2011

Critical Approach Wikileaks Make

More Transparent Media

Kamil Mehmet Ö ZKAN

“Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates

a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced
corruption and stronger democracies in all society’s institutions,
including government, corporations and other organisations. A
healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital
role in achieving these goals. We are part of that media....” they
said. Is Wikileaks realy make media tranperant or it is an illusion
serve for dark powers.

[Kamil Mehmet ÖZKAN]

[New Media Master Program]
[2010.09.19.005]
Contents
What is Wikileaks ?.................................................................................................................................1
How WikiLeaks works ?..........................................................................................................................2
Why the media is important ?................................................................................................................3
Who is Julian Assange ?..........................................................................................................................4
Important Leaks.....................................................................................................................................4
2006–08..........................................................................................................................................4
2009................................................................................................................................................5
2010................................................................................................................................................5
Diplomatic Cables Release......................................................................................................................6
Some of the topic stories they have broken...........................................................................................6
How They Administrate Wikileaks ?.......................................................................................................6
After US Diplomatic Leaks, Are They in Danger ?...................................................................................7
Upcoming Leaks and Insurance..............................................................................................................8
Critical View Wikileaks............................................................................................................................8
Sum Up.................................................................................................................................................10
Sources;................................................................................................................................................11
Critical Aproach Wikileaks Can Make
Media Transperancy or Make Innocent
Life in Danger
By Kamil Mehmet ÖZKAN

What is Wikileaks ?

“WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. 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 (our electronic drop box). One of our most
important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so
readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organisation that
has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe.
Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report
on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support
these activities.” They discribe themself in their official website very self deniying
organization and they want publish secrets which are kept from public.

Ok. What is Wikileaks ?

WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private,

secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources and news leaks. The wikileaks.org
domain name was registered on 4 October 2006. Its website, launched in 2006 and run by
The Sunshine Press, claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of
its launch. The organisation describes its founders as a mix of Chinesedissidents, journalists,
mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe,
Australia, and South Africa.

The website was unveiled, and published its first document in December 2006.

The creators of WikiLeaks have not been formally identified. It has been represented in public
since January 2007 by Julian Assange and others. Assange describes himself as a member of
WikiLeaks' advisory board.

News reports in The Australian have called Assange the "founder of WikiLeaks". According
to Wired magazine, a volunteer said that Assange described himself in a private conversation
as "the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original
coder, organiser, financier, and all the rest". As of June 2009, the site had over 1,200
registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange and eight other people.
“WikiLeaks has sustained and triumphed against legal and political attacks designed to
silence our publishing organisation, our journalists and our anonymous sources. The
broader principles on which our work is based are the defence of freedom of speech and
media publishing, the improvement of our common historical record and the support of the
rights of all people to create new history. We derive these principles from the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, Article 19 inspires the work of our journalists
and other volunteers. It states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. We
agree, and we seek to uphold this and the other Articles of the Declaration.”

They are soldier of freedom and heroes of journalists. Are they ? Are the information they
show us really important for us ? Or can they changed anything about blatant injustice ? Or
are they mirror in front of the big plans. Are somebody have problem about leaks ?

Lets look how wikileaks system works.

How WikiLeaks works ?

“WikiLeaks has combined high-end security technologies with journalism and ethical
principles. Like other media outlets conducting investigative journalism, we accept (but do
not solicit) anonymous sources of information. Unlike other outlets, we provide a high
security anonymous drop box fortified...

We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the public. When information
comes in, our journalists analyse the material, verify it and write a news piece about it
describing its significance to society. We then publish both the news story and the original
material in order to enable readers to analyse the story in the context of the original source
material themselves ...

As the media organisation has grown and developed, WikiLeaks been developing and
improving a harm minimisation procedure. We do not censor our news, but from time to
time we may remove or significantly delay the publication of some identifying details from
original documents to protect life and limb of innocent people.

We accept leaked material in person and via postal drops as alternative methods, although
we recommend the anonymous electronic drop box as the preferred method of submitting
any material. We do not ask for material, but we make sure that if material is going to be
submitted it is done securely and that the source is well protected. Because we receive so
much information, and we have limited resources, it may take time to review a source’s
submission.

We also have a network of talented lawyers around the globe who are personally committed
to the principles that WikiLeaks is based on, and who defend our media organisation.”
Wikileaks works like a media organization. It is not a common website which publish
documents when it found. Wikileaks have lots of volunteers, journalists, lawyers and talented
people about security and technology.

They edit leaks and look is the document true or not. They look about forensic problems with
their lawyer army and publish their documents in a legal way which is not unstoppable way.
They want to change the way of making journalism with technological developments. Also
they want to change new age history.

Also they said sometime they remove information from leaks for keeping their innocent life.

Why the media is important ?

“Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all
people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all
society’s institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. A
healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in achieving these goals.
We are part of that media.

Scrutiny requires information. Historically, information has been costly in terms of human
life, human rights and economics. As a result of technical advances particularly the internet
and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered. In its
landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and
unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.

We believe that it is not only the people of one country that keep their own government
honest, but also the people of other countries who are watching that government through
the media.

In the years leading up to the founding of WikiLeaks, we observed the world’s publishing
media becoming less independent and far less willing to ask the hard questions of
government, corporations and other institutions. We believed this needed to change.

WikiLeaks has provided a new model of journalism. Because we are not motivated by
making a profit, we work cooperatively with other publishing and media organisations
around the globe, instead of following the traditional model of competing with other media.
We don’t hoard our information; we make the original documents available with our news
stories. Readers can verify the truth of what we have reported themselves. Like a wire service,
WikiLeaks reports stories that are often picked up by other media outlets. We encourage this.
We believe the world’s media should work together as much as possible to bring stories to a
broad international readership.”

Wikileaks have some problems with traditional media sources. They think pure journalism
doesnot motivated by profit and advertisements or some powerful politicians. Public must see
everything about what they related about.
In an interview on The Colbert Report, Assange explained about the limit to the freedom of
speech, saying, "[it is] not an ultimate freedom, however free speech is what regulates
government and regulates law. That is why in the US constitution the bill of rights says that
congress is to make no such law abridging the freedom of the press. It is to take the rights of
the press outside the rights of the law because those rights are superior to the law because in
fact they create the law. Every constitution, every bit of legislation is derived from the flow of
information. Similarly every government is elected as a result of people understanding
things".

Who is Julian Assange ?

Before looking Wikileaks media effects we must know some useful information about
founder or spokesman Julian Assange.

Julian Paul Assange ( Born 3 July 1971) is an Australian publisher, journalist, software
developer and Internet activist. He is the founder, spokesperson, and editor in chief of
WikiLeaks, with the stated purpose of creating open governments. Assange has worked as a
computer programmer and was a hacker during his youth. He has lived in several countries,
and has made public appearances in many parts of the world to speak about freedom of the
press, censorship, and investigative journalism.

The White House has called Assange's release of the diplomatic cables "reckless and
dangerous" while sources in the Kremlin linked to President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that
he "could be awarded a Nobel prize."

For his work with WikiLeaks Assange has received glowing praise and accolades, along with
public condemnation and calls for his execution. He received a number of awards and
nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award for publishing material
about extrajudicial killings in Kenya and Readers' Choice for Time magazine's 2010 Person of
the Year.

Assange is currently wanted for questioning in Sweden regarding alleged sexual offences, and
was arrested in London, England on 7 December 2010. He is currently on bail and under
house arrest in England pending an extradition hearing. Assange has denied the allegations
and claimed that they are politically motivated.

Important Leaks

2006–08
WikiLeaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government
officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys."
In August 2007, The Guardian published a story about corruption by the family of the former
Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi based on information provided via WikiLeaks. In November
2007, a March 2003 copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta detailing the
protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was released. The
document revealed that some prisoners were off-limits to the International Committee of the
Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied. ... In March
2008, WikiLeaks published what they referred to as "the collected secret 'bibles' of
Scientology," and three days later received letters threatening to sue them for breach of
copyright. ...

2009

In January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians

and businessmen involved in the 2008 Peru oil scandalIn February, WikiLeaks released 6,780
Congressional Research Service reports followed in March, by a list of contributors to the
Norm Coleman senatorial campaign and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that
had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian. In July, they released a report
relating to a serious nuclear accident that had occurred at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in
2009. Later media reports have suggested that the accident was related to the Stuxnet
computer worm. In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from
shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008–2010 Icelandic
financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to
various owners of the bank, and large debts written off. They also released 570,000 intercepts
of pager messages sent on the day of the 11 September attacks. During 2008 and 2009,
WikiLeaks published the alleged lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for Australia,
Denmark and Thailand. These were originally created to prevent access to child pornography
and terrorism, but the leaks revealed that other sites covering unrelated subjects were also
listed.

2010

In March 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense

Counterintelligence Analysis Report written in March 2008 discussing the leaking of material
by WikiLeaks and how it could be deterred. In April, a classified video of the 12 July 2007
Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two Reuters employees being fired at, after the
pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras.
In June 2010, A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley
Manning, was arrested after alleged chat logs were turned in to the authorities by former
hacker Adrian Lamo, in whom he had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo he had leaked
the "Collateral Murder" video, in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around
260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks. In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents
related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to The Guardian, The
New York Times and Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including
friendly fire and civilian casualties. At the end of July, a 1.4 GB "insurance file" was
added to the Afghan War Diary page, whose decryption details would be released if
WikiLeaks or Assange were harmed. WikiLeaks asked the Pentagon and human-rights
groups to help remove names from the documents to reduce the potential harm caused by
their release, but did not receive assistance. Following on from the leak of information from
the Afghan War, in October 2010, around 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War were
released in October. The BBC quoted The Pentagon referring to the Iraq War Logs as "the
largest leak of classified documents in its history." Media coverage of the leaked documents
focused on claims that the U.S. government had ignored reports of torture by the Iraqi
authorities during the period after the 2003 war.

Diplomatic Cables Release

On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País),
France (Le Monde), Germany (Der Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The Guardian), and
the United States (The New York Times) started to simultaneously publish the first 220 of
251,287 leaked confidential diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies around the world,
dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. WikiLeaks plans to release the entirety of
the cables in phases over several months.

Some of the topic stories they have broken

 War, killings, torture and detention

 Government, trade and corporate transparency
 Suppression of free speech and a free press
 Diplomacy, spying and (counter-)intelligence
 Ecology, climate, nature and sciences
 Corruption, finance, taxes, trading
 Censorship technology and internet filtering
 Cults and other religious organizations
 Abuse, violence, violation

How They Administrate Wikileaks ?

According to a January 2010 interview, the WikiLeaks team then consisted of five people
working full-time and about 800 people who worked occasionally, none of whom were
compensated. WikiLeaks has no official headquarters. The expenses per year are about
€200,000, mainly for servers and bureaucracy. WikiLeaks does not pay for lawyers, as
hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal support have been donated by media organisations
such as the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and the National Newspaper Publishers
Association. Its only revenue stream is donations, but WikiLeaks has planned to add an
auction model to sell early access to documents. The Wau Holland Foundation helps to
process donations to WikiLeaks. In July 2010, the Foundation stated that WikiLeaks was
receiving no money for personnel costs, only for hardware, travelling and bandwidth.

After US Diplomatic Leaks, Are They in Danger ?

According to The Times, WikiLeaks and its members have complained about continuing
surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence organisations. Two lawyers for Julian
Assange in the United Kingdom told The Guardian that they believed they were being
watched by the security services after the US cables leak, which started on 28 November
2010.

Furthermore, several companies severed ties with WikiLeaks. After providing 24-hour
notification, American owned EveryDNS dropped WikiLeaks from its entries on 2 December
2010, citing DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure". On the same
day, Amazon.com severed its ties with WikiLeaks, to which it was providing infrastructure
services, after an intervention by an aide of U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. But the other
hand Amazon denied acting under political pressure citing a violation of its terms of service.

In the days following, hundreds of (and eventually more than a thousand) mirrors of the
WikiLeaks site appeared and the Anonymous group of internet activists, called on supporters
to attack the websites of companies which do not support WikiLeaks, under the banner of
Operation Payback, previously aimed at anti-piracy organisations.

On 3 December, PayPal, the payment processor owned by eBay, permanently cut off the
account of the Wau Holland Foundation that had been redirecting donations to WikiLeaks.
PayPal alleged that the account violated its "Acceptable Use Policy", specifically that it was
used for "activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal
activity." The Vice President of PayPal later stated that they stopped accepting payments
after the “State Department told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward.”
Later the same day, he said that his previous statement was incorrect, and that it was in fact
based on a letter from the State Department to WikiLeaks.

On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance, announced that it had frozen the assets of
Assange that it holds, totalling 31,000 euros. In a statement on their website, they stated that
this was because Assange "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when
opening the account. WikiLeaks released a statement saying this was due to that Assange, "as
a homeless refugee attempting to gain residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's address
in Geneva for the bank's correspondence".On the same day, MasterCard announced that it "is
taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products",
adding "MasterCard rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or
facilitating any action that is illegal." The next day, Visa Inc. announced it was suspending
payments to WikiLeaks, pending "further investigations". In a move of support for
WikiLeaks, XIPWIRE established a way to donate to WikiLeaks, and waived their fees. On
December 18, Bank of America announced it would "not process transactions of any type that
we have reason to believe are intended for Wikileaks" citing "Wikileaks may be engaged in
activities that are... inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments".

On 7 December, The Guardian stated that people can still donate to WikiLeaks via
Commerzbank Kassel in Germany or Landsbanki in Iceland or by post to a post office box at
the University of Melbourne or at the wikileaks.ch domain.

On 21 December, media reported that Apple had removed an application from its App Store,
which provided access to the embassy cable leaks.

Upcoming Leaks and Insurance

In an interview with Chris Anderson on 19 July 2010, Assange showed a document

WikiLeaks had on an Albanian oil well blowout, and said they also had material from inside
BP, and that they were "getting enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of a very
high calibre" but added that they have not been able to verify and release the material because
they do not have enough volunteer journalists.

In October 2010, Assange told a leading Moscow newspaper that "The Kremlin had better
brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia." Assange later
clarified: "we have material on many businesses and governments, including in Russia. It’s
not right to say there’s going to be a particular focus on Russia".

In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from

Bank of America". In 2010 he told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another
"megaleak" early in 2011, from inside the private sector, involving "a big U.S. bank" and
revealing an "ecosystem of corruption". Bank of America's stock price fell by 3% as a result
of this announcement. Assange commented on the possible impact of the release that ”it
could take down a bank or two.”

In December 2010, Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on the
BBC, that WikiLeaks had information it considers to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it
would release if the organisation needs to defend itself.

Insurance file is still waiting. If any attacks Wikileaks or Julian Assange himself, they release
cyrpto of insurance file which contains more than Cablegate documents. They may have very
important leaks fro banking sector.

Critical View Wikileaks

Wikileaks organization describe themself non profit organization and new way to make news.
They fight freedom and transparency about secret informations somebody have from
government.

When we look “The Global Media in the late 1990s” (Edward Herman and Robert
McChesney) and “Globalization and Cultural Imperialism Reconsidered: Old Questions
in New Guises” in( James Curran and David Morley) Wikileaks fit to this model. After
technological revolution and growing information ways it effects media and news sector. In
past if you leaks one or two paper you can publish pysical newspaper in one country. It canbe
censored before publishing and leaker is arrested quickly.

But today with internet can be reach billions of people in seconds and can not be censored in
classical way. If the internet does not exist we can not know anything about leaks. In global
media age every information can be leaks and inform from cyber soldiers or terrorists.
Wikileaks reach thousands of documents from all around the world via technology anonymus
way.

They can kept their sources. They said they do not know most of their sources.

New media makes new way making journalism. With new media and social media tools today
Wikileaks have millions of supporters. Today in Facebook Wikileaks have more than
1,500,000 people. More than 650.000 followers. And thousands of anonymus hacker
supporter which we do not know about them fight for Wikileaks. They hacked Paypal,
Amazon, Banks website. This is another and modern way propaganda way.

“A Propaganda Model” in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass

Media(Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky), Wikileaks fight big power baroons, money
and goverment. They want transperancy about secret information about diplomatic relations.
Ok. Is it really possible. Is it really important for public. Common citizen must know
everything their purpose. Is the aim so cute and so innocence. With technology there are
always new way to phshcological war. Who wants to publish top secret government
documents. Or these documents help something or someone to change.

However Hillary Clinton said that Julian Assange and their team make danger innocents life.
But above Wikileaks said that sometime we remove name or the other contact informations
from leaks because we want to keep their life. ” We do not censor our news, but from time to
time we may remove or significantly delay the publication of some identifying details from
original documents to protect life and limb of innocent people.”

Another way they claim that their works based on freedom. They fight profit centered news
sector censor some important informations which public knowledge worh. They take their
power from Universal Decleration of Human Rights. It can be possible a real movement from
civil but it can be motivated from international intelligence powers such as USA or Russia or
meybe China. Its ıs all about what they show us. “...our work is based are the defence of
freedom of speech and media publishing, the improvement of our common historical record
and the support of the rights of all people to create new history. We derive these principles
from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, Article 19 inspires the work
of our journalists and other volunteers. It states that everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference
and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers.”

In tihs case Propaganda model is working. You can say public we do this for you. This secrets
hide from you, but the other hand the big plans run on. It can be and possible. But can not
verifyied.

Sum Up

We are living high technology edge. Media is top the global and more crowded form all the
time. With social networks and internet based information and communication systems
everybody have their all media channnel. With Twitter or Facebook or only writing in a blog
everybody can reach all audiences in internet all around the world. This is global media and
global worlds. Every person in internet is a media channel.

With this condition propaganda in past make some powerful media relared baroons but today
everyone can make propaganda. Classic media is message today’s medium internet. One
person can take war logs from army computer and arrived Julian Assange and their team and
nobody can not do anything.

Media became more transperancy as Julian Assange and their team want. Nobody’s life can
hurt from Wikileaks . Wikileaks change government in Afrika. Nowadays in Tunusian
dictator escape from public angry. They said it is all related with Wikileaks last cablegate
documents.

We say only one thing, Julian Assange and Wikileaks wants really or not media came more
tranperancy from past. Today every body publish what they want and reach millions of people
in seconds.
Sources;

- Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky “A Propaganda Model” in Manufacturing Consent:

The Political Economy of Mass Media, 2002. pp. 1-35. (kit).

- Edward Herman and Robert McChesney “The Global Media in the late 1990s” in Mckay
ed., pp. 178-210. (kit)

- David Morley “Globalization and Cultural Imperialism Reconsidered: Old Questions in New
Guises” in James Curran and David Morley eds. Media and Cultural Theory, London:
Routledge, 2006. pp. 30-43. (kit)

- Lev Manovich. “What is New Media?” in The Language of New Media, MIT Press, 2001.pp
19-61.

- http://www.wikileaks.ch/About.html

- http://twitter.com/wikileaks

- http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-data#data

- http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/13/julian-assange-readers-choice-for-times-person-of-the-
year-2010/

- http://www.reuters.com/subjects/wikileaks

- http://www.orbooks.com/our-books/wikileaks/ with Google book search

- http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2009/10/start/exposed-wikileaks-secrets

- http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/shield