Secrecy and Those Who Tell

“Governments, the citizenry and secrecy make for an uncomfortable triumvirate at times” (Dreyfus and Hrafnsson)

I feel like Wikileaks is one of those things that everyone has HEARD about, but they don’t actually KNOW anything about it. It’s just that thing that happened with that bloke that’s in that embassy.

Even I wasn’t 100% sure where it all started and how it began and I don’t know about you, but I found the textbook a bit confusing.  So I did some digging. Good ol’ Google.

Wikileaks was launched in 2006 and since has released more than 25,000 secret details about the US and their relationship with other countries, detailed logs about civilian deaths from the Iraq and Afgan wars amongst thousands of other documents.

The information is leaked to the not-for-profit organisation by anyone who has access and information. They don’t leave the government in charge because it is seen that “they cannot fairly be both the keeper of the secrets and also a truly independent judge of wheter the public release of those secrets would be in the best interest of the citizens” (Dreyfus and Hrafnsson). This is where us journalists step in.

The Wikileaks project is run by The Sunshine Press who are dedicated to the idea of free press. The “cleaning and declassifying” (Dreyfus and Hrafnsson)of documents is then crowd sourced to journalists who are “public advocates….[who] sought to make as much information public as possible, unlike the government”.

Still confused? It takes a while to work around the antics of Julian Assange (the headliner of the organisation that’s currently stealing all the thunder).

What you do need to know is there is a lot of controversy. Some people think that Wikileaks has gone too far and released too much information. Others believe it is in the best interest of the public to know what the government and other organisations like religious organisations, banks and large companies are doing.

Here are what The Telegraph deem as the top 10 Wikileaksstories, some that has rocked nations.

YouTube have HEAPS of interesting videos on Wikileaks, each with a bit more information to share light on what they do. 

Similarly, a Wikileaks search on the Internet will return a bagillion hits.

News.com had a great breakdown and easy to understand concept of it all.

Do you agree with the concept of Wikileaks? I think I'm on board. I think the way we are going, it will become an important tool for truth and advocacy, granted they remain vigilant and check their facts.