People are asking “Is WikiLeaks going to be shut down again?” and “Are U.S. troops and others’ lives in danger as a result of the leaked documents?” Those questions are yet to be answered.
There was speculation Monday morning that the government had already shut down WikiLeaks’ website.
While it’s true the WikiLeaks.org website was down most of Monday morning, it was probably due to the high traffic it received after news hit of the confidential U.S. military documents posted Sunday night, not because the government had somehow taken down the site.
It was back up later in the morning with a link to a separate page entitled “War Diary” with several browse options.
WikiLeaks is a whistle-blowing website that leaks confidential secret governmental and business documents online.
But has it gone too far this time? Your COMMENTS welcome below.
WikiLeaks’ latest action was the posting of some 91,000 classified documents regarding the war in Afghanistan. The question is, has the information posted for the world to see posed a risk to lives? Will it be ordered shut down as it was in 2008?
The Pentagon said Monday it is assessing the damage caused by the leak, and trying to determine if it has “put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk.”
Pakistan dismissed the documents as malicious and unsubstantiated.
The WikiLeaks website was shut down for similar activity in 2008 (scroll down for more information).
Monday’s news – Government needs time to assess the damage
The Pentagon said Monday in an Associated Press report that it is scrambling to assess the damage caused by the newest Internet leak of the 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war.
People are asking, “Will the site be shut down as it was in 2008?” The government has not stated its position as to any closure of the website.
The Associated Press reported Monday that the documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops.
The documents were posted on the Internet Sunday night on WikiLeaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization.
Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need “days, if not weeks” to review all the documents and determine “the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners.”
Did the U.S. government try to stop the leak of information?
The White House says it did not attempt to stop news organizations that had access to secret U.S. military documents from publishing reports about the leak.
It did, however, ask WikiLeaks – through reporters from The New York Times, London’s Guardian newspaper, and the German Weekly Der Spiegel, that were given advanced copies of the documents – to redact information in the documents that could harm U.S. military personnel.
The documents, the Pentagon says, could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad for allegedly transmitting classified information.
What is Wikileaks? Why was it shut down in 2008? Why was it shut down in 2010?
WikiLeaks.org shut down in 2008
WikiLeaks.org is a website that invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments, the New York Times reported in February 2008.
At that time the website posted documents concerning the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual concerning the operation of prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.
Subsequently, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the WikiLeaks.org website be disabled, a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet era.
WikiLeaks.org maintained “mirror sites” which are copies of itself, usually to insure against outages and this kind of legal action. These sites were registered in countries like Belgium, Germany, and the Christmas Island through domain registrars other than Dynadot and were not affected by the injunction.
The reason for the shutdown was posting of documents purporting to describe offshore activities of a Swiss bank.
The bank, Julius Baer & Co., ordered the shutdown saying WikiLeaks had wrongfully obtained hundreds of confidential bank documents, some of them altered or forged.
In court papers, the bank claimed that “a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign” provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws.
The New York Times reported that according to WikiLeaks, “the documents allegedly reveal secrets Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering, and tax evasion.”
The Judge’s order was criticized as being unconstitutional.
WikiLeaks provided a response to the judge’s order here.
A couple weeks later the judge reversed his decision in part because the information, once placed online, is virtually impossible to remove – web pages are cached, mirrored, and preserved, so those who are Internet savvy can gain access to the documents – and in part because of the criticism his actions drew from numerous organizations concerned that the order violated the First Amendment protection of free speech. More >>
WikiLeaks shut down in 2010
Again the WikiLeaks.org website was shut down in early 2010. This time the reason had nothing to do with judges seeking court orders for leaked documents. It had to do with funding.
WikiLeaks did not receive enough donations to keep the website up and running so it shut it down until such funding could be obtained.
The Guardian reported that the website WikiLeaks was temporarily shut down because of a lack of funds. The report referred to the site as a “major irritant to governments and big businesses since it launched in 2007,” and said it could not keep going without more public donations.
It looks like the company must have received the monies necessary, as it was able to provide over 91,000 documents on its website Sunday night.
The Guardian stated the company, WikiLeaks, was pleading for more cash and that it explained publishing hundreds of thousands of previously secret documents each year costs money.
“If staff are paid, our yearly budget is $600,000 [£372,000],” it said.
The site, which is part of the not-for-profit group Sunshine Press, added: “We have raised just over $130,000 for this year but cannot meaningfully continue operations until costs are covered. These amount to just under $200,000pa.”
The Guardian’s report further stated that WikiLeaks’s appeal for cash prompted widespread support on the web. A Facebook group called Save Wikileaks was formed and there were numerous supportive messages on Twitter.
The report stated that WikiLeaks refuses to accept corporate or government funding for fear of compromising its integrity.
