Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com, where smart happens Him Marshall Brain with today's question, how does wiki leaks work. Let's imagine that you have learned a secret, and this secret is so important or so damaging that you need to tell someone. But let's also imagine that you need to remain anonymous. For example, you might fear that you would face retaliation, jail, or perhaps murder if
people found out who revealed the secret. What would you do in a situation like this, You might go to the government, or perhaps to the police, but you might be concerned that the government might be a part of the problem, or that they might bury your secret or do something to you that would be unfortunate. In other words, if you have a big, dirty secret, especially one that involves the government itself, it may be hard to get the word out anonymously. In that case, you might want
to try wiki leaks at WikiLeaks dot org. WikiLeaks describes itself in this way. Wiki Leaks is a not for profit media organization. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure, and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists that anonymity is important to maintaining Wiki Leak's incoming
flow of information. WikiLeaks claims that it has never blown the cover of any informant, and WikiLeaks provides a number of ways to submit material, as well as instructions for ensuring anonymous Internet submissions. Based on its promise and track record of anonymity, WikiLeaks has been able to break several important releases of secret material, and this really gets to
the heart of the Wiki leaks process. First, someone has to gain possession of secret material in some way, and then that someone has to trust Wiki leaks enough to send it in where might the leaked material come from? In the case of the Sarah Palin Yahoo email account and the Climate Research Unit email account, a hacker had
to break into the accounts and steal the emails. In the case of the British National Party membership list, the website for that organization accidentally posted its membership list on its website for a short period of time and someone snagged a copy before it disappeared. But by far the most common and most damaging source of leaks is insiders who secretly collect the information and then send it to
Wiki Leaks. Insiders might do this out of a sense of justice or as a form of retaliation against an employer. Whatever the motive, several of the resulting leaks have been spectacular. For example, an insider managed to leak an audio and video stream recorded during an Apache helicopter attack that killed
civilians in Iraq. This leaked video is the one that put wiki leaks on the map, because WikiLeaks was the sole outlet for that video, and the video was so incendiary that most major media outlets around the world picked it up. It was incendiary because two Reuters reporters were killed, because the US military tried to cover up the incident, and because the military personnel involved used rather amazing language during the attack that did not reflect well on US forces.
Since that watershed moment, WikiLeaks has benefited from several more major insider releases. For example, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of pages of information known as the Iraq War Logs, and it has also come into possession of hundreds of thousands of U S diplomatic cables. These cables revealed behind the scenes comments and actions by US diplomats that have proven quite embarrassing to the United States and its allies. If you think about it, wiki leaks should not be necessary,
at least in the United States. The U s Government is supposed to be government by the people and for the people. Such a government should be completely transparent to the entire population in every action it takes. Unfortunately, the US government appears to be far from transparent, and wiki leaks is helping to remove that opacity, one leak at a time. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuffwork staff as we
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