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.'"

Comments

Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in March

[eldavojohn]

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? :-)

Shirley

[Anonymous Coward]

from the balls-of-steel dept.
Surely that should be 'balls of steal'.

Re:Shirley

[Pojut]

It should.

And don't call me Shirley.

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

HE should reveal the location of all US nukes and their launch codes... because those are kept secret and cost a lot of money.

Blood on his hands

[flaming error]

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.

Re:Blood on his hands

[flaming error]

There's some context to think about. The US entered WWII as a direct result of American soil being attacked. It was pretty clear that fighting back was a matter of national security. In that context it would be easy to make the case that a leaker of battlefield secrets was treasonous.

Since then we've only waged elective wars, generally for purposes that leave many of us scratching our heads in confusion. Who knows what the hell we invaded Iraq for. Our strategy there and in Afghanistan seems to be to drive around in Hummers until somebody shoots us, then chase 'em down and shoot 'em back. How that benefits our national security is a mystery to me. Maybe some of these leaked documents can clarify it.

Re:Blood on his hands

[phantomfive]

If you want to know why we invaded Iraq, all you need to do is dig around a little. Check out this letter from the PNAC to President Clinton, when Clinton was president. Look at who signed the letter, you have Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. Bush stacked his administration with members of the PNAC and they shaped his foreign policy. Go read what they wrote, what their ideology was before 9/11, and the way they acted after 9/11 will make sense. They wanted to attack Iraq, and after 9/11 they took advantage of the chance.

Basically it was to get rid of a bad guy, stabilize the region (which is a strategically important region), and intimidate other bad guys. To a degree these goals were effective, they got rid of the 'bad guy,' and they were able to intimidate Syria (another regional 'bad guy') to get out of Lebanon (for a while anyway). Whether it helps to stabilize the region remains to be seen. Iraq has democracy now, for better or for worse. Personally, while I think these are good goals, there were better ways to achieve them, and the end wasn't worth the cost. The administration led by the PNAC was an arrogant bunch.

They weren't hiding any of this if you were paying attention. The marketing speak became about terrorism when they tried to sell it to the American public, and it became about WMD when they tried to sell it to the United Nations. It is also worth remember that, while we didn't find any WMD, pretty near every country who investigated at the time, including US Democrats who voted to authorize the war, believed Saddam had WMD. It is also possible that Saddam himself thought he had WMD; at the time his administration was kind of falling apart and there was a lot of corruption, so people could have been telling him things that weren't true.

Re:Team up with the Daily Show!

[JSBiff]

Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc. It's more editorial or commentary on the news. All of the new clips they show on the program come from other news sources.

Why the press does a bad job

[betterunixthanunix]

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.

Re:Why the press does a bad job

[elrous0]

Many government agencies have inspectors general who are *supposed* to fill that very role. But the problem is that they're rarely independent in any meaningful way, making it highly unlikely that they'll perform any other role than making it *look like* someone is there to do fair investigations. Even at the executive level (in the U.S.) the Attorney General is theoretically supposed to handle such investigations. But who is going to conduct any investigation of the President or his party when he is the very man who appoints (and can fire) them?

Re:Why the press does a bad job

[seanthenerd]

I sometimes wonder if perhaps government needs another wing,

an executive, a legislature, a judiciary and another wing(investigative?) with the job of (but not monopoly on)letting everyone know what the hell the other 3 are up to

I'm often surprised (and impressed) by how well the CBC here in Canada and the BBC in the UK objectively report on government actions and policies. Both of them are government-owned entities, but they seem to provide a much more critical lens on that very government than the private commercial news broadcasters do. It's really counter-intuitive.

Re:Team up with the Daily Show!

[Scrameustache]

Don't get me wrong, The Daily Show is great, but it's not really journalism - they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field, etc. It's more editorial or commentary on the news. All of the new clips they show on the program come from other news sources.

They're the only one bothering to do background research, they're the only ones exposing contradictions and bullshit, sure they only comment on news already told, but their analysis is head and shoulders above any of the "real" news shows. And those shows also mostly only retweet news.

I stand by my attack on news organizations: They all suck and a comedy show is better at their job than they are.

Democracy

[Darkness404]

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.

Small, independent, nothing to lose

[JSBiff]

"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).

some amount of secrecy is warranted

[SethJohnson]

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

Re:some amount of secrecy is warranted

[betterunixthanunix]

The problem, though, is that people can no longer trust the government to give accurate information about our reasons for going to war, the state of affairs in the war, or what sort of conduct our soldiers are engaging in. If it were the case that when the government says, "this document is being kept secret to protect the lives of people who are helping us," we could actually trust that is the case and that the government is not just trying to hide some sort of mistake (like an apache helicopter crew killing someone who was trying to bring a wounded reporter to the hospital), then I would say that yeah, Wikileaks is not doing us a service. Unfortunately, when the government says something is being kept secret for national security purposes, it is not possible to know whether there really is a good reason to keep it secret, or if it is just part of another attempt to keep the public in the dark about what our supposed representatives are doing. Keep in mind that the US government classified a copyright treaty as a national security secret.

As one of the people who works with Wikileaks recently said, the people in Iraq and Afghanistan know what is happening in the war. They see the civilian deaths all the time. Why, then, does the US government want to keep the American public in the dark about civilian deaths in the wars that we are fighting?

Extreme secrecy on the part of the government demands the sort of extreme response that Wikileaks represents. Until we can trust the government, Wikileaks is doing vital and necessary work to preserve the right of the people to know what their government is up to, which is absolutely necessary for a democracy to work.

The rest of the world media has bills to pay

[SmallFurryCreature]

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?

Re:Team up with the Daily Show!

[Halo1]

they don't break any stories, send reporters out into the field

Actually, they do send out people in the field from time to time, and then I don't mean "put them in front of a blue or green screen". See e.g. Jason Jones' excellent Behind the Veil series that was recorded in Iran.

A couple more interviews

[BertieBaggio]

I don't know how much of the content at the links below is repeated in TFA, but I thought these were good:

• Interview in the Guardian
• Audio interview on BBC R4 Media Show. The Assange segment starts about 2/3 through from memory, but the first bit on Bloody Sunday is interesting and worth a listen too.

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:)

• Wikileaks' Afghanistan war logs: how our datajournalism operation worked
• Wikileaks Afghanistan files: download the key incidents as a spreadsheet
• Afghanistan war logs: our selection of significant incidents

Good Stuff

[carp3_noct3m]

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.

Consider, also, *what* is classified

[whitroth]

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?"

There is a need for classified material.

[whizbang77045]

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.

WikiLeaks probably has their own agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Team up with the Daily Show!

[Scrameustache]

I like the show but it isn't really news.

And yet it's more "news" than the news shows. I'll say again: A show that, by everyone's admission isn't a news show, is a better news show than any news show. That, off course, is more of a commentary on news shows than on the Daily Show.

Re:I still say

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Glory Hound

[kismet666]

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?

Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar

[amRadioHed]

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.

Re:Idiot

[CannonballHead]

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.

But you can't trust wikileaks either

[exabrial]

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'.

Re:Team up with the Daily Show!

[IICV]

They really are - MSNBC reports "this dude said A". And that's it.

The Daily Show reports "this dude said A today, but last month he was saying not A! Further, his entire political position is premised on not A! So when he says A today, he's full of shit".

And that's the sort of analysis we want to hear. The fact that it's also hilarious is a bonus.

Re:Slashdot Had the Option to Interview Him in Mar

[tuxgeek]

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