WikiLeaks, a whistleblowing website founded by Julian Assange, has received praise as well as criticism from the public, hacktivists, journalist organisations and government officials. The organisation has revealed human rights abuses and was the target of an alleged "cyber war". Allegations have been made that Wikileaks worked with or was exploited by the Russian government and acted in a partisan manner during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The organisation has won awards, including The Economist's New Media Award in 2008 at the Index on Censorship Awards and Amnesty International's UK Media Award in 2009. In 2010, the UK Information Commissioner stated that "WikiLeaks is part of the phenomenon of the online, empowered citizen". An Internet petition calling for the cessation of extrajudicial intimidation of WikiLeaks attracted over six hundred thousand signatures. Supporters of WikiLeaks in the media and academia have commended it for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, supporting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions.
Some U.S. government officials have criticised WikiLeaks for exposing classified information and said that the leaks harm U.S. national security and compromise international diplomacy. The concerns include the publication of sensitive information and the anonymity afforded by the internet. Several human rights organisations requested that WikiLeaks redact the names of civilians working with international forces, in order to protect lives. Some journalists have criticised a perceived lack of editorial discretion when releasing thousands of documents at once and without sufficient analysis.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, expressed concern about pressure being placed on private companies to enact a financial blockade against WikiLeaks, which Pillay said was a violation of WikiLeaks' right to freedom of expression.
Background Timeline 2006: Julian Assange, an Australian programmer and activist, founded WikiLeaks with the intention of publishing leaked documents.
2010: WikiLeaks came to international attention when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010),, 5 April 2000. Retrieved 28 March 2014. the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.
2013: Assange stood for the Australian Senate for the short-lived WikiLeaks Party but failed to win a seat.
2016: During the 2016 U.S. election campaign, WikiLeaks published confidential Democratic Party emails, showing that the party's national committee favoured Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
2017: WikiLeaks publishes the Vault 7 CIA files.
2019: Julian Assange is ejected from the embassy, arrested by the London Metropolitan Police and a US indictment is unsealed.
2024: Julian Assange agreed to a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors and pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents in return for a sentence of time served.
Response from public : A UMR Research December 2010 poll showed that the majority of Australians are against the official government position on WikiLeaks. The findings which were done on 1,000 individuals show 59% support WikiLeaks' action in making the cables public and 25% oppose it. This was asked a few weeks after the initial release of the cables. According to a 2011 poll by The Lowy Institute, 62% of Australians said the job WikiLeaks does is more of a good thing than a bad thing. : According to a telephone survey of 1,004 German residents age 18 and older, which was conducted at the end of November for the German public broadcaster ARD, a majority of 53% disapprove of WikiLeaks, while 43% are generally in favour of the platform. Asked about the specific release of US diplomatic cables, almost two-Thirds (65%) believe that these documents should not be published, compared to 31% that agree with them being released to the public. : A December 2010 a Gallup poll found that 52% of Pakistanis believe that "America herself has published the documents on purpose to create unrest," while 24% believe that this is not the case and 24% did not respond. : A CNN poll of 2,010 British adults conducted in December 2010 revealed that more people agree than disagree that WikiLeaks was right to release the cables, by 42% to 33%. The remaining 25% did not have a position. Older people were significantly more likely to oppose WikiLeaks. : A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 42% of Americans thought that the release of the Afghan war logs serves the public interest, with 47% of Americans saying it harmed the public interest. 37% of the public said they had heard a lot about the release. Amongst these, 53% say the disclosure of classified documents about the Afghanistan war harms the public interest. According to a telephone survey of 1,029 US residents age 18 and older, conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in December 2010, 70% of American respondents – particularly Republicans and older people – think the leaks are doing more harm than good by allowing enemies of the United States government to see confidential and secret information about U.S. foreign policy. Approximately 22% – especially young liberals – think the leaks are doing more good than harm by making the U.S. government more transparent and accountable. A majority of 59% also want to see the people behind WikiLeaks prosecuted, while 31% said the publication of secrets is protected under the First Amendment guarantee of a free press. According to a CBS poll conducted the same month, 60% of Americans thought WikiLeaks' releases would have a damaging impact on US relations overseas. 74% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats and 59% of Independents thought the Cablegate release would have a damaging impact on the US. Another CBS poll conducted the next month found that only 9% of Americans viewed Wikileaks positively, and 45% viewed it negatively with 22% of them thinking it was treasonous and 23% thinking it was damaging but legal. Republicans were more than twice as likely to think WikiLeaks was treasonous than Democrats. An Economist-YouGov poll tracked partisan sentiment about WikiLeaks from 2013 to 2016 and found that Republicans' view of WikiLeaks improved by 74 points after the DNC and Podesta leaks, and Democrats view of WikiLeaks became more negative by just 25 points over the same period. According to a 2015 poll by Fox News, three times as many voters disapprove of WikiLeaks as support it. 73% of Republicans, 57% of Democrats and 76% of Independents disapproved of the organisation, and 61% of voters thought that releasing classified military files was treason.
Response from governments
Australia On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications and Media Authority added WikiLeaks to their proposed list of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering scheme is implemented as planned. The blacklisting had been removed by 29 November 2010.
On 2 December 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard made a statement that she 'absolutely condemns' WikiLeaks' actions and that the release of information on the site was 'grossly irresponsible' and 'illegal.' However, on 8 December 2010 – after WikiLeaks published U.S. diplomatic cables in which United States diplomats labelled him a "control freak", former Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister (now resigned) Kevin Rudd said the leak of the US secret cables raised questions about US security. Rudd said, "The core responsibility, and therefore legal liability, goes to those individuals responsible for that initial unauthorised release."
Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stated in reference to WikiLeaks disclosure of classified US diplomatic cables in November and December 2010 that WikiLeaks had "exposed a diplomacy that had appeared unreachable".
China According to the WikiLeaks website, the government of the People's Republic of China has attempted to block all traffic to websites with "wikileaks" in the URL since 2007, but that this can be bypassed by encrypted connections or by using one of WikiLeaks' many covert URLs.
France The French Industry Minister Éric Besson said in a letter to the CGIET technology agency, WikiLeaks "violates the secret of diplomatic relations and puts people protected by diplomatic secret in danger". Therefore, it would be 'unacceptable' that the site was hosted on servers based in France. The minister asked for measures to bar WikiLeaks from France.
Germany The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the German WikiLeaks domain name, wikileaks.de, was raided on 24 March 2009 after WikiLeaks released the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist. The site was not affected. Mirror available: 24 March 2009
Iceland After the release of the 2007 Baghdad airstrikes video and as they prepared to release film of the Granai airstrike, Julian Assange has said that his group of volunteers came under intense surveillance. In an interview and Twitter posts he said that a restaurant in Reykjavík where his group of volunteers met came under surveillance in March; that there was "covert following and hidden photography" by police and foreign intelligence services; that an apparent British intelligence agent made thinly veiled threats in a Luxembourg car park; and that one of the volunteers was detained by police for 21 hours. Another volunteer posted that computers were seized, saying "If anything happens to us, you know why... and you know who is responsible." According to the Columbia Journalism Review, "the Icelandic press took a look at Assange's charges of being surveilled in Iceland [...] and, at best, have found nothing to substantiate them."
In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank secured a court order preventing Iceland's national broadcaster, RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt default risk. This information had been leaked to WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks website; faced with an injunction minutes before broadcast, the channel aired a screen-shot of the WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the bank. Citizens of Iceland were reported to be outraged that RÚV was prevented from broadcasting news of relevance. Therefore, WikiLeaks has been credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) ranking as first in the world for free speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for sources, journalists, and publishers. Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief sponsor of the proposal.
India In identical statements to both Houses of Parliament on 18 March 2011, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected all allegations against his government revealed by the United States diplomatic cables leak, including allegations of bribery during the 2008 Lok Sabha vote of confidence. Singh told Parliament, "The Government of India cannot confirm the veracity, contents or even the existence of such communications. I may point out that many of the persons referred to in those reports have stoutly denied the veracity of the contents. An issue was raised that the offence of bribery was committed in India. Government rejects that allegation absolutely and firmly."