TechStuff Classic: The WikiLeaks Story

This is called the Wiki Leaks story, and obviously it's another one of those topics where I could do a full update, probably a full redo of this episode, but it's always interesting to go back and listen to how the show has evolved over the years. So let's listen to the Wiki Leaks story. Also, real quick, before we get into this, I do want to give a brief

trigger warning. It's it's a light trigger warning. Really. UM. Julianna sound being UM, one of the so called founders of Wiki Leaks, has been brought up on some rape charges and so there will be a non graphic discussion of that later on in the podcast. UM. If that is the kind of thing that you would rather avoid hearing, than perhaps you would like to uh skip the rest of this episode now. Spoiler alert, both Lauren and myself

and and with our particular political views. Feel that no one in this story really comes out being a complete hero. It's it's it's just it's humans being humans, which means it's complex. It's complex and gets kind of messy. Yeah, so we're gonna get messy. But before we get messy, let's just clear things up a little bit, let's talk about what wiki leaks is. Now. First of all, the name wiki gives you this sense that it has this sort of collaborative, open structure that allows people to come

in and add things and tweak things. Not so much. They trined that early on in the timeline of wiki leaks,

but eventually moved away from it. The name has stuck, however, right, and I think that I think that really what they wanted to do was um it was used, was used that that easy reading format of wikis without you know, and then they decided to really close down the part where hey, anyone can edit it, because that's bad times right right when you're talking about what it is WikiLeaks is trying to do and uh and be yes, the

sourcing of information in order to remain um anonymous and pertinent. Yeah, yeah, these are all things that make it. You know, if you were to just open it up for what wiki leaks does, it would just be a mess very quickly. It also has created a lot of confusion among people who are just casually following this or have just heard about it, who think that wiki leaks has some sort of connection to Wikipedia, which it does not know. The Wikipedia and wiki leaks are not at all related. So

what is wiki leaks. Well, it's a not for profit organization, and the purpose of wiki leaks is to publish information that would normally not be available to the public. Right. Normally normally be stuff that's either been classified or Yeah, it could be trade secret stuff, it could be a corporate uh, communications that normally would not be available to anyone outside a certain group of people within that corporation. Really, it's any information that would be of public interest but

is not publicly available. And in fact, WikiLeaks go so far as to say that the organization does not want anything that's been published elsewhere. That's not the purpose for WikiLeaks. They also make pains to say that they do not

solicit any kind of information or files. They accept it, but they don't solicit, which is an important distinction they have to make so that they yeah, because otherwise they could start getting charges about being a spy or or trying to bribe officials or people and who have access

to to classified information to then share it. If they merely accepted donations of information, that absolves them of of some of that responsible kind of technically, yeah, and just at least prints a better picture of them, right as far as it makes it more difficult to make a case against them, doesn't necessarily mean that a case would not be made against them and it wouldn't be successful.

But anyway, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves now. Um. According to Columbia University's Journalism School, I read this, there was a very long article about wiki leaks and its association with the Guardian newspaper was a newspaper in the UK, and uh. In fact, there was quite a strong relationship between the two for a while until an event that we will discuss later. Yeah, yeah, that will come important later.

But according to that particular article, it said that Julian Assange, who is often referred to as a founder, founder or or at the very least the spokesperson for wiki leaks, he's certainly the most identifiable personality associated with figurehead. If if nothing else. Yeah. Yeah, and that gets complicated too, and we'll explain that in a bit. But according to this article, he registered the domain name back in However, every other source I could find, two thousand six was

the earliest that it was actually um registered. This is another part that makes talking about wiki leaks challenging in that there's a lot of misinformation about the site itself, not just about all the shenanigans that went on both within wiki Leaks and surrounding Wiki Leaks, but just when

it really got started. Right, And part of the problem we should mention now is that a lot of the information out there about wiki leaks comes from either Juliana Sounds himself or other other personalities that have been involved with the organization and have left it violently and bitterly. Yeah, and so so all of all of this is uh not necessarily it's difficult to track down the exact truth. Yeah,

there's a lot of subjectivity here. I mean, everyone involved has their own agenda and uh, and that doesn't it doesn't necessarily align with the organization stated mission, right right, So this is this is what makes this complicated. Now,

what is that stated mission? Well, the whole idea here is that what Wiki leaks is trying to do is make available information that the public that that that you know, the organization feels the public should have access to but otherwise would not because of the secrecy of either governmental or corporate organizations or even just other organizations in general, and that it's an attempt to make these organizations more transparent. Right.

They cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UM, in particular Article nineteen UM, which which just says that that everyone has the right to freedom, freedom of opinion and expression right and that they should be able to pursue information regardless of frontiers, which is kind of like saying, you know, a person in in say China, who otherwise might not have access to certain information completely has the universal right to that, even if the Chinese government says

they don't. So in other words, it's kind of this idea that everyone has this right regardless of what your government says. Well, this is the United Nations that has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it's not like this is somehow legally binding for all right, Right, it's it's a very nice idea. Yeah, it's it's an ideal, Right,

it's not so much legal wording. It's it's saying ideally, we would say all people have the right to these expectations, and one of them would be this right to freedom of expression. Now, depending on where you are in the world, your right to freedom of expression maybe fairly generous or it might be really restrictive. In the United States, we like to think that we have the freedom of speech,

but there are certain limitations. I mean, obviously, if you are using that freedom of speech to inflict harm upon someone and it is completely unjustified, and you know, you could be taken to court for things things like library um. You know, the whole there's the whole argument about you can't yell fire in a crowded theater because it could cause people You're you're right, or freedom of expression does not override someone else's right to safety safety right, or

at least the expectation of safety. Um. And so there are a lot of complications here. But even in the United States, you know, it's fairly wide open. People will argue as to how wide open it is because of their own personal views. If you go to someplace like the United Kingdom, there rights of free speech are are more narrow. There are very specific laws that prevent newspapers,

for example, from violating secrecy agreements. So something like The Guardian had to make some really tough decisions when they got information from Wiki leaks onto whether or not to publish it, because it could result in some junctions from the government, So that gets really complex as well. Anyway, Wiki Leaks essentially says, we don't subscribe to any of these regional concepts. We subscribe to this universal concept and

that's what it's all about. And so they try to provide the material that journalists can use to tell the stories that otherwise would be untold. Right. Um Assassa said in in one interview with Time that this organization practices civil obedience. It tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction. So it's kind of funny to call it civil obedience considering that, uh, you know that they

are directly disobeying. Yes, they're being disobedient by by very nature. But it's it's all an argument about who has the power and responsibility. If you have a lot of you know, as as Uncle Ben would say, with great power comes great responsibility. That's that's one of those little cliche sayings,

but there is truth to that. It's very true that if you are a governmental agency or a corporation that has a lot of power, then there is a certain expectation that you will use that power in a responsible way and not do it in such a way that you are going to violate people's rights, right. You know.

At the same time, frequently information is withheld by by governments, in particular because because of of of measures of national security, because they're trying to protect you know, either their their military interests or their scientific interests, or or you know, the people and the research that go into making that country a safe place to be, right. So there is

a very delicate balance here, right. I mean, you could argue that there are there's certain information that's out there that it's good that it's secret because that means that the people who are doing valuable work, and it may be valuable work that in no way is violent towards any other person. It may be completely humanitarian work that their lives could be in jeopardy if the information were made public, and that is something that you know needs

to be taken into consideration. Now, the what wicked Leaks would say is, on the other hand, you also have these instances where UH agencies or the military or a corporation are behaving in an unethical or corrupt or illegal manner, and without this information becoming public, they can never be held accountable for that. And so if they you know,

this transparency gives accountability to those agencies. And in fact, they go so far as to say it's the media's role to to reveal this kind of information to the public, to to make the public informed enough to be good citizens, right, because this is that that big relationship. You know, we often think of the government as being this kind of separate entity that is UH in some cases we think of as sort of that big brother Orwellian idea of

this this other that dictates what we do. But in reality, at least in in you can argue to watch it, right. You know, they're definitely fringe theories about how much your your average citizen does or doesn't have power over over

these these things. But but but saying that, you know, if we take democracy in the United States for what it's supposed to be, if we assume that that in fact is the case, then what Wiki Leak's role is to tell the public, Hey, this is what your officials are up to, and if you don't approve of that, you need to be aware of it so that you can the next time voting comes around, behave in a way that that allows you to get the right people in charge, assuming of course, that the right people are

the ones who are running for office. That's that's a different political discussion. That's the whole other, whole other canne worms. Honestly, I'm I'm probably coming across is really cynical. I'm actually not that cynical. I'm just aware of a lot of cynicism. So it's one of those things where you kind of

dance around it. Anyway. Well, yeah, and you know, the thing is that I read one thing about how the US Information Security Oversight Office reported that um, the number of new secrets designated as such by the government rose from nine and so so partially what this has to do with is the way that governments are processing information and um and releasing it to the public right and and to be fair, I mean, the Albama administration in

the United States specifically said that one of its cornerstones was going to be transparency, and so in a way you can think of the media in general and wiki leaks in particular in this case, trying to hold them accountable for that claim saying you said you're going to be transparent. Here are all these things that have not been reported? What is your stance on this? Absolutely? And so I mean, you know, I can't disagree with that motivation.

I think that that's very important. I think that any nation where you have a free pet press, that presses job to keep an eye and make sure that things are not being uh, that people are not behaving in an unethical manner or taking advantage of a situation, and if they are, that that's reported. I think that's very important. It's a key role in journalism, and it's something that some people would say has really been slipping from journalism

over the last couple of decades. Again, I'm not a journalists, so I'm not going to comment on that. Well, that's that's another you know, there's also a lot of ideas about out there about how entertainment based the journalism industry is these days. Yes, yeah, the whole idea of of the the commercialization of journalism. Uh well, anyway, Wiki leaks does have some policies that try to guide the organization

and how it behaves. One of those is that that they do sometimes delay or remove some details in stories in order to protect people from immediate harm, especially either current victims of of harm somewhere or the whistleblowers who

are hoarding this information right. And then on top of that, they also try to make sure that every single leaked report that they receive, which by the way, they they've set up an electronic dropbox, that's their preferred method of receiving information is electronically, and that this dropbox is encrypted so that again in theory, you wouldn't be able to trace the origin of that other than being able to see that this is original source material, but it's not

tied to any particular person. So the electronic dropbox is supposed to be a secure way of getting files two wiki leaks, and they have said that they would also receive files or documents in other forms, like including through the mail, but they preferred not to because that kind of stuff can be intercepted and securities and questions, and also also if they have a physical mailing address, that makes it more difficult for them to uh avoid entanglements,

all right, So anyway, they they do refer to their electronic drop boxes being the preferred method, and they say that everything they get they use traditional investigative journalism techniques as well as more modern technology based methods to verify that that information is in fact, accurate and true, and that it really is from a verifiable source, right, that the documents are actually from wherever the person the anonymous

source says they're from. So if an anonymous source drops off a enormous file that is supposed to contain all these documents from the Department of Justice in the United States, for example, they would go through and try to verify that those were in fact d o J documents and not just someone using some logos or whatever to fabricate something. Right.

This is through a largely volunteer based system they've they've reported and again you know, these numbers are kind of wibbly wobbly, but um they reported having up to eight hundred volunteer members, mostly mostly journalists, I think, helping helping them out with stuff like this, right, and some of those volunteers have a lot of stuff to say about wiki leaks, but again we'll cover that probably in the

second half. I think of this of this episode, so they their policies to verify everything to keep it secure, and then once they verified it, the next step is deciding on when to publish this information. And wiki leaks has done uh well, They've done their own journalism. They've had their own journalists right stories that were based off

of the documents that they had found. That I think you mentioned earlier that that part of what wiki leaks holds very DearS that they want to publish original material. They don't want to republish anything, and and that's and so yes, so um so actually doing writing an investigation,

it's a big part of that. They also will partner with existing media outlets, although there's been sort of a contentious relationship between wiki leaks and several high profile newspapers UH in multiple nation and part of that I think has to do with the sana's personal handling of situations.

But anyway, they they their goal is to have stories written about the information they have, because it's kind of like if you were to walk into a laboratory that's doing scientific experiments and you see the experiment going on, but you can't really necessarily make any meaningful conclusion based on that. You need to have the report written up where you can see what the actual methodology was, what the results were, and what the conclusions are. That's what

is digestible to the average person. Same thing with these wiki leaks reports. It's usually the raw material is something that they hand over to journalists and the journalists and up rutting the stories, and then the raw material is published along with the story, so that way complete transparency that they're really going for, right that way, so that

you can check their sources exactly exactly. Like if if Lauren reads the story and then you know, she reads onejournalists perspective on that story and they're the way that they have taken this information and then communicated it, she can then go to the the source material, read the source material and see if her own interpretation of that

source material is aligned with what the journalists said. Because remember, no matter what, we're all humans, so we all view things through our own kind of lens in the world, and we try and be as you know, a journalists tried to be as objective as possible, at least most

people journalists try. That's the hypothetical ideal. Yeah, So, but it's it's you know, there's no way to ever truly attain that sure, and and and in some of these cases they the Assange and and other folks at Wiki leaks have admitted to wanting to market some of these bigger releases, uh, to to really get things into the

public eye. Right, I don't I haven't personally read any any ill intent to change details, but it just to bring the most important details to the forefront, because they are a political organization, right and when you look at it, you're you're talking about sometimes they're getting files that are enormous. They're talking about pages and pages and pages of documentation.

It's like like over over three hundred thousand documents and ago that that's you know, obviously way too much for anyone to just wade through beginning to end and find the nuggets that are meaningful, because a lot of this stuff has information that's not really um, you know, important in the grand scheme of things. It might have been important for a very specific purpose, but you know, beyond that, it doesn't really matter so much. So well, we'll mention

a few examples of stuff like that a little bit later. Yeah, So they you know, this is this is their basic purpose and their basic approach. To go into more detail, we'll have to kind of look at the timeline and discuss what had happened throughout the history of wiki leaks, which course is still in existence today. I don't mean to suggest that history is over, but it is. It

is a continuing story. But um, but most of the most of the action within wiki leaks was going on around Yeah, that's when the big, big stuff was going on, although it's played a part in other stories since then, and of course before then too. Hey, guys, Jonathan from here,

we're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, so we've had an overview of what wiki leaks is, what its purposes, what you know, role it's it's ideally would fill within the world of journalism and transparency and accountability. Let's talk a little bit about the timeline. So it was around two thousand six that Wiki leaks began to coalesce, and it was officially launched in two thousand seven, right either December two thousand six or early two thousand seven. Yeah,

it's right around the anyway. The first publications were coming

out in in December of two thousand and six. But most folks just say that are The official launch where we've had a thing was in early two thousand seven, right, And and I did want to mention that this is coming on the heels of in two thousand five, the commission that had been investigating the nine eleven terrorists attacks here in the United States had found that that poor information sharing was a huge failure of the government in the in the lead up to the attacks, of of

of preventing this sort of thing from happening, and and that that had led to internally a lot of reorganization of how information is shared in between different departments department. Yeah, this this is something that we see in all levels of organization where you have multiple departments and then the communication between departments, sometimes the communication within a department tends to get bogged down by red tape. And uh, you know,

you see this all the time. Like if you ever read any stories about uh police investigation that spanned multiple jurisdictions, that's always part of the story is how complicated it was to get the cooperation of one police office versus another. And if their federal investigators, then that adds another layer

of complexity. And it was it wasn't until around that time that um, I think that a lot of agencies had been kind of resisting going digital just because of the ease of flow of information, which isn't really considered a good thing when you're trying to keep things secret. Um And but but it was after after two five after that report from that commission, that things started going going online. And the first story that wiki leaks partnered with The Guardian on was for around August thirty one,

two thousand seven. It was a story about the alleged corruption of Daniel arap Moi, the former president of Kenya, and it was a leaked report. The Kenyan government had elected to keep this report secret, and UH, someone leaked the information to wiki leaks. Wiki leaks then approached the Guardian, and the Guardian was very cautious about this kind of relationship. It was one of those things where they saw the

value in what WikiLeaks was doing. WikiLeaks was setting itself up to be a completely independent safe house of information leaked information. UH. The idea being that of course anyone who would submit to it would remain anonymous, WikiLeaks would not point the finger at anybody, and that that information could then get to some sort of outlet that could communicate it to the wider world. So this was the first attempt of The Guardian and WikiLeaks to work together.

From the story I read from Columbia University, it really did sound like Julian Assange was a big part of this early early on, and that that was both a good thing in the early days and turned into a complicated thing as time went on. Um from what I understand, he can he can have an effect on people, uh and make them feel like they're not really being listened to. He's frequently described as being a very um dynamic personality.

That's a very generous way of putting it. Uh. Yeah, people who have taught to him have had some pretty contentious things to say about him. I've never met the man, so I know nothing about him personally, nor have I had any interactions with him. But just going from what other people said, it seems like he seems he seems very intense. Yeah, he can be a handful, yes, um uh. This The Wiki Leaks would later be presented with an award from Musty International um On behalf of the Kenyan

folks who leaked this information. Um uh. Now that's one of the awards that Wiki Leaks has won Wiki leaks of course, you know it's it is very controversial, but there are organizations that have recognized its role in UH in uncovering corruption and even going so far as to UH giving enough information so that authorities could end up pursuing and correcting problems UM or that people could end up going out and voting what would what some would

call a corrupt administration out of power. This is, of course, you know, on a global scale, not not limited to just one country. In February of two eight, a wiki leaks report along with The Guardian, exposed a Swiss bank called Julius Bear for money laundering UH and UH that ended up getting Wiki leaks hit with one of their first major lawsuits, which is not something unusual for the organization.

They've been hit with many of them. Right. Also in two thousand eight, they posted a bunch of scientologies secret membership manuals. Yeah. Uh. And it's funny because there's there are some stories that talk about how wiki leaks expected certain things to get a lot more attention than what they what it actually did, and that these manuals were that was one of the things they thought that a lot more attention would be devoted to the scientology manuals

than what actually happened. And that's another reason why wiki leaks was looking to partner with various newspapers around the world, because they were discovering that trying to direct people to wiki leaks to find out about the information was tricky. Anyone who makes a website learns pretty quickly it's hard to get folks to go to your website. It is folks need to want to go to your website, you

can't really make them go. So uh, you know, if WikiLeaks was going to fulfill its mission and being this this uh depository of secret information that could then be used by journalists, they determined that they had to reach out to more journalists to make that happen. Um. The next thing I have is November two thousand nine. Do

you have anything before that? Okay? That's when they published a comprehensive list of text pager messages that were sent during September eleventh, two thousand one, which of course was the date of the terrorist attacks that that that ended

thousands of lives here in the United States. UM. And they were criticized for this because a lot of those text messages were just simple messages from between family members or co workers to let people know that they were all right, that they had um managed to to stay clear of the impact zones and that sort of thing, and that there was a real question of is this actually newsworthy? Is this is this valuable information to publish?

Is this are is this getting a little too voyeuristic into the personal tragedies that happened during this day and and and there was a little bit of a question, um. And this ties back into the scientology bit of whether wiki leaks was was publishing things to get attention and to be sensational um rather than mission right. Yeah, and that's that's played wiki leaks throughout its history as well.

Like the again, the goal that it states seems very noble and a journalistic sense, but the behavior of at least some of the people in wiki leaks may have been so is aligned quite with that. It seems it seemed like you said, a little more sensationalists. And that might not have ever been the intent of the people in wiki leaks. It just maybe the impression that everyone

got from the way it was handled. Now, getting back in one last little thing about these these text pager messages, Um, was that Wiki Leaks said their response to the criticism of is this actually newsworthy? Their response was, this helps create a more complete picture of what happened on that day. And I'm not I mean, yeah, it's more complete. I just don't know that it's more relevant. Sure, sure I could. I could. I could argue that one. You know that

that that could easily be argued either way. Yeah, but um, but yeah, I did want to mention also in two thousand nine, UM, that was the year that President Obama signed the executive order requiring a whole bunch of people who hold classified status here in the States um to receive extra training on what actually needs classification and UM and also forced people who who are creating these classified

documents to identify themselves on those documents. And again this is that this is that effort for official transparency to say, you know, let's not just blanket whitewash everything is classified, because that just all that really does is engender a spirit of distrust in the government to say, like, what, why are they hiding this? What else do they have to hide? And uh, And of course I mean this is an ongoing story, stuff that we're finding out about now.

About things like clandestine surveillance, which are these are stories that are breaking as we are recording this podcast in early June two thousand thirteen. They are all these stories about the n s A and surveillance and cell phones and things like that. And some might even argue that the things that happened with wiki leaks are what kind of led to those policies, which is the antithesis of

what they were supposed to be doing. I think that there's been a lot of that actually from from I think a lot of governments have kind of cracked down on openness in response to this sort of thing. Yeah it's it's you know, and some might argue they're cracking down on one side while really doubling down on the shady stuff on the other side. So it's almost like the Wilkie defense. Hey it's Chewbacca. So um yeah, I mean,

these is complicated issue. April that's when Assane goes to the National Press Club in d C and shows a video of a two thousand seven incident. Now, this is the the most probably the most notorious wiki leaks really, yeah, I mean there's been a lot of high profile ones, but this one is like the defining one, I think, and this is one that showed an incident in two thousand seven in which UH two US Apache helicopter pilots allegedly executed UH innocent people on the ground in Iraq,

including to Reuter's correspondence. The whole thing was caught on video, and Assange called it collateral murder. That's what he named the video. And again that seems very sensationalist. Now, at the same time, the video itself really did portray a horrific act. Yeah, and and I mean, and there's and there's full audio in it, so there's this very chillingly calm discussion of everything that they're doing and um and and yeah, it's it's you. You can you can see.

I think at least eighteen people are killed during the course of the video, and two of them were Reuters reporters, right right. This had been a project that had been going on since March of and had been they had received these files and UH kind of went into a frenzy of work in Iceland putting them together. It was called Project B And and they knew that it was big. Yeah, they knew it was big. And and again Assange was trying to find a way to get more visibility for

wiki leaks. So part of that sensationalism was in fact intended because it was meant to to get as much press as possible. But also, I mean it was an absolutely pressworthy release. Yes, I mean you know you can't. Yeah, it was, I mean, I I was a legitimate It was a completely legitimate story. It was something that needed to be broken because it was you know, people needed

to be held accountable. Although it should be said that the military never did charge those helicopter pilots with anything illegal or the official statement was essentially that the people were in an area where there was a suspected um uh ambush that was going to attack US forces and that the helicopter pilots acted responsibly. That's the official response. So anyway, definitely was newsworthy. Uh. Again, it was the handling of it that I think was sensational, not the

material itself, but that was again completely valid. Uh. On the pen I gone arrested US Army Private Bradley Manning on charges of downloading and then leaking thousands of classified US documents, including this video, and uh, that's sort of been the the video and and the handling of Bradley Manning and and Bradley Manning's case have been this sort of defining element to what Wiki Leaks is and the way that it's portrayed in general. I mean, this story

is still ongoing to this day. Right. I believe that the trial for Manning is going on right now as we're recording this podcast. Yes, it is, although it apparently it's going much more quickly than what they had originally planned. They thought it was going to take it was gonna be a three month trial, but apparently there moving through witnesses much more quickly than they had previously thought. And uh, and there were thousands of documents involved in this, not

just the video, right right. Uh. Wiki Leaks ended up publishing over two fifty documents for Manning. He had downloaded all of these diplomatic cables while he was at an Iraq Army outpost between November two thousand nine. In April, um reportedly having burned them to a c d R labeled Lady Gaga and told told a Hacker friend that he had them to Hacker turned him in, And apparently that hacker has since felt a great deal of conflict

about that act. Uh. The charge, the main charge against Bradley Manning is that he knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy through indirect means. And uh because before he was arrested and put on you know, put on trial, he had obviously leaked these documents to wiki leaks, right, and so the in the trial I can say this because this was reported very recently as of the recording of this podcast. Uh. The defense called the senior intelligence or

one senior intelligence analyst from Manning's unit. Her name is Casey Fulton, and Fulton said that the unit received no specific warning about sites visited by al Qaeda. She did say that al Qaeda would visit sites like Facebook or Google or even Google Maps to gather information, but she

did not mention Wiki leaks among them. And the defenses case is saying that uh, that there this information went directly to write well, that the al Qaeda was not using wiki leaks specifically together information that that was not Manning's intent. And in fact, the judge in the case has said that the prosecution has to show that Manning had actual knowledge that he was actually giving intelligence to the enemy through a third party and intermediary or in

some other indirect way. And that the soldier must have had quote a general evil intent unquote and to have known he was dealing directly or indirectly with an enemy of the United States in order for this particular charge to hold. Now keep in mind this one charge out of all the trial. So but it sounds to me that it's a it's a really tough case to make, you know, to prove the intent parts specifically, but improving intent is one of those things that's uh, basically impossible.

So but doesn't mean that people don't do it or don't don't achieve it now to say they also point out that this is a military trial. It's different from other trials in the United States. Typically in the United States you have a trial with in front of a jury of your peers. But in this case, it is a judge that is overseeing the case and her word is final at least unless you go through an appeals process. But and you do not have exactly the same the same rights to see what is a normal citizen in

a court of law. So getting back to two wiki leaks back in UH July twenty, two thousand and ten, so so Bradley Manning had been arrested By this point, three news organizations released separate accounts of the war logs gathered from Wiki Leaks regarding the war in Afghanistan. And in August, UH, that's when another big introversial event in the history of Wiki leaks in general and Julian Assange

in particular happens. Uh. Two former employees of Wiki leaks filed rape charges against Julian Assange, and Assange has essentially spent the rest of his life from that point evading any extradition to Sweden to stand trial for this. All right, right, these charges were brought up in Sweden. UM. The the two women who have brought up the charges, their names have not been revealed to the press. UM and UH.

In Sweden there are laws about using using condoms. If partner tells you to use one and you do not, then you can be brought up on what is called a rape charge and and the technical definition I shall leave up to other political parties. Yeah, hey guys, it's Jonathan. I gotta run out and take a quick Wiki leaks, so we're gonna take a break. At any rate, he has been fighting x tradition since then, and at this point he has actually um been a granted asylum from

by Ecuador. Ecuador has granted asansing. I'll tell them more about that when we get a little further down. But yeah, that whole the whole drama is a story in of itself. But because again it's so hard to get to the truth of the matter, there's just we actually talked about doing an episode just about Julia Sange, but instead of

about wiki leaks. But the more we looked into it, the more we realize that this there's no way to verify half the information that's out there, right, you know, as as I said at the beginning of the episode, all of the information about Juliana Sang comes from either a Sange himself m or from very close personal ex compatriots who are pretty angry at him, right, So there are a lot of biases, and neither of those sources are really necessarily reliable. So the July you had the

uh the Afghanistan reports released. Now that was one third of three big blocks of information that we're going to be released that year. The other two were about the Iraqi War, which that information came out in October, and then there was a huge block of classified US diplomatic cables and a cable is essentially a message. So these were all these thousands and thousands of diplomatic messages that

came out in November. That was the trifecta of big, big bombshell releases that came out in twenty that really established what wiki leaks was all about. I think I think there's in November were the ones are specifically from Manning. Yeah. Yeah, And then in September twenty a little bit earlier, that's when Daniel dom Scheidberg left Wiki leaks, right, that's when he walked. He had joined in two thousand eight and had become sort of a Songe's right hand man. Yeah,

he was kind of. He was specifically a spokesperson four wiki leaks in your up, mainly in Germany, and he had a major falling out with a Sange to the point where it went from he and Assange sharing the same ideals to both of them demonizing one another whenever they had the opportunity to speak to the media. And they were roommates somewhere in between there. So this is like talking about that band you used to love and then they broke up, and now no one has anything

good to say about each other. Multiplied by about a billion right later later on, he would publish a book called Inside WikiLeaks, My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website. Yeah, he was not particularly complementary of Osange in that book or in any of his interviews. He left to try and his goal was to found a competing leak side. He felt that wiki leaks had lost sight of its ideals, that it was not following, it was not behaving in a way that again was

aligned with its ideals. Perhaps he felt that it was more sensationalized, the kind of way that we've been talking about. How you know, that's always been my person anal impression, but again that's a personal impression. Um. So he wanted to found a company called open leaks that would be essentially a competitor to wiki leaks. Uh, and he wanted

it to be more transparent than wiki leaks was. So he didn't want to have these kind of deals with various news organizations where it was almost exclusive, like a partnership saying hey, I'm going to give you this information and then you can run it and you know, we'll we'll have this buddy buddy relationship. Just link back to my site. Make sure you do that. If you link

back to my site, we're all good. He didn't want to do any of that, but eventually he ended up changing his tune for open leaks because it just didn't go well. Part of it was that when he left, one of the things he did was he copied about thirty five hundred files and then deleted them from wiki

leaks's database, and he left with those files. Depending upon whom you ask, he was either trying to partially sabotage wiki leaks and establish open leaks by getting a jump start with these files, or from his point of view, he felt that what wiki leaks was doing was irresponsible and endangering the information that was within these thirty files, and he was only copying it so that that information would remain safe until such time that he could return

those files to wiki leaks. This is why this gets really complicated, because people get you know, they get a little irritated at each other and they act out a bit. So um Anyway, open leaks never really took off. It ended up sort of transforming into more of a site that's designed to teach other people how to set up sites that that can accept and publish leaked material, so it really did change quite a bit. So then we had October and November where those other big releases came out.

In two thousand eleven, that's when Wiki leaks was hit by a pretty hard blow, and it didn't have anything to do with a lawsuit. This was a blockade, a financial blockade. This was when several major financial companies, banks and credit card companies all decided to end any transfer of funds towards WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks existed solely upon uh submissions of of monetary donations to the site. You know, people were donating money in order for WikiLeaks to keep going.

This was essentially all those methods of transmission, saying we are no longer allowing payments to go to WikiLeaks, so even if you want to donate, there was no route for you to go right. And it actually got to a point where Assange said that Wiki leaks had burned through of its assets UH and and that it wasn't able to really regenerate them in any meaningful way because this blockade was preventing payments to go to Wiki leaks. Absolutely.

And this was also going on at the same time that um Or or a little bit before this, UH servers had started withdrawing their services from Wiki leaks. Amazon dumped them, every DNS had terminated their service, right it got to a point where you know, you could still

get there. It was you know, they would have work around so that people could still get to UH, to wiki leaks, but it was a lot of that that support was going away, and you know, there were theories on all sides of this as well, saying there was a conspiracy that these companies had been pressured by various governments around the world to end any support so that way Wiki leaks would essentially kind of starved to death, that no one would be able to get there, that

it would no one would be able to financially support it, and that it would have just go away and then hey, no more problems with all this leaked information because no one has any place for this leaked information to go. So UH. Whether or not that's true, or if it was just the company saying, you know, this is something that is going to cause us problems and we just don't want to be a part of it, and they

were independently coming to that decision, I don't know. I guess if there was a leak about it, we'd find out this was This was also around the same time that that they had published in September of two, two thousand eleven, they had published over two cables that did not contain read actions, which means that that the sources of this information and in some places victims names and etcetera,

had not been blacked out. Yeah. In other words, there were names of individuals within these cables that someone who is reading over this could then target, either politically or literally target these these folks that are mentioned in these cables, and so there were there's a lot of criticism leveled against Wiki leaks and against Assange, saying that it was being irresponsible and endangering people's lives. Assange has not been

the most um compassionate person in regards to this. He's often said that, uh, his goal is to save innocent lives, but if it endangers a few people because of the information that's revealed in these in these cables, then that's you know, that's acceptable. I'm paraphrasing. That's not exactly what he said, but it's it's more or less the message

that has been given collateral murder. Yeah, it's yeah, that's the problem is that the Lauren seems to feel that this might be a little touch hypocritical, considering the uh, the criticisms that WikiLeaks has levied against, you know, governments and corporations, that WikiLeaks itself seems to be engaging in

the same sort of cavalier behavior towards people's safety. And to be fair, it is absolutely not a parallel to compare um, uh putting putting a source in hypothetical danger of persecution versus an Apache pilot killing a child in a car. That's that's different. Yeah, that's the obviously very different things. But it does seem to suggest that there's a little bit of hypocrisy going on. I don't disagree

with Lauren, is what I'm saying. UM. But but but that's but that is that is my personal opinion and UH and I apologize a little bit for injecting it. Um. This this move did did create a great rift between Wiki Leaks and UM. Several of those newspapers or or reporting organizations that we had been talking about them being in cahoots with earlier, The Guardian, the New York Times, UM, a bunch of papers around the world. Der Spiegel was

another one. Yeah, it was actually uh and the way that Assange was handling the relationship between Wiki Leaks and

these news organizations was starting to cheesse them off. Like the Guardian had certain expectations, the New York Times had certain expectations UH, and the Guardian had felt that the New York Times was going to be able to report on certain things which the Guardian actually wanted to have happened, because again the Guardians in the UK and the secrecy laws are such that there were there were these partnerships between the Guardian and New York Times where New York

Times could publish some stuff that would possibly get the Guardian into trouble but would still benefit the Guardian in some way. So it was this this kind of weird relationship that was going on. But then a sane got essentially got ticked off at the New York Times for the way that the New York Times handled its information.

Because one thing that the New York Times would do is approached the government and say, hey, we receive these cables and we plan on running with the story, but we're letting you know ahead of time, whereas in the

UK that's generally not done. Generally in the UK they run the story, so that put pressure on the Guardian and also put pressure on a Sane And then as Sane was apparently very much upset about this and wanted to sever the relationship with The New York Times, but the Guardians still wanted this relationship with the New York Times. If this is starting to sound like the relationships in middle school drama club, that's kind of what it comes

out to being, except the stakes are obviously way higher. Absolutely, and uh yeah, they the newspapers five five global newspapers bound up putting out a joint statement that said, um, we deplored the decision of Wiki Leaks to pub which the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk.

The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his and his alone, right, yeah, because they all had the policy of actually going through and very carefully uh redacting any identifiable information to protect sources and to protect people who

could potentially become a victim of some agency. And uh and you know that was an important part of their process, to the point where you had people entire departments in charge of reviewing every single cable to make certain that all the stuff they published was going to be safe, and so for this move to happen on wiki leaks and meant that a lot of that work was just nullified.

And obviously that is a good reason to become upset. Well, once you get into about May two thousand twelve, so Assange had been fighting extradition attempts and he had been living in London while Sweden authorities were trying to extradite into Sweden. He had he had spent about a week in jail in December on those um extradition charges. Yeah, and he had for being released on bail, been in

and out of court trying to appeal extradition. And by made two thousand twelve, the British Supreme Court, it had gone all the way up to the British Supreme Court said no, we're not going to prevent your extradition. You are going to have to go to Sweden to stand trial. That's when a sane then started to appeal to Ecuador the embassy in the UK and actually saying will you grant me asylum? And it was at a point where he was in the he was staying in the embassy.

He had not officially been granted asylum by Ecuador, and then there was going to be apparently a raid on the Ecuador embassy in order to get a Sange out, and that's when Ecuador said, we're giving you asylum. So it's almost when it's possible that that that raid was the precipitated Yeah, that was exactly the moment where the Ecuador said, you know, we weren't going to but now

we totally are because now it's political. So it's still very complicated issue, um and you know, guilt or innocence aside. It's it's one of those stories that is really complicated and tough to to kind of unwind and follow. So anyway, Wiki leaks is still still a thing still around. It's still you know, accepts leaked information. Uh. It has uncovered lots of stories, not just with governments, but like we said, with corporations, some of which have caused newspapers to get

into trouble for running the stories. Things like you know, major corporations that may have fallen short on promises for doing things like cleaning up a gasoline spill. There was a specific example of that, um and it continues to fulfill that role. Some argue that it's even possible that the whole Assange story could just be a smoke and mirrors for Wiki Leaks to continue doing what it does without having to worry about some focus because there's this

fall guy. Right. Yeah, You've got this very flashbank kind of person over here who's going like, look at me, extradition charges. Yeah, and then they can continue doing their their political political work. Right. So, uh, I doubt that anything is that planned out because life is just complicated and messy and it's tough to ever have a plan that, like James bond Isshue be very impressed. But but you know it's possible. You know, if they did do that,

then it's it's the stuff of movie legend. Speaking of movie legends, there is a film being made well there there there are two films that have been um in production recently. One is a documentary that was just released I believe Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets, right, and that one focused both on a sang and on Manning correct and uh and sort of it was supposed to be in all awards and all kind of portrayal. And some people say that his portrayal of Assange does give sort

of a warts and all approach. In fact, I think you know, Assange definitely did not make that relationship a sweet one because apparently he demanded outright that if Gimney where to talk to Assange, you would cost him a million bucks, and the documentary filmmaker, that's probably not the

best way to win that person over to your side. No, Yeah, Assange has come out very vocally against this documentary, which is funny because people other people have also on both sides, have come down upon this documentary right and and some some people are proponents of it. One uh former Wiki Leaks employee in particular, James ball Um reported reported it being a very accurate portrayal, like to the point that it was deja bou seeing the film. Now, there are

some who say that Manning's portrayal was overly sympathetic. That they do, you know, it's hard to say that that it's unjustified, because you're talking about one person who may very well have been acting in what he thought was the right way to to expose what he saw as unethical behavior. And there's no you know, there's no official way of doing it and any hope of it being addressed. And so he went outside the system in order to try and have this done. That's that's kind of the

story that's being told. There are other people who say it's more complicated than that, and that you know, it wasn't truly altruistic motivations that had him do what he did. But again, that's a really complicated story. When you're doing a documentary film, you have to simplify things so that you can and be so two hours long. And note that was one of the criticisms I saw was that it made uh Manning out to be more sympathetic than

than the person felt that he should be. Uh. I think it's really hard to say that you can't feel sympathy for someone who's being held for a military trial that doesn't have the same same protections as a criminal or civil case would in a normal court of law. But you know, again, I don't know, so we don't know the guy, don't know all the details. So uh, you know that will play out and the judge will

come to a decision. So the other one is, um, it's it's a fictional film, or I mean fictional, it's a biopic maybe Barnaby cumberbund In it a cumber Batch right right, I'm sorry, John Harrison. Is that John Harrison? Um? This This film is called The Fifth Est State. It's being directed by Bill Condon, UM, and it is slated to be released on October eleven. UM and uh. Cumber Batch has said that Assange directly asked him to not do the film, UM, calling it a massive propaganda attack. Yeah,

then maybe it is. I haven't seen it. I don't know. We'll have to wait here. But if you want to see some really cool pictures of Benedict Comberbatch looking intense with bleach bleach hair, um, those are on the internet. And that wraps up this episode, this classic episode of tech Stuff, the Wiki leaks story. Like I said, we probably need to go back and revisit this one. A lot has happened with Wiki leaks, a lot of ups and downs with that story. So I'll probably do a

follow up, maybe a full redo. We'll see. But if you guys have suggestions for topics I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter. The handle it both is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows e