World | Afghanistan
WikiLeaks founder hailed by many and condemned by US
Wikileaks, the site of which he is director, has been publishing "sensitive documents" through what it calls "principled leaking" since July 2007.
- By Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times
- Published: 00:00 July 27, 2010
- Image Credit: AP
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaking at a press conference in London on Monday. Assange said he believes there is evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan.
London: Julian Assange has been hailed as a hero of investigative journalism and condemned as a risk to national security.
WikiLeaks, the site of which he is director, has been publishing "sensitive documents" through what it calls "principled leaking" since July 2007.
Sunday's release of more than 75,000 classified reports about the war in Afghanistan is perhaps its biggest leak yet.
The site has become a key conduit for whistleblowers, hosting more than 1 million documents and datasets ranging from Sarah Palin's e-mail inbox and the Guantanamo Bay prison manual to a membership list of the UK's far-right British National Party and the financial secrets of Kaupthing, the Icelandic bank. It has even posted what it says is a US intelligence report on the site itself.
But its highest-impact leak came this year, with a 2007 video, which appears to show a US helicopter firing on a group in Baghdad, killing two Reuters employees. A US army intelligence analyst has been charged in connection with the video leak and Assange has not visited the US since, fearing arrest.
"We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies," WikiLeaks says on its site. Holding governments to account requires information, which has historically been "costly — in terms of human life and human rights", it says. "But with technological advances ...the risks of conveying important information can be lowered."
WikiLeaks maintains a grand internet tradition, dating back to the 1998 allegations about President Clinton's liaisons with Monica Lewinsky first published on the Drudge Report, of revealing suppressed information.
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