put it down to purple and it was rejected. I understand he's a media whore with shady beginnings but what was everyone afraid of? That the interview would go poorly and he'd start releasing sensitive Slashdot information? :-)
My work here is dung.
Wikileaks and the Daily Show are some of the very few examples of real journalism we can find today, I hope they team up and become a hilarious force of journalistic good.
You can't take the sky from me...
from the balls-of-steel dept.
Surely that should be 'balls of steal'.
HE should reveal the location of all US nukes and their launch codes... because those are kept secret and cost a lot of money.
Julian Assange also admits someday he's probably going to have "blood on his hands." He has put himself in a tough situation. But I'm betting the increased daylight will do more good than bad.
I admire whistleblowers. But there is sometimes a fine line between heroism and stupidity. And whistleblowers almost always pay a hefty price for what they do. Best case scenario they either lose their job outright or are shuffled off into a corner somewhere, never to be trusted or promoted again. Worst case scenario, they end up in jail or dead. The "thanks" are usually short-lived, the stain of being an employee/contractor/soldier who can't be trusted lasts forever.
I hope this guy and his whistleblowers continue to keep fighting and that Wikileaks is around for a long time. But, make no mistake about it, the powers-that-be will fight it. And the more Wikileaks releases, the farther those powers will be willing to go to silence the site.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The press does a bad job specifically because it is not just a group of volunteers; the press ultimately needs to make enough money to pay reporters, journalists, editors, etc. In countries where news is a business, getting on the government's bad side can mean losing access to news sources (the ability to speak with powerful people); in countries where news is sponsored by the government, getting on the government's bad side could mean getting fired or receiving less funding. There are a few exceptional cases, such as the New York Times leaking the illegal wiretapping program, but more often than not it seems that news organizations avoid creating controversies.
Palm trees and 8
Organizations like Wikileaks are essential to having a democratic country. Such a thing like the Afghan War Diary is very much needed to evaluate which leaders to elect. Remember these are our tax dollars being used/wasted to fight this war. We have a right to know the body count and the details about past missions. Without that how am I supposed to know who to vote for? If I don't have the facts, how can I make an educated decision? My only choice is through the mainstream media which doesn't have the facts.
I need -facts- to back up my election choices. I need to know stuff like the Afghan War Diary, otherwise how will I know if its worth continuing the Afghan war? It seems my only two options in the mainstream media is either DESTROY ALL TERRORISTS WITH NUKES!!!!! and EVERY SOLDIER WHO GOES TO AFGHANISTAN KILLS 324234 CHILDREN!!!! and none of them deal with the facts.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"
In some specific regards he's right. He and his staff take on some personal risks of reprisals, but I think the reason he is doing what other sources of Journalism aren't, is that he *can*. Unfortunately, most of the world media is either State-controlled, or owned by for-profit corporations, which means in the first case that they aren't allowed to report such things, by the government which controls them, or in the second case, aren't as willing to take the risks, because it might hurt profits.
I think only a a relatively small, non-profit, or possibly, privately owned, organization can actually engage in such risky journalism, because they have basically nothing to lose (well, some of the staff could lose their personal property and/or go to jail).
The drawback to wholesale leaks like this is that sometimes innocent people can be harmed. As an example, when Valerie Plame's identity was divulged, the CIA downplayed her official capacity as being that of a desk jockey. That's what they'll say whether she really is a desk jockey, or an elite 007 killing machine. Anyway, the problem with exposing Valerie Plame is that she had contacts in the field who were then exposed to have been meeting with a CIA agent. Kinda puts those people at risk within their own organizations.
Same with these documents. Even a casual remark in a report about a helpful shop owner can put that person on a Taliban hit list.
The perspective espoused by WikiLeaks is irresponsible and naive.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Someone recently linked an image comparing the CNN homepage with Al Jazeera Home page. The difference is extreme. One is a gossip rag, the other a, highly biased, news source.
But CNN probably makes more money, or used to anyway.
Remember the story about Ballmer being a bad CEO despite raising revenue and profits? That is because in the United Corporations of America, making a profit isn't enough you always go to be growing your profits and growing the amount by which your profits grow. Raise your profits for 10 years in a row by 25% and you are doing badly, it should be year 1: 25%, year 2: 40%, year 3: 60% etc etc. Impossible? Yes it is, but is what the stock market wants, what employees payed in stock options want.
So everything in the UCA is constantly squeezed, cost cutting here, cost cutting there. Spend a little less, earn a little more until you are left with... well it the iPhone 4. Made with slave labour, broken by design. And no this isn't just about Apple. Dell is even better at it. Sold broken PC's, broke anti-trust laws everything to increase the bottom line year after year.
And then you apply it to news. And news isn't cheap or efficient or effective. And you won't notice when it is gone until it is far to late. Until you get to a state that "politicians" refuse to speak to journalists and have them barred from events and only ask questions submitted in advance and then only those they like. Sarah Palin anyone? If you think she is bad, the exact same thing has been going on for a long time. Ask the wrong questions and forget about getting invited to the special events. So no reporter at a white house press briefing asks hard questions, at least not without prior approval.
Think about it, if journalists asked real questions, guys like Bush and Blair would have been as embarrased as when they meet a private citizen who manages to corner them. Brits might remember Blair being totally unable to counter woman questioning him on public health care. Brown the same. What NO report mentioned is that not a SINGLE ONE OF THE PRESS CORE asked those questions. If you are reporter and you haven't had a poltician cry, then suck. And this is the same around the world.
In Holland we have tv news for children. If you compare that show from ten years ago with the adult news, you will find that the adult news now is softer then the children news from way back.
But who is to blame? Big business intrests? Perhaps, but we the public let them. We let the likes of Murdoch own every newssource. We don't refuse to watch fluf pieces on the news and now the fluff has become the news.
And don't blame it on the right either. The left is just as guilty of it. The right has fluff pieces that ignore global warming and corporate corruption. The left has fluff pieces that ignore problems with immigration and culture clashes.
Fluff is not just Idols, it is news that doesn't upset you.
If you read a news source and you agree with it, then you are reading fluff. And we like it. See how quickly people resort to flamebait and troll to silence troubling thoughts on slashdot.
There was another piece, that people seek communities in games that give them the least amount of stress. Well, that is also how we seek out news. Be REALLY honest with yourself, how often do you purposefully seek out news from a source critical to your own world views?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah, because I really want a country based on democracy to hide all the essential facts from their citizens. Look without facts how is it possible to make an informed decision on election day? The mainstream media is terrible, and things like Wikileaks is the only possible way to get solid facts to base your decision on election day on.
Without solid facts like this we end up having the Afghan War debated on two sides, the leftist side of EVERY SOLDIER KILLS CHILDREN and the right-wing side of LETS NUKE ALL OF AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ, KOREA, AND CANADA!!! Rather than a sane cost-to-benefit ratio.
Why is it that the mainstream media doesn't use -facts- to prove their points. Things like "For every day of war we spend XXXXX dollars, we kill XX civilians, XX terrorists, and destroy XXXX worth of infrastructure" would be a great way for people to know if they want to continue this war. Without that though we have the two extremes, extreme pacifism and extreme militarism.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I don't know how much of the content at the links below is repeated in TFA, but I thought these were good:
Apologies to those outside the UK or otherwise without access as the second interview is on iPlayer.
(Incidentally, the Guardian also had access to the Afghanistan data, as was mentioned in a previous /. article. Since I have the tabs open, I'll repeat some key links from that here:)
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
As a USMC Iraq combat vet, who has for the past few months been studying the Afghan situation extensively, I can say that this is a good thing. Anybody who is actually involved knows that the Paki, and more specifically ISI, have been a problem for us since the early 80's, and not much has changed. The Paki's have and will continue to say "What? Not us!" but they are full of shit. The fact that the politicians are relatively good at hiding this fact undermines the general public's knowledge about the situation, and therefore it is a major part of controlling public opinion about our war. The facts are that we send money to ISI (often bypassing paki authorities completely) who then have (sometimes rogue) officers directly funding everything from afghan warlords, to Al Queda, to Paki Talibs, and on down the line. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan has absolutely no interest in really getting rid of their extremists, on either border, because Islamabad has so much fear of India, the militants are a tool they plan to use if needed. They will only do enough to keep our money flowing to them, but not enough to truly alienate the extremists. Its enormously complicated, with factors such as Iran and Russia playing into the equation. Regardless, I just hope that Assange did a good enough job purging of intel that could jeopardize people, but when so much is being hid, this kind of knowledge should be made public, albeit perhaps a bit with a bit more ambiguous information.
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I was wondering what happened to that.
I guess some people harbour angry feelings towards him for releasing that military video - something along the lines of loose lips might sink ships. I think more good than harm came from releasing the video, but I can see where it strikes a nerve with some people.
I mean if your kid happened to be in the military - and it would appear that the military is hiding something your kids may or may not be doing - it would make you feel uneasy, to say the least. Most parents would still side with their kids though.
We know, for a fact, that there's a *lot* of material being classified that has *ZERO* relation to national security, and every relation to embarrassing or revealing criminal malfeasance by those doing the classifying.
Let's see the documents that Cheney and Bush used to justify invading and conquering Iraq. Let's see the ones explaining the real reasons that the US did *not* use our troops to take Tora Bora.
mark "and where's the war crimes tribunals?"
Some things simply have to be kept private, if national defense is to function in our best interests. It's simply impossible for anyone outside of the government to second guess what must be kept secret, and what must not. Julian Assange is not in a position to make these judgments. He simply does not have the complete picture. All leaking bits and pieces can do is create a less than complete picture. He is not doing U.S. citizens a service. Conversely, if we cannot trust our government to make this decision, we need to do something about our government.
So I wonder why members of their organizations never send anything to WikiLeaks? Makes the playing field somewhat uneven don't you think?
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
A democratic elected government -cannot- be secret otherwise it fails to elect good leaders. If I'm paying for a war, I better know damn well where every chunk of lead paid for by me, the taxpayer, went. I better be able to know if it hit a civilian, a terrorist, one of our own soldiers, etc. I better know how much the war is costing, both in lives, loss of freedom, and in terms of dollars.
And before you say this guy doesn't leak anything of importance from other regimes, there has been many leaks of censorship lists and other nasty documents from China and other dictatorships, its just that things like that don't make headlines here in the west.
How do you expect us to elect good leaders if we don't know what they do? By the media which ignores facts? By some magical-ness that lets you look at a candidate and see if hes a good choice? By commercials which lie?
The knowledge of just about everything the government does is essential to maintaining a free country. Otherwise how the hell do I know who to vote for?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The trap we can fall into with WikiLeaks in my opinion is that they themselves can craft a leak to suit their own political agenda. If they are the ones responsible for redacting certain information in information they are going to post, it wouldn't be very hard to redact or edit certain parts to make documents sound very different than the original.
What they are doing is great in principle but they are in a position of "power" that is easy to abuse. I'm not suggesting they should stop but we as readers need to take what they post with a grain of salt and do as much fact checking as we can.
he's a media whore with shady beginnings
Anyone would become a "media whore" in a situation where being one could make the difference between staying alive or getting shot in a dark alley with noone caring about it...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Of course! Because we all know how well democracy works when people can't get facts. Facts are -essential- to any sort of democracy without facts democracy falls apart.
These things were all pre-Obama all quite old. It is -essential- that people get the facts without them being obscured. Without it, democracy can no longer work.
Without facts, explain to me how democracy can work?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Secrecy is entrusted to the government on the assumption that it will only be used when truly needed.
However the same power can be and is abused to subvert the freedom of its own people, as misappropriation for personal gain by powerful people and used to cover up ineffective, improper, illegal or immoral activity.
Whistle blowers object to these abuses and fight against it in the only way possible, by removing the shroud of secrecy and revealing these violations of trust to the public.
Mistakes may be made, but revealing the abuse of trust by the government is vital to the continuation of freedom and democracy.
I suspect that, if he had them, he'd release them. For reasons that should be obvious, American news stories about wikileaks tend to focus on wikileaking of American documents; but if you head over to wikileaks directly, and trawl through the archvies, there is all kinds of stuff, pertaining to a wide variety of institutions and governments and issues. Shockingly, leaks of grindingly technical minutes of some obscure EU trade negotiation just don't have the media impact of videos of helicopters shooting stuff.
Further, I'm guessing that wikileaks has a much, much easier time in places where it has embedded sympathizers, and in places with languages that they have people who speak. There is no evidence that wikileaks has any spies of its own, just that they operate a convenient system for whistleblowers to make drops. How many whistleblowers with big caches of digital documents(and internet connections) do you fancy there are in North Korea?
I think Wikileaks plays an important role in information being free (as in information)
My concern is that with the things that he releases, and especially what he chooses to focus on, that he has an agenda and that he is using what is otherwise noble to press that agenda.
"Who the hell is this guy to decide for a democratically elected government what should remain secret or not?"
Someone who values freedom of information and accountability over murky special interests and the protection of political elites?
"Who the hell is this guy to decide for a democratically elected government what should remain secret or not?"
Someone who has obviously spent a little more time than you have on thinking about the implications of his points of view. Democracy depends crucially on the availabilty of information that makes it possible for the voters to hold their elected leaders accountable. No accountability means no democracy. In a world where more and more of the big media corporations have become extremely fixated on profit and are being more and more limited in their role by various laws and other means (secret gag orders in the UK, libel shopping, exclusion from important events if you are overly critical, embedding of journalists with troups on strict rules about what they can and cannot report on, etc) we have a desperate need for organizations that find ways to get past those limitations of traditional journalism and get people the information they need.
Your argument regarding North Korea, Zimbabwe and Congo is fatally flawed since a whisleblower site depends on people providing them with info and they have no control over those sources. Furthermore if you type any of those country names in the Wikileaks search box you will find loads of documents as well as links to news articles regarding those countries.
I suspect Wikileaks leaks what whistleblowers provide them. How would they be able to leak embarassing documents from places where there are no whistleblowers submitting things to Wikileaks? Also, are you saying that as long as the USA isn't as bad as North Korea or China its good enough? I thought the USA was a democracy with free speech that was a beacon for all of the world to admire, was I wrong? Is the USA really just trying to stay above the bottom 5% of the world? Regarding Assange's personality, I think that only someone with a huge ego, big balls, and a desire for publicity would be able to lead Wikileaks. A meaker man wouldn't hold up under the constant scrutiny and criticism. What does it matter whether you like the guy or not? How is the guy's demeanor significant? Who cares if the guy enjoys international attention, if Wikileaks is helping to uncover lies that allow organizations to exploit the masses isn't it doing a public service?
I remember elementary school, and as I recall it there weren't that many innocent people being murdered. Comparing tattling in the schoolyard to uncovering potential war crimes is just ridiculous. When serious wrongs are being done then yes I do like tattle tails, narcs, informants, snitches, or whatever you would call them. What I don't like are complicit cowards.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Why is it that the mainstream media doesn't use -facts- to prove their points. Things like "For every day of war we spend XXXXX dollars, we kill XX civilians, XX terrorists, and destroy XXXX worth of infrastructure" would be a great way for people to know if they want to continue this war. Without that though we have the two extremes, extreme pacifism and extreme militarism.
What about how much we spend building infrastructure and how many civilians we liberate from oppressive regimes?
Or are those facts too biased to be mentioned?
It could just be oversight on your part :) But it seems that the prevailing view about the war is that the only stats that really count are deaths and destruction... nothing about the entire military engineers that are building ... say ... roads. Girls' schools that were not allowed previously. Some people view those facts as propaganda for "excusing" the war in some way. I say that leaving out those facts is propaganda for dismissing the war as entirely bad and thus should not be continued.
Unfortunately, as soon as someone SUPPORTS a war, people automatically assume that they support killing innocent civilians ... and as soon as someone DOES NOT SUPPORT the war, people assume they do not support the "troops" or think they agree with the oppressive regimes/governments.
In other words, everybody seems to think everybody else either supports everything that goes on or does not support everything that goes on, and misrepresents facts in order to "prove" that the other person does this.
Citing only death and destruction as figures to decide on the war is biased towards ending the war. Citing only good things that happen (rebuilding or even building things that weren't there to begin with, for example) and hiding the other is biased towards continuing the war.
" Where are his efforts to find the Taliban documents showing their human rights violations?"
Where are his efforts to find proof that water is wet?
"And where are the documents showing the amount of effort the US soldiers put in distributing contributions from US citizens, including medical, school, and sport supplies? Putting themselves in harms way to protect civilians during firefights? Or the extrodinary efforts they take to try to limit civilian casualties."
Front and centre at every press conference and event where the military want to make themselves look good.
They're already making every effort to get that information front and centre.
Wikileaks job is to show the other half of the story.
"And where are the documents showing the Taliban's indiscriminate placing of IEDs and the number innocent lives they have taken?? Hmmm??? "
Actually the recent leak had quite a lot of info about the civilian deaths caused by IED's.
Nice to know you've been too lazy to actually read anything before posting.
A journalist uncovers information which needs to be heard.
if a journalist discovers a company selling hotdogs made of rat meat they shouldn't have to spend an equal portion of their time talking about how really the companies products are quite good and affordable in some parody of being "unbiased".
"it's a data dump that any 12 year old with access to the Internet could do if they got the data."
get back to me when you find some 12 year olds who regularly get their hands on data which makes front pages worldwide.
I think Wikileaks is a great idea in theory, but just like the USA, EU, and everyone else... Wikileaks also has a political agenda.
Lets says Pres Obama said, "I'm going to release 70,000 war documents about Afghanistan." And such documents detailed mostly happy things about the war in Afghanistan. We'd have CNN, Foxnews etc saying how the documents were released strategically to paint a light picture of a grim war.
Yet somehow, when a third party receives documents and ADMITTEDLY filters through them, absolutely no one is questioning the political motivation of such third party.
I'd like to believe in Wikileaks, but I don't trust the man's agenda, and neither should you. It's merely business as usual, and should be taken as 'another piece of the whole truth'.
Yeah he really gets off on drawing attention to militaries killing innocent civilians. What a self-centered jerk.
The difference between the countries you name and the US, as human rights violators, is that the US is clearly the biggest violator of human rights all the while claiming to be the enforcer of human rights laws globally.
We covertly support war criminals and dictators when politically advantageous, Saddam was one such person that comes to mind. We've also supported and sold weapons to the islamic leadership of Iran even though publicly we recognize them as adversaries.
We've started wars and invaded countries promoting ourselves as heroes and saviors and then kill civilians using depleted uranium weapons before pillaging all wealth from those countries.
The headlines today state that our pentagon has misplaced and cannot account for $8.7B of Iraq's reconstruction money. I wonder who's pockets were lined with that.
It's good there is something like WikiLeaks out there that is willing to risk themselves and their lives to expose just what hypocrites, liars and assholes the American leadership really is. Every American should hang their heads in shame over what we've allowed ourselves to become. Global assholes!
Here at home, we've had political leadership for at least 30 years now, that no longer fear the people. We are being ass-raped by our government and are unwilling to do anything about it, like go to DC and kill everyone there.
We now have the government we deserve
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Countries
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Russia
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Cuba
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Venezuela
Wow, you really did your homework on that one. I mean, I've never even visited Wikileaks before today, and I found these links in less than 30 seconds. The only people "locked in on the US" here are the US media, who have another circus when new US government documents are posted in Wikileaks. So basically you blame this guy for the US media's reaction to some US whistle-blower publishing something on his web site, which strikes me as more than a little sheep-ish.
If there really are fewer documents from these countries, it's because being a whistle-blower in one of those countries is a good way to commit suicide. Actually, it may be an excruciatingly painful way to do it, but I think you get the picture.
I don't think the guy in charge of Wikileaks is a journalist, either. I think he's in it for the fame, and for the money that generally comes with it. But that doesn't make your statements any less ridiculous.
We already *know* that the Chinese government abuses human rights. China abuses human rights. Teenage boys wear hoods. Bears shit in the woods.
On the other hand, the United States claims to be whiter than white, and claims to value freedom and all the rest. Therefore, it is much more significant when you can prove the US government is saying one thing, but in reality is sending people for torture, lying to the electorate, doing things at the behest of energy company executives etcetera.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Effectively wrong on many levels -- for starters, the ones "electing" weren't local Hawaiians, but rather the rich oligarchs from the mainland US and Europe.
Oh, dear. Have you ever heard the term banana republic? That mostly applied to Central America and the tactics of fruit companies there, but the basic mechanics were very much at work in Hawaii as well, only for pineapples instead of bananas. (Hint -- Dole Fruit started in Hawaii, and the founder's cousin appointed himself head of the forcibly instated "Republic of Hawaii".) Rich white businessmen forcibly stripped the Hawaiian monarchy of power and relegated locals to an undercaste position.
Read up on Hawaiian history next time before posting stuff like this. Hawaii was very much overrun by capitalist white folks bent on enforcing their will, locals be damned -- or better yet, de facto enslaved to work the fruit plantations.
Try this and this for starters.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
'A media whore with shady beginnings' ? Hardly..
He's got open-source projects under his belt with rubberhose (which, at the time was pretty cool), and boring stuff like NNTP caching. He's did a fair amount of work in the security / privacy computer sciences.
And if you think about it, his impact on the world with wikileaks has been greater than essentially everything he did before it. And he's remained true to his ideals consistently, he didn't just hop on the web2.0 'lets start a wiki' thing out of no-where. It's an extension of his political and ethical belief system.
Haters gonna hate..