What Is Wikileaks Website - Essay Example

0[ (Due What is wikileaks (the website) Wikileaks is a non-profit making media organization whose main goal is to bring important information and news to the public. It provides new methods and anonymous ways to leak information to the public. Wikileaks is a website that publishes submissions of private, secret and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks and whistle blowers. Wikileaks mainly publishes original source material information alongside news stories from within so that readers can see the evidential truth. It mainly relies on a global network, the network of volunteers who are dedicated to the organizations objectives. The organizational operations are designed to protect journalists, activists and whistleblowers. What does it mean (the website and the word Wikileaks) The term wikileaks is a combination of two terms “wiki” and “Leaks” each of which is defined separately. According to Jennings, a wiki is a server program that permits users to work together in making up the content of a website. With it, any user who is using a web browser from their own computer can edit the site including other user’s contributions (4). It uses a collaboration of many users. The contributors can view the page any time conveniently before and after changes have been made to it. According to Jennings, the term wiki comes from Hawaiian language meaning fast. From the English dictionary, the word leak is defined as permitting to escape or to flaw. The leak part of the word describes what the organization does (Times Taffn.p). Wikileaks is an organization which gathers information that governments and institutions do not want released and posts it on the internet where everyone can read it. It is a system for untraceable mass document leaking. A little about the background/history of the website The founding and registration of wikileaks.org domain name was done on 4th October 2006 and was launched under the sunshine press organization. The founder of wikileaks was Julian Assange who was an Australian internet activist. The wikileaks site however states that it was “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa”. It was not until 2007 when Julian Assange was referred to as the “founder” of wikileaks. The advisory board consisted of Assange, Phillip Adams,Wang Dan, CJ Hinke, Ben Laurie, TashiNamgyalKhamsitsag, Xiao Qiang, Chico Whitaker and Wang Youcai. It started publishing leaked documents in 2007 which were significant and became leading front page news items. Since it was launched and started working, wikileaks has endured and overcome legal and political attacks purposed to silence publications, journals and anonymous sources from it. Wikileaks was originally launched as a user-editable site but has progressively moved towards a more traditional publication and currently it no longer accepts comments or edits by users. However, the organization heavily relies on volunteers who are above a thousand including the board members. A little about the founder (briefly) and what does he want to deliver to the world from his website? How he wants people to use his website, and what for? The founder of wikileaks is Julian Assange who was born on 3 July 1971. He is an Australian journalist, publisher, media and internet entrepreneur, media critic, computer programmer and a political activist. As the founder, he is also the editor in chief of wikileaks. In his youth, Assange was a computer hacker before becoming a skilled programmer and a political activist. He has been a speaker on press freedom censorship and investigative journalism in many public appearances in many countries. Through his works, he has won several awards and nominations including the nomination for the 2011 Nobel peace prize and Amnesty International Media Award Among others. In his youth, he began hacking under the name “mendrax” together with two of his friends whom they formed a group called International Subversives. According to wikileaks, Assange states that one should not damage computer systems they break into or change the information in them but they should cover tracks instead. Assange was regarded as the most and famous ethical computer hacker (Personal Democracy Forum). The Australian federal police discovered his group and upon investigations in September 1991, they were caught hacking into the Canadian Telecommunications Company master terminal. He was arrested and taken to court in a case which took three years where action was brought against him for hacking computers belonging to Australian University. He pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking and was released on bond after being fined several thousand Australian dollars. He later spent three years working with an academic researcher on the internet and wrote a book on it. This was followed by a course in physics and mathematics at Melbourne University but he did not graduate because he found a motivating factor to drop and start wikileaks. He began wikileaks in 2006 with fellow likeminded people from different places. This website’s purpose is to bring important news and information to the public. It gathers information that governments and institutions do not want released and posts it on the internet where all people can read it. Through these publications, the website suggests that it improves transparency which creates a better society for all people. In his view, it leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in society, including government corporations and other organizations. Also through the wikileaks, Assange hopes to promote freedom of the press whereby journalism is not motivated by profit incentives to write the truth.Assange through wikileakswebsite, went public on December 2006 whereby he published articles on government corporations. The most significant documents he published include the Afghanistan war and corruption in Kenya among others which made headlines in newspapers in many countries. What was the big story that made it (the website) famous and what happened to the people that they were involved with that story? According to Higgins, the most influential story was the release of a video of the US military in Afghanistan which was titled “Collateral Murder”. This story was published in April 2010 and it was gunfight footage from a Bagdad airstrike which occurred in July 2007 in which Iraqi journalists were killed amongst other people by an apache helicopter. The video was shot from the cock pit of the helicopter and shows US soldiers killing twelve people in Bagdad. In addition to the two journalists killed, two children were among the seriously injured. From the video, the pilots are seemingly aware that they are shooting civilians and they can be heard mocking the dead from the videos audio track. According to Higgins, Only insurgents and the two journalists were killed according to the US Army’s officials. According to Higgins, through this story, Assange wanted to demonstrate and prove that the Army was concealing the truth by releasing that video. He also wanted to show that media coverage of military operations was untrustworthy especially reporting on the actual insurgents. His main goal was to influence the public opinion against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan by considering them illegal and immoral. Through this publication, Assange gave several interviews on the story which had captured the world’s attention and the government received public criticism and he received praise. In their defense according to Higgins, the US military offered a different perspective of the captured events in the video. They claimed that all those killed were insurgents and it was difficult to establish whether the journalists were among them because they were mixed with them. They also claimed that it is common for insurgents to photograph such situations for their own use in training camps and propaganda(11). Some other famous stories from wikileaks. The other story from wikileaks that drew world’s attention through the media was the Kenyan corruption case. According to wikileaks, upon president Moi’s retirement in December 2002, Kenya’s new president MwaiKibaki appointed John Githongo formerly of Transparency International as his personal advisor on good governance and anticorruption. Githongo then engaged a private investigation firm, Kroll and Associates (UK) to trace money stashed abroad by the former president and his associates. The report vindicated president’s Mois relatives who were said to be his two sons and his associates. At this time, close associates of the then current president Kibaki were also implicated in the Angloleasingscandal. This turn of events caused the president to suppress further investigations on anticorruption cases. Since then, none of the assets traced and identified by Kroll have been impounded. Among them are a bank in Belgium, hotels and residences in the USA, UK, South Africa, Zambia and Australia and massive real estate and agricultural investments. The leak originated from high levels of Kenyan government and it is motivated by the desire to show that president Kibaki is aware of the corruption evidence and chooses to suppress the evidence, and has further formed alliances with former president Moi who’s Associates were vindicated in the scandal. The other motivator for the leak is the magnitude of the theft of public funds by president Moi and his associates which add up to millions of dollars. This story occupied most of the news headlines in Kenya but has since been suppressed because the government stopped or has neglected any further investigations. The other story that was published by wikileaks was the SarahPalin’s email hack story that occurred on September 2008 during the United States presidential election campaign. Her yahoo e-mail account was subjected to unauthorized access by a hacker named David Kernel. The hacker posted some screen shots of Palin’s e-mails and her address book to wikileaks. At that time, the hacker was a 20-year-old college student and he was charged in a federal court. The charges were three felonies which were identity theft, wire fraud and anticipating obstruction of justice where he pleaded not guilty. After the proceedings, the jury found him guilty of felony of anticipating obstruction of justice and the misdemeanor of unauthorized access to a computer. He was sentenced to one year and one day of prison and three years of probation. According to the guardian, addresses belonging to Palin’s aides including a draft letter to California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a discussion of nominations to the state court of appeal and several other mails were among the e-mails in her account. These actions by kernel were highly condemned by other contesting candidates who termed them as outrageous. Wikileaks vs. mainstream media (TV channels, newspapers, radio, etc) According to Choi (2008), the secrets being revealed by wikileaks show how technology made it easy to steal confidential information and post it globally. The secret revelations indicate that modern technology is shifting news leaks from mainstream media like newspapers because they can be accessed by wikileaks. Such shift has led to conflict between wikileaks and mainstream media since it transforms how the public gets information. Through this, the public has displayed a lack of confidence with mainstream media, which has been perceived as conservative and protective. The second way through which there has been conflict between the two is that wikileaks provides whistle blowers with anonymity to provide documents to the public without worry about them getting censored and filtered. Choi (2010) stated that “woes that face the journalism industry have caused it to shed investigative efforts” which require a lot of money and time for a story break. In another perspective, Feldstein suggests that wikileaks benefit from getting credibility from journalists organizations and attracts public attention from their documents, which the mainstream media does not get. As quoted in Cair (2010), Parker states, “Wikileaks is not a new organization but rather a cell of activists that is releasing information designed to embarrass people in power.” This writer from the New Yorker suggests that wikileaks is opposed to the belief that state departments are legitimate organizations therefore they should be exposed. Parker refers to it as not journalism he further suggests that mainstream media should let the government have some level of secrecy in their organs. Thirdly, Mainstream media has been accused of failing to provide a check on power. Due to this, whistle blowers have trusted wikileaks for their information. The legitimacy of the other press has been of question this is because wikileaks provides anonymity hence whistleblowers trust it compared to the mainstream media. Fourthly, in some cases, wikileaks has been appraised for its disclosures on some documents. First, Feldstein suggests that due to the relationship between mainstream media and wikileaks is an interaction, which is good for both of them. This is because wikileaks benefits from credibility from elite journalists organizations and draws public attention globally as they provide evidence. On the same case, mainstream media benefits by getting a treasure of secret documents with low risk to themselves if they had directly dealt with a whistleblower. This risk includes the risk of persecution or publishing injunctions issued by the government. In another case, the cohesiveness of wikileaks with the mainstream media occurs where release of secrets of wikileaks creates co-ordination of news outlets stories at once as opposed to breaking news by one media at a time. The whole issue of leaking information The whole issue of ethical leaking of information by wikileaks originates from its main purpose which it was established, that is to expose oppressive regimes globally and providing assistance to people wishing to reveal unethical Behavior in their government’scorporations(wikileaks). Therefore according to wikileaks, leaking information seeks to end unethical behavior of governments globally so that others can desist from such kind of behavior. Such kind of information was released by wikileaks on the corruption in Kenya and the Afghanistan shooting cases whereby, the stories revealed the level of unethical behavior being practiced by government institutions and officials. According to wikileaks, ethics is used as a means to strengthen broader social values while maximizing the gender good of society, being fair respecting human dignity and ensuring justice to the people. This is evident through the sites story especially collateral murder story where the soldiers were seemingly shooting civilians and innocent journalists. Through the story wikileaks seeks to promote human dignity and ensuring that U.S. government agencies respect the value of human life of the people in Afghanistan (Higgins 2011). The story is also a way of ensuring that for those who were innocently killed and injured, justice was served to them. Wikileaks also promotes information ethics whereby through this stories, values can be strengthened through the storage, production, distribution and use of information as well as the related systems of information, policies, infrastructure and professional duties of journalism. In addition, wikileaks observes and promotes broader ethical concerns contained in issues and laws such as access to information and control, information security and privacy and intellectual freedom. According to Zimmer (2011), wikileaks presents challenges to intellectual freedom (ALA/AALL/SLA) ethical codes and principles which encourage providing full information to meet the needs of all patrons. Another challenge from wikileaks that originates from leaking information is that intellectual freedom materials should be excluded from publications because of origin, background or contributors views to their creation. Some of the materials are obtained illegally and this creates a problem with these laws (Zimmer 2011). On information leaking, access and classification of government information, public access to information about and by the government is a basic foundation of a democratic society and is also a challenge from Wikileaks. This is important to the ability of the public to hold the government accountable for their actions but on the other hand, there is a necessity for the government to withhold certain information which relates to security. The leaking of information by wikileaks has created debate on access to and classification of government information. How information is being shared There are some general issues surrounding the whole issue of leaking and sharing of information by wikileaks to the public and some of them shall be analyzed in this paper. The site protects informers who submit confidential information or documents, which has been kept in secret by the government and corporate organizations and publishes it on the public domain. However, wikileaks have several procedures that informers submit the leak information. Firstly, the whistleblower needs to assess the information’s worth because wikileaks accepts information that is censored, classified or restricted material, which is diplomatically, politically, historically or ethically important or significant. Secondly, the whistle blower needs to directly converse with wikileaks using their chat and antilogging features on the website to give further clarification of the information so that they can avoid accidental disclosure of their identity or name. Thirdly, the informers should prepare their documents by converting them to PDF to avoid leaving trails before submitting them to wikileaks. After preparation of documents, they are now assured to submit their information through a secured submission process of uploading. Some of the methods used for submission are the online system and the postal system through wikileaks address. However, wikileaks advises against the postal submission because it can expose the sender to great risk than the online submission. There is an analysis of how wikileaks shares information to the rest of the world. According to wikileaks, publishing of stories improves transparency which later creates a better society for all people, reduction of corruption and strengthening democracies in society’s institutions such as government corporations. This is brought about through scrutiny of the various documents that they receive before publishing them. Therefore, through these activities, wikileaks acts as a source of sharing information from governments and organizations to the global public. Before sharing information, wikileaks assesses all news stories and tests their veracity. They subject documents to a very detailed procedure to prove the real elements and the motive of such documents. They do this by using traditional investigative journalism techniques and other modern technology methods. For example, in the collateral murder video and story, wikileaks claim they sent a team of journalists on the ground to interview victims and witnesses of the attack. They obtained hospital records, death certificates and eye witness statements and other evidences which supported the truth in the video. Therefore, Wikipedia shares publicly information that is authentic thereby also supporting other journalists work because they can use their documents as well. Does leaked information have an impact on governments? According to Broederset. al. (2009), An uncontrollable nature of the internet brings about major impacts on the government. This includes difficulty to channel, verify and guarantee the reliability of the leaked information that is, since the government has no control of what is posted to the public for view one can post malicious information and the public taking it as a true copy of what goes behind closed doors. Secondly, the governments whose international relations have been leaked have lead to tensions between countries a good example being the American government and Kenyan government which revealed about Kenyan leaders and this lead to diplomatic tensions between the two countries. This causes governments to view each other with suspicion breaking the friendly ties that existed before. It also jeopardizes negotiations between nations. Thirdly, Governments’ secret data whose becomes compromised can lead to breach of national security. The national secrets are broadcasted over the internet without care of who comes into possession of the data. If this lands on wrong hands, it may lead to political chaos, assassinations and country to country wars. This leads to the government to conduct it business more cautiously. The fourth impact of leaked information is that it can lead to integrity damage of the government. According to Moynihan and Combest (1997), leaked information has lead to damage of the integrity of the governments’ and public respect for the overall classification system that is vital to a country’s security. This is a result of public documents being posted on its conduct of business and critical decisions. This at times is equivalent to airing a country’s dirty linen in public. On the contrary the leaked information has had a positive impact on governments such as; better governance and freedom of speech. Did Wikileaks change the behavior of people or government officials? Leaked information has lead to better governance as the political leaders are more cautious in their activities least they are exposed. Political leaders are now careful on what they do, say or even intend to do as the public and the whole world in general is made aware and action can be taken against them or their respective governments. The people are enlightened as to what their leaders are doing a good example being of the post election violence in Kenya and how the attacks were carried out. Freedom of speech has been restored in governments as people can expose governments secrets to what they think is illegal or unethical and the government officials are trying to hide but indeed should be made aware. The various individuals can now reveal secrets without fear of victimization or oppression by the government. The governments have become more accountable and transparent as they have to account for the actions that they undertake and by chance leaks to third parties. This leads to better leadership and making of sound decisions by the leaders in power. Wiki leaks has lead to a better government and a healthy society that is, principled leaking can alter the course of history in present and lead to a better future. Ethics of Confidentiality: what should be shared, how public officials decide what to keep confidential and what not. Confidential information is that information, which has restriction placed on the common, or dissemination of that information (Ferell and Fraedric). On issue of ethics on confidentiality, Farrell and Fredrick (2012), suggests that although wikileaks has been praised for creating transparency and revealing injustice, the site has been under scrutiny by the US government for leaking confidential US documents. Investigations by US officials claim that the reveal confidential information on subjects such as war in Afghanistan could put soldiers at risk. However, some legal experts have revealed that the right of freedom of speech prevails as long as wikileaks does not pay or collect information by itself. Such contentions between freedom of speech and revealing of confidential information that threatens national security are ethical issues that are heavily discussed by lawmakers. The issue of confidentiality has led to government classification of information whose purpose is protection of information from being used to damage national security. It constitutes what is a state secret and gives the different levels of protection of information based on likely damage it might cause. The classification levels are top secret, confidential and restricted. Secret information is those that would cause grave damage to national security on their availability to the public. Confidential information is that which would be prejudicial to national secret if it were publically available. Lastly, restricted information is that which would cause undesirable effects if it were publically available. Conclusion There has been a lot of debate whether wikileaks is ethical or not. This is because each of their action though they follow some ethics related to journalism, draws controversy across the board. In his article, Belonsky leaked internal contract that shows that Assange makes employees sign pledge not to distribute and of the organizations data or information. In that pledge, it explains that a document leaked would result in the loss of opportunity to sell information, loss of reputation and loss of opportunity to execute future agreements. In that employee contract, the consequences of leaking such data or information attracts a fine of 12 million pounds. Belonsky suggests that although it is usual for news agencies to present employees with contracts, wikileaks has always tried to set themselves from other media networks. These contracts are suggestive that wikileaks has other intentions which according to Belonsky are not just distribution of news for journalistic ideals and the free distribution of information. According to Belonsky, wikileaks is not there for very straight or very ethical reasons in the way it treats information which it receives. He suggests that this employee contract suggests of other motives which wikileaks might have. Belonsky further asserts that it is not easy to say that wikileaks does not serve a journalistic purpose but also, it is not clear of their capitalistic self interest whenever they find opportunities to utilize them. There is no known organization that leaks information other than wikileaks in the world this is because of the stringed laws put up by governments to protect information. According to wikileaks, the organization follows ethics on journalism in their investigations and publishing of information. This includes the journalism ethics and standards in practice, codes of practice and the common elements of journalism. According to Keeble, journalism ethics and standards comprise of principle of ethics and good practice as applicable to challenges specifically faced by journalists. Code of practice can be found in news reporting organizations that are mostly in countries with freedom of the press. The codes however vary from country to country and from organization to another, but there are some of them which apply across the board. The most common elements of these standards is the accuracy and standards of factual reporting. In this case, reporters are expected to provide accurate information as possible using reliable sources. Consequently, facts should be independent and corrections should be published immediately errors are discovered in previous publications. The second element is slander and libel consideration. This provides that journalists should report the truth that is accurate. In this case, private persons have rights to their privacy which must be balanced against public interests while reporting information about them. However, many publishers are covered by liberal insurance against lawsuits on their publications. The third element is the harm limitation principle whereby in their work, whether journalists should report everything learnt about a subject. The fourth element is the presentation of information. This states that ethical standards should never be confused with communication standards of presenting quality of correct spoken or written English, clarity and brevity. The last element is that of self regulation whereby in addition to the laid down ethics by law, organizations should maintain internal regulations. The aim of this last element is to ensure that news organizations are responsible, honest and accountable to the public. Other codes of ethics are provided by journalist organizations like the National Union of Journalists. References Ferel O.C. and Fraedric J. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Cases. Cengage Learning, 2012 Michael Ziummer. “information ethics and wikileaks” Apr. 14, 2011 Shi Jiahui. “Ethical Issues Surrounding Wikileaks”. Nov. 15, 2011 Wikileaks Staff. “VP Contender Sarah Palin Hacked”. Wikipedia. Sep. 17, 2008 Mellisa Higgins. Julian Assange: Wikileaks Founder. ABDU 2011 Charlie Becket and James Ball.Wikileaks: The Threat Of The New News. Polity, 2012 Broaden D., Prins C., Griffoen H., Kaizer A.G., Keymolen E. I Government:Amsterdam University Press, 2011 Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Larry Combest. Secrecy: Report Of The Commission On Protecting And Reducing Government Secrecy. Diane Publishing, 1997. Micah L. Sifry.Wikileaks and the age of transparency: OR books, 2011 Andrew Belonsky. Wikileaks Mystique Blown Apart by Leaked Employee contract. April 2011 Read More