Wikileaks is a Wikipedia styled site which is dedicated to a new freedom of speech which might be quite dangerous. They basically publish secret information which has been passed to them from official “leaks”. As an example, the homepage states:
At 5pm EST Friday 22nd October 2010 WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports (‘The Iraq War Logs’), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout.
The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 ‘civilians’; 23,984 ‘enemy’ (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 ‘host nation’ (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 ‘friendly’ (coalition forces). The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60%) of these are civilian deaths.That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six year period. For comparison, the ‘Afghan War Diaries’, previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people. Iraq during the same period, was five times as lethal with equivalent population size.
In the newspaper this morning was an article on how Wikileaks has published information including (secret) communications between government officials – things like Saudi Arabia asking America to bomb Iran and destroy their Nuclear weapons programme before it is too late. Obviously not stuff that the people involved want the world at large to know.
If you want a good nose before they get shut down, head over there now and check it out.
Keep your eye on #Wikileaks and @wikileaks for more.
Further reading:
WikiLeaks: Arabs urged US to attack Iran
WikiLeaks is threatening national security, says Downing Street
Adrian is a self-proclaimed geek with a love for all things tech (except Apple products). He works in the SEO industry for a living and loves how it's constantly changing and evolving. He finds social media fascinating, but is also enthralled by all sorts of other things including Android, VW's, gaming and being a Dad.
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Let’s just bear in mind how the vast majority of these communications are extremely dull. The stuff revealed about the Japanese so far has been hilarious in just how boring it is.
http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/11/30/wikileaks-reveals-boring-stuff-about-japan-cablegate/
And let’s also remember that stuff that the various governments are spouting now about how these documents “will damage international relations”, “harm the national interest” and “put servicemen’s lives in danger” is the same crap they came out with back when Daniel Ellsberg leaked The Pentagon Papers detailing the US involvement in the Vietnam War and explicitly revealing that LBJ and his chums had systematically lied to the public and Congress about the conduct of the war.
It seems that whilst every Western government bangs on about how open and transparent they are, none of them come close. They routinely lie and cover up things that are very much in the public interest. Remember how the Iraq war documents that WikiLeaks published was going to endanger the lives of troops? And then how they didn’t? And how in fact it revealed a catalogue of covered-up civilian deaths and routine abuse of the very people the troops are supposed to be protecting?
Yes, there are some things that should not be made public for genuine reasons of national security and the nation’s interests, but far, far more often governments hide incompetence, deceit and evil behind those same excuses. If we could trust them, then they wouldn’t be so worried.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg