The site’s stated mission's is to develop “an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis.” Their primary goal: “to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” Wikileaks’ intended focus is on countries known for oppressive governments and shoddy standards of human rights (Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, former Soviet states), but they also take a hard line of businesses. So far their database is 1.2 million documents strong, and growing. But as Wikileaks expands, so does the controversy surrounding it.
Recently, in response to a suit brought against Wikileaks by Swiss bank Julius Baer, a judge in California issued an injunction against the site that effectively shut it down for a couple of weeks in February before reversing the ruling on 1 March. Now Wikileaks is back online, but the court’s reversal allowed the law to sidestep all kinds of murky legal questions concerning internet ownership, prior restraint and First Amendment rights. Just last week Wikileaks posted a trailer for the controversial anti-Islam film Fitna. The trailer had been censored elsewhere because of its sensitive nature. The posting resulted in unprecedented traffic that overwhelmed Wikileaks’ servers, shutting the site down until the technical issues could be resolved.
Then there’s the controversy caused just by the site’s existence. 1.2 million anonymously leaked documents can’t all be verified, so falsification could, in theory, be rampant. What’s the best way to verify all these newly open secrets? Wikileaks claims that public dialog and user participation will do the trick, citing the success of Wikipedia as evidence. Also, the Wikileaks writer's kit offers advice for verifying a leaked document’s accuracy: Explain the document. Question its veracity. Cite references. But is this enough? And what of legitimate claims of privacy? Although Wikileaks’ editors review documents before releasing them to the public, I found no statement that guarantees protection for documents defined by U.S. law as private. Secrecy for secrecy’s sake is often arbitrary, and secrecy used to cover up crimes should be exposed, but some information protected by law from public view (juvenile arrest records, medical records and abortion records come to mind) is protected for good reason. If Wikileaks received such touchy documents, would it release them? Wikileaks’ bosses do value privacy and secrecy – they keep their identities secret – and they balk at international laws that they deem unfair. Do they also see themselves as above U.S. law? Above their own ethnic?
Finally, as the media and the public become savvier about Wikileaks, I’m curious as to which leaks will produce the most leads. According to a study released last month by Journalism.org, the top five stories followed by the media in 2007 received about 30 percent of all coverage – contradicting forecasters who predicted a democratization of topics for the Internet age. Will Wikileaks help reverse this trends? Or will its users gravitate to the same-old-same-old: the 2008 campaign, Iraq, immigration, Iran. Not that these stories deserve no attention, but there are so many other stories out there. Many of them may be hiding in Wikileaks’ massive and largely untapped data stores.
