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WikiLeaks: Seven Years Today

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EVERYWHERE (Rixstep) — WIKILEAKS.ORG is seven years old today.

Domain ID:D130035267-LROR
Domain Name:WIKILEAKS.ORG
Created On:04-Oct-2006 05:54:19 UTC
Last Updated On:04-Apr-2013 14:26:46 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2018 05:54:19 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Dynadot, LLC (R1266-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED

A lot's happened in seven years.

The Idea

The idea (or so it seemed at the time) was to take advantage of encryption technology to turn journalism on its head. No more selective publishing (selective censorship). People would finally see original documents and be able to judge for themselves. In a short time, WikiLeaks published more crucial documents than all of the world's mainstream media combined.

This might be a good place to start:



That explains a bit of the WikiLeaks technology (the WikiLeaks idea) in broad strokes. But what's happened to the world the past twenty years which makes things like WikiLeaks even more critical? Watch this acclaimed speech from the Oslo Freedom Forum to find out.



So now you know what the people are up against.

Most people first became aware of WikiLeaks with the release of the Collateral Murder video 5 April 2010.



Here's an excellent documentary in two parts on WikiLeaks by Mark Davis of Australia's SBS Dateline from May 2010.





And that was the run-up to the Afghan War Diaries.

Shadows of Mordor

Sauron woke. Manning was arrested, Julian went to Sweden for a while, where he ran into two absolutely wonderful girls.

This documentary by Andrew Fowler of Australia's 4 Corners should not be missed, as it's the most complete and most thorough account of Julian's time in the land of the midnight sun.

The sensational thing about 2010 was that each successive WikiLeaks release for that year was bigger than the one before and again set a world record. The assembled media, on radio, television, and online, went totally bonkers and drowned everyone in these exciting - and much needed - revelations.

Pentagon Papers? Those were on paper. The world had never before seen the ramifications (the promises) of the digital age.

But the Afghan War Diaries release of 25 July (75,000 documents, another 15,000 withheld for harm minimisation) was soon dwarfed by the release of the Iraq War Logs of 23 October (391,832 field reports) and then (in pure bulk) by 'Cablegate' on 28 November with 251,287 US diplomatic cables (with 261,276,536 words).

What with the reactions of mainstream media and above all the pompous US government up to this point, Cablegate came as a resounding karma boomerang for them all. And then Sauron got really pissed. The truth had become a terror.



So Sauron reacted. The medium size dog got Julian entangled in legal turmoils in Sweden, later the UK, saboteur extraordinaire Daniel Domscheit-Berg tried to destroy the WikiLeaks infrastructure, and Pete King and Joe Lieberman twisted the thumb screws on the global payment processors to stop donations.

Yet Julian and WikiLeaks kept going. Bolstered by good staff and a resolve to crush the bastards, they fought back. Today the financial blockade has crumbled, WikiLeaks found support in the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and the leaks just keep on coming, most notably the Public Library of US Diplomacy and the Stratfor files.

When Edward Snowden entered the ring, Julian and WikiLeaks were there to help.

It's been a fantastic seven years. The world has forever changed. The genie will never again be put back in the bottle.

Happy birthday, WikiLeaks. And thanks for all the leaks. Thanks for crushing bastards.

Yeah can it possibly be true? It's a worry, isn't it? That the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined.
 - Julian Assange, TED Talks Oxford, 16 July 2010

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