WikiLeaks: Impact of Leaks on Governments and Public Perception

This report provides a comprehensive overview of WikiLeaks, a non-profit media organization known for publishing private, secret, and classified media from anonymous sources. It details WikiLeaks' operational model, emphasizing its reliance on a global network of volunteers and its founder, Julian Assange. The report explores significant leaks, including the 'Collateral Murder' video and the Kenyan corruption case, analyzing their impact and the controversies they generated. It examines the benefits and negative consequences of WikiLeaks' actions, the reactions of governments and the public, and the ethical considerations surrounding the disclosure of sensitive information. The report concludes by considering the balance between the public's right to information and the need to protect against potential harm, offering a nuanced perspective on the organization's role in promoting transparency and influencing global politics. This assignment is available on Desklib, a platform offering past papers and solved assignments for students.

Wikileaks
Student’s name
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Introduction
“WikiLeaks is a non-profit making media organization whose main goal is to bring
important information and news to the public. It provides new methods and anonymous ways to
leak information to the public. WikiLeaks is a website that publishes submissions of private,
secret and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks and whistle blowers.
WikiLeaks mainly publishes original source material information alongside news stories from
within so that readers can see the evidential truth.” (Allan, 2013) It mainly relies on a global
network, the network of volunteers who are dedicated to the organizations objectives. The
organizational operations are designed to protect journalists, activists and whistleblowers.
WikiLeaks Explained
The term WikiLeaks is a combination of two terms “wiki” and “Leaks” each of which is
defined separately. According to Jennings, a wiki is a server program that permits users to work
together in making up the content of a website. With it, any user who is using a web browser
from their own computer can edit the site including other user’s contributions. It uses a
collaboration of many users (Anderson, 2016). The contributors can view the page any time
conveniently before and after changes have been made to it. According to Jennings, the term
wiki comes from Hawaiian language meaning fast. From the English dictionary, the word leak is
defined as permitting to escape or to flaw. The leak part of the word describes what the
organization does. WikiLeaks is an organization which gathers information that governments and
institutions do not want released and posts it on the internet where everyone can read it. It is a
system for untraceable mass document leaking.

How WikiLeaks Operates
The founding and registration of wikileaks.org domain name was done on 4th October
2006 and was launched under the sunshine press organization. The founder of WikiLeaks was
Julian Assange who was an Australian internet activist. The WikiLeaks site however states that it
was “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company
technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa”. It was not until 2007
when Julian Assange was referred to as the “founder” of WikiLeaks. It started publishing leaked
documents in 2007 which were significant and became leading front page news items. Since it
was launched and started working, WikiLeaks has endured and overcome legal and political
attacks purposed to silence publications, journals and anonymous sources from it (Assange,
2016). WikiLeaks was originally launched as a user-editable site but has progressively moved
towards a more traditional publication and currently it no longer accepts comments or edits by
users. However, the organization heavily relies on volunteers who are above a thousand
including the board members.
A little about the founder (briefly) and what does he want to deliver to the world
from his website? How he wants people to use his website, and what for?
As the founder, Julian Assange is also the editor in chief of WikiLeaks. In his youth,
Assange was a computer hacker before becoming a skilled programmer and a political activist.
He has been a speaker on press freedom censorship and investigative journalism in many public
appearances in many countries (Beckett & Ball, 2012). Through his works, he has won several
awards and nominations including the nomination for the 2011 Nobel peace prize and Amnesty
International Media Award Among others. In his youth, he began hacking under the name
“mendrax” together with two of his friends whom they formed a group called International

Subversives. According to WikiLeaks, Assange states that one should not damage computer
systems they break into or change the information in them but they should cover tracks instead.
Assange was regarded as the most and famous ethical computer hacker. The Australian federal
police discovered his group and upon investigations in September 1991, they were caught
hacking into the Canadian Telecommunications Company master terminal (Benkler, 2013). He
was arrested and taken to court in a case which took three years where action was brought
against him for hacking computers belonging to Australian University. He pleaded guilty to 25
charges of hacking and was released on bond after being fined several thousand Australian
dollars. He later spent three years working with an academic researcher on the internet and wrote
a book on it. This was followed by a course in physics and mathematics at Melbourne University
but he did not graduate because he found a motivating factor to drop and start WikiLeaks.
He began WikiLeaks in 2006 with fellow likeminded people from different places. This
website’s purpose is to bring important news and information to the public. It gathers
information that governments and institutions do not want released and posts it on the internet
where all people can read it (Brevini, Hintz, & McCurdy, 2013). Through these publications, the
website suggests that it improves transparency which creates a better society for all people. In his
view, it leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in society, including government
corporations and other organizations. Also through the WikiLeaks, Assange hopes to promote
freedom of the press whereby journalism is not motivated by profit incentives to write the truth.
Assange through WikiLeaks website, went public on December 2006 whereby he published
articles on government corporations. The most significant documents he published include the
Afghanistan war and corruption in Kenya among others which made headlines in newspapers in
many countries (Dumas, 2013).

What was the big story that made it (the website) famous and what happened to the
people that they were involved with that story?
According to Higgins, the most influential story was the release of a video of the US
military in Afghanistan which was titled “Collateral Murder”. This story was published in April
2010 and it was gunfight footage from a Bagdad airstrike which occurred in July 2007 in which
Iraqi journalists were killed amongst other people by an apache helicopter (Eldridge, 2014). The
video was shot from the cock pit of the helicopter and shows US soldiers killing twelve people in
Bagdad. In addition to the two journalists killed, two children were among the seriously injured.
From the video, the pilots are seemingly aware that they are shooting civilians and they can be
heard mocking the dead from the videos audio track. According to Higgins, Only insurgents and
the two journalists were killed according to the US Army’s officials.
According to Higgins, through this story, Assange wanted to demonstrate and prove that
the Army was concealing the truth by releasing that video. He also wanted to show that media
coverage of military operations was untrustworthy especially reporting on the actual insurgents.
His main goal was to influence the public opinion against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan by
considering them illegal and immoral. Through this publication, Assange gave several interviews
on the story which had captured the world’s attention and the government received public
criticism and he received praise (Forte, Hartnett, & Sevetson, 2016).
In their defense according to Higgins, the US military offered a different perspective of
the captured events in the video. They claimed that all those killed were insurgents and it was
difficult to establish whether the journalists were among them because they were mixed with
them. They also claimed that it is common for insurgents to photograph such situations for their
own use in training camps and propaganda (Fowler, 2015).

Who is negatively affected by WikiLeaks
The other story from WikiLeaks that drew world’s attention through the media was the
Kenyan corruption case. According to WikiLeaks, upon president Moi’s retirement in December
2002, Kenya’s new president MwaiKibaki appointed John Githongo formerly of Transparency
International as his personal advisor on good governance and anticorruption. Githongo then
engaged a private investigation firm, Kroll and Associates (UK) to trace money stashed abroad
by the former president and his associates (Gale (Firm), 2014). The report vindicated president’s
Moi's relatives who were said to be his two sons and his associates. At this time, close associates
of the then current president Kibaki were also implicated in the Angloleasingscandal. This turn
of events caused the president to suppress further investigations on anticorruption cases. Since
then, none of the assets traced and identified by Kroll have been impounded. Among them are a
bank in Belgium, hotels and residences in the USA, UK, South Africa, Zambia and Australia and
massive real estate and agricultural investments. The leak originated from high levels of Kenyan
government and it is motivated by the desire to show that president Kibaki is aware of the
corruption evidence and chooses to suppress the evidence, and has further formed alliances with
former president Moi who’s Associates were vindicated in the scandal (Guichaoua,
Radermecker, Cloutier, & Bachelin, 2011). The other motivator for the leak is the magnitude of
the theft of public funds by president Moi and his associates which add up to millions of dollars.
This story occupied most of the news headlines in Kenya but has since been suppressed because
the government stopped or has neglected any further investigations.
The other story that was published by WikiLeaks was the SarahPalin’s email hack story
that occurred on September 2008 during the United States presidential election campaign. Her
yahoo e-mail account was subjected to unauthorized access by a hacker named David Kernel.
The hacker posted some screen shots of Palin’s e-mails and her address book to WikiLeaks. At

that time, the hacker was a 20-year-old college student and he was charged in a federal court.
The charges were three felonies which were identity theft, wire fraud and anticipating
obstruction of justice where he pleaded not guilty. After the proceedings, the jury found him
guilty of felony of anticipating obstruction of justice and the misdemeanor of unauthorized
access to a computer. He was sentenced to one year and one day of prison and three years of
probation (In Anglim, In Kirtley, & In Nobahar, 2015).
Who benefits from WikiLeaks?
In 2010, Wikileaks made headlines after publishing several sensitive documents about
Iraq, Afghanistan, the United States and many countries around the world. Wikileaks also
promised to divulge important information about certain big companies in the United States and
abroad. The documents leaked to the press by Wikileaks caused a lot of concerns among nations
that many world leaders wanted to have the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, arrested.
While world leaders cried foul, many people around the world commended Wikileaks for
informing the public regarding what governments and big corporations are doing. Many people
believe that the public has the right to know what their leaders are doing and that Wikileaks must
be allowed to continue providing the public with critical information without being censored (In
Lüsted, 2018).
While some people see Wikileaks as a hero, others feel that the company has breached
the bounds of decency and ethics for divulging damaging information without taking into
considerations the consequences of its actions. Yet, despite the possible ethical breach on the
part of Wikileaks, this does not mean that censorship of the press is the best solution to avert
possible harm and prevent potentially embarrassing situations on the part of the government.

There is no doubt that the right to information is very important but the question now is
whether or not it is morally and politically correct for an organization like Wikileaks to spy on
governments and big companies and divulge sensitive information to the public (In Peters & In
Broersma, 2013). In other words, to what extent should the public be kept informed about
government transactions and when should the government be allowed to withhold information
from its constituents. We have to understand that the public does not need to be a privy to all
activities of the government and there are things that are better left unsaid to protect the people.
Information is very powerful and it can make or unmake a company, a government, an
organization or an individual. Since information is very powerful, there is a need to temper the
sharing of information and use it only to promote the highest good.
The right to be informed is very important so there is a need for people to be kept
informed on the issues that affect them. In the case of Wikileaks, providing the general public
with the right information is crucial so there is a need to scrutinize the kind of information that it
gives to the general public. Note that certain types of information can cause a lot of damage and
put the lives of people in danger. Potentially embarrassing leaks can lead to international tension
and may lead to the breakdown of diplomatic ties of some nations (In Samek & In Shultz, 2017).
Allegations that the United States is selling nuclear arms to terrorists for instance are a very
serious and it can create dangerous backlash. Publishing this kind of information without putting
the information in the right context is very dangerous it can undermine the stability of certain
nations.
The idea that companies like Wikileaks can hack into the database of certain government
offices and private companies is disturbing because any information that these companies
generate can be used against the offices where the information came from. A clear example of

this is what happened in Iraq when Wikileaks published sensitive Iraq war documents. Note that
Iraq had an inconclusive election in March of 2010 and the publication of the war documents
added to the uneasiness in the area. According to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, the war
documents published by Wikileaks undermined the efforts of the Iraqis to form a strong
government (In Taylor, 2018). Although some political observers noted that the information
published by Wikileaks did not seem to impress the majority of the people in Iraq, there is really
no way of saying how this information had influenced the way the world look at Iraq. Note that
the war documents were published online and people from all over the world and see them so the
sphere of influence created is so wide that it is difficult to clearly measure the impact of that
these documents had on the general public.
Since lives may be at stake if certain information is made public, should companies like
Wikileaks be subjected to censorship? The idea that whistleblowers like Wikileaks should be
silenced is rather disturbing and when we start to go after whistleblowers, we may stifle the truth
and cause injustice to prosper. Censorship stifles the flow of information and it can curtail the
freedom of the press so there is a need to hit a balance between what should be or should not be
published. There are certain types of information that should be made known to the public even
if they are shocking to the senses of humankind (Kljajic, 2011). For instance, war crimes that go
unpunished should be made known to the public in order to pressure world leaders to act on
these injustices. By publishing documents that pinpoint war criminals, world leaders may be
persuaded to go after these criminals. Note that in certain parts of the world, powerful people,
organizations and even governments commit criminal acts against innocent people without being
brought to justice. In the same manner, publishing unethical practices of certain companies can
save lives so there is a need to companies like WikiLeaks that are brave enough to tell the ugly

truth as it is. If organizations like WikiLeaks are prohibited from blowing the whistle on these
individuals and organizations, several lives can be in great danger.
Information can be a double-edge sword and it can go either way. If we withhold critical
information, people can die and if we irresponsibly divulge sensitive information people can also
die. Given this situation, it is very important for companies like WikiLeaks to have the right
moral values and motivations (Konstantopoulos, 2017). Merely publishing critical information
just for the sake of giving information to the public should be avoided to minimize damage to
property and the loss of lives. As it is, journalists and publishers both online and offline must
observe proper conduct and must put the best interest of the public first before anything else. The
right to be informed is not an absolute right, thus, journalists and publishers should use sound
judgment to decide whether or not publishing sensitive information will bring the highest good to
the public. There is a need to journalists and publishing companies to act responsibly and
consider the consequences of their actions (Leigh, Harding, & Garcia, 2011).
WikiLeaks vs. mainstream media (TV channels, newspapers, radio, etc)
According to (Leigh & Harding, 2013) the secrets being revealed by WikiLeaks show
how technology made it easy to steal confidential information and post it globally. The secret
revelations indicate that modern technology is shifting news leaks from mainstream media like
newspapers because they can be accessed by WikiLeaks. Such shift has led to conflict between
WikiLeaks and mainstream media since it transforms how the public gets information. Through
this, the public has displayed a lack of confidence with mainstream media, which has been
perceived as conservative and protective.
The second way through which there has been conflict between the two is that WikiLeaks
provides whistle blowers with anonymity to provide documents to the public without worry

about them getting censored and filtered. (Leigh & Harding, 2013 stated that “woes that face the
journalism industry have caused it to shed investigative efforts” which require a lot of money
and time for a story break. In another perspective, Feldstein suggests that WikiLeaks benefit
from getting credibility from journalists organizations and attracts public attention from their
documents, which the mainstream media does not get.
As quoted in (Lynch, 2010), “WikiLeaks is not a new organization but rather a cell of
activists that is releasing information designed to embarrass people in power.” This writer from
the New Yorker suggests that WikiLeaks is opposed to the belief that state departments are
legitimate organizations therefore they should be exposed. Parker refers to it as not journalism he
further suggests that mainstream media should let the government have some level of secrecy in
their organs.
Thirdly, Mainstream media has been accused of failing to provide a check on power. Due
to this, whistle blowers have trusted WikiLeaks for their information. The legitimacy of the other
press has been of question this is because WikiLeaks provides anonymity hence whistleblowers
trust it compared to the mainstream media. Fourthly, in some cases, WikiLeaks has been
appraised for its disclosures on some documents. First, Feldstein suggests that due to the
relationship between mainstream media and WikiLeaks is an interaction, which is good for both
of them (Mortensen, 2015). This is because WikiLeaks benefits from credibility from elite
journalists organizations and draws public attention globally as they provide evidence. On the
same case, mainstream media benefits by getting a treasure of secret documents with low risk to
themselves if they had directly dealt with a whistleblower. This risk includes the risk of
persecution or publishing injunctions issued by the government. In another case, the
cohesiveness of WikiLeaks with the mainstream media occurs where release of secrets of

WikiLeaks creates co-ordination of news outlets stories at once as opposed to breaking news by
one media at a time (Mortensen, 2015).
Challenges faced by Information System professionals
The whole issue of ethical leaking of information by WikiLeaks originates from its main
purpose which it was established, that is to expose oppressive regimes globally and providing
assistance to people wishing to reveal unethical Behavior in their government’s corporations.
Therefore according to WikiLeaks, leaking information seeks to end unethical behavior of
governments globally so that others can desist from such kind of behavior. Such kind of
information was released by WikiLeaks on the corruption in Kenya and the Afghanistan shooting
cases whereby, the stories revealed the level of unethical behavior being practiced by
government institutions and officials (Müller, 2014).
According to WikiLeaks, ethics is used as a means to strengthen broader social values
while maximizing the gender good of society, being fair respecting human dignity and ensuring
justice to the people. This is evident through the sites story especially collateral murder story
where the soldiers were seemingly shooting civilians and innocent journalists. Through the story
WikiLeaks seeks to promote human dignity and ensuring that U.S. government agencies respect
the value of human life of the people in Afghanistan. The story is also a way of ensuring that for
those who were innocently killed and injured, justice was served to them. WikiLeaks also
promotes information ethics whereby through this stories, values can be strengthened through the
storage, production, distribution and use of information as well as the related systems of
information, policies, infrastructure and professional duties of journalism (Reynolds, 2012). In
addition, WikiLeaks observes and promotes broader ethical concerns contained in issues and