Why the World Needs WikiLeaks (According to Julian Assange)

in Media | August 17th, 2010 5 Comments

After yes­ter­day’s post, I’ll nev­er get a sniff of a TED con­fer­ence. But even so, we’ll keep fea­tur­ing Ted Talks from time to time, and so why not today? Above, we have TED’s Chris Ander­son inter­view­ing Julian Assange, founder of Wik­iLeaks, the whis­tle-blow­ing web­site that made head­lines last month when it released the Afghan War Diaries, all 92,000 pages worth. Dur­ing the 19 minute inter­view, Assange talks a lit­tle more about the phi­los­o­phy behind Wik­iLeaks, how the orga­ni­za­tion decides when to release infor­ma­tion (or not), how the site has changed world events, and what some more ordi­nary leaks look like. No mat­ter what stance you take on Wik­iLeaks, the inter­view is worth a watch. You’ll only hear more about them down the line.


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Comments (5)
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  • Hate Ignorance says:
    August 17, 2010 at 8:10 am

    This guy does­n’t under­stand the impli­ca­tions of his actions. It is all about his ego. He like the atten­tion being giv­en him by peo­ple who don’t under­stand how clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion can be dead­ly to the sources and meth­ods revealed with­in the doc­u­men­ta­tion.

    Did you notice they only showed the part that iden­ti­fied the reporters and then the apache fir­ing on them. If you watch the full video, you will see that the reporters are with armed insur­gents, there are AK-47’s and one guy has an RPG in a neigh­bor­hood and they are wait­ing to attack U.S. troops head­ed their direc­tion.

    I can’t wait for some­one to expose this guy as the scum­bag he is. He is endgan­ger­ing mil­i­tary mem­bers lives who are in oth­er coun­tries and expos­ing infor­ma­tion that is kept secret for a rea­son. If you remem­ber from grade school, we had peo­ple who did the same thing and what did we call them, a tat­tle-tale.

    In the crim­i­nal world, a tat­tle-tale is a snitch or a rat. His orga­ni­za­tion is mak­ing it eas­i­er for peo­ple to ille­gal­ly release clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion with­out reper­cus­sion and this video is essen­tial­ly let­ting the world know he is open for busi­ness.

    Reply
  • Rahul Verma says:
    August 17, 2010 at 10:25 am

    The heli­copters should­n’t have been there. The Reuters reporters weren’t plan­ning to attack along.

    If meant with pur­pose­ful need, their is no shame in dis­clos­ing the truth. The real ques­tion being: Why hide when it was nec­es­sary and already done?

    Reply
  • Paul McGlade says:
    December 6, 2010 at 6:47 am

    @Hate Igno­rance

    I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like the guy, and have mixed feel­ing about some of the things he has leaked, but I am absolute­ly appalled by some of the reac­tions I have seen.

    I too remem­ber the school­yard and taunts of “tell-tale”. I also remem­ber that it was gen­er­al­ly used by bul­lies or oth­er peo­ple doing things they should­n’t have try­ing to avoid what they had done com­ing to light and try­ing to place the guilt on the per­son who told on them.

    I also remem­ber being told to stand up for the truth and what is right in the face of bul­lies.

    There is an old say­ing about not shoot­ing the mes­sen­ger (which some politi­cians have been con­tra­dict­ing in the most chill­ing terms in calls to assas­si­nate Assange for pub­lish­ing some doc­u­ments, when they seem hap­py to let nuclear-armed dic­ta­tors to car­ry on their mer­ry way, and let their incom­pe­tent col­leagues who are direct­ly respons­ble for unnec­es­sary mil­i­tary and civil­ian deaths get away with it).

    Lots of what is com­ing out is not nation­al secu­ri­ty, it’s dirty laun­dry. It’s what gov­ern­ments don’t want their own peo­ple to know.

    You want a world where news agen­cies will have to wor­ry about being pros­e­cut­ed for pub­lish­ing the truth when the source is a leak? Or just the truths you don’t like?

    Reply
  • Taqwa says:
    December 6, 2010 at 2:39 pm

    Con­vieni­ant that they com­plete­ly omit the parts of the chop­per video where the guys are watch­ing the chop­per, peek­ing around cor­ners and point­ing uniden­ti­fied (Quite pos­si­bly weapons) direct­ly at the chop­per.

    Then the 10–20 sec­onds they take to inform com­mand and get the ok to open fire.

    REAAAAAL con­vieni­ant.

    Reply
  • Rahul Verma says:
    December 20, 2010 at 6:51 am

    @Taqwa If they ommit­ed those por­tions, how did u see them?

    Reply

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