WikiLeaks is one of the most controversial organizations of the twenty-first century, yet it remains largely misunderstood. The confusion about WikiLeaks results, in large part, from the fact that so few people—academics, journalists, and average citizens—simply do not take Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks personnel seriously as theorists of their practice. Even though many essays about WikiLeaks by people involved in WikiLeaks are easily accessible and concise, most assessments of WikiLeaks do not draw upon such sources.
Another reason for widespread misunderstandings about WikiLeaks is that the U.S. corporate press and U.S. government officials are the public’s main sources of information about WikiLeaks, and these parties have interests in giving people false impressions of WikiLeaks. U.S. government officials generally view WikiLeaks as an adversary and therefore take any steps possible to not only ruin the organization’s reputation but to also persecute Assange and anyone associated with WikiLeaks. Members of the the corporate press in the U.S. also have an interest in painting WikiLeaks in a bad light, for not only are member of this sector of the press nationalistic but they are also threatened professionally by WikiLeaks’ alternative form of journalism.
When it comes to understanding WikiLeaks, one must understand three aspects of Assange’s philosophy: (1) technology, (2) political theory, and (3) scientific journalism.
Technology: As a cypherpunk, Assange believes that digital encryption—or crypto—is the most effective tool for social change in the digital age. Or as he pits it, “cryptography is the ultimate form of non-violent direct action.” On the individual level, crypto promises to protect individual privacy in an age of transnational surveillance dystopias. On the systemic level, crypto promises to be wielded as a tool in the fight for institutional transparency and the free distribution of knowledge. In Assange’s view, crypto is an essential tool for anti-imperialist politics and the promotion of national self-determination worldwide.
Political Theory: Having been heavily influenced by Enlightenment theories of government, Assange analyses government through some for of social contract theory. In Assange’s view, government legitimacy is derived form the consent of the governed, but modern information states increasingly use secrecy—or “conspriacy,” in Assange terminology—to consolidate their power and carry out actions without public knowledge. When a public does not know what its government does, it cannot give meaningful consent to those actions. And while Assange does not deny that there are, in theory, some legitimate state secrets, he argues that secrecy is a systemic issue that causes the majority of the injustice in our modern world.
Scientific Journalism: WikiLeaks practices a kind of journalistic publication style Assange has called scientific journalism, the practice of publishing (defined as “making public”) the primary documents on which their and others’ reporting is based. This practice has two justifications. On the one hand, by providing readers with the documents used by journalists as the basis of their news reports, WikiLeaks gives the reader a chance to check the journalists’ work; readers no longer have to simply take the journalists’ word for it. On the other hand, by publishing the primary sources, WikiLeaks sees itself as building a archive library of corporate and government information, which can be used by researchers to learn more about the world and, in Assange’s view, advance humanity.
The following list of primary and secondary sources provides a contextual and theoretical basis for understanding WikiLeaks outside the boundaries of U.S. government and corporate interests. Perhaps the most important article included below is Yochai Benkler’s now classic essay on the conflict between WikiLeaks and U.S. government and corporate interests during 2010 and 2011, when WikiLeaks was working with traditional media outlets to publish stories based on documents provided by the whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Benkler’s detalied analysis debunks many of the myths about WikiLeaks, and it was published at the time when those myths were becoming cemented into “fact.”
For those who are interested in learning about WikiLeaks, please check out the following (non-exhaustive list of) books and articles:
Secondary Sources
WikiLeaks: Julian Assange, Public Enemy? Directed by Elena Kuch and Robert Holm. DW Documentary, 2020. [Link]
Anderson, Patrick D. “Review Essay of Christian Cotton and Robert Arp (editors), WikiLeaking: The Ethics of Secrecy and Exposure (Chicago: Open Court, 2019).” Logos 19.1 (2020). [Link]
Benkler, Yochai. A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 46 (2011): 311-397. [Link]
Manne, Robert. “The Cypherpunk Revolutionary.” The Monthly. 16 February 2011. http://archive.fo/kwI60
O’Day, John C. “Corporate Media Have Second Thoughts About Exiling Julian Assange From Journalism.” Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, June 5, 2019. [Link]
Primary Sources
Assange, Julian. “WikiLeaks has the Same Mission as The Post and The Times.” Washington Post, 11 April 2017: https://archive.fo/3ZZKu
Assange, Julian. When Google Met WikiLeaks. New York: OR Books, 2016. [Also available in audio and transcript on wikileaks.org.]
Assange, Julian. “Introduction: WikiLeaks and Empire.” The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire. New York: Verso, 2015.
Assange, Julian. “How cryptography is a key weapon in the fight against empire states.” The Guardian, 9 July 2013: http://archive.ph/Mbsx4
Assange, Julian. “A Cryptographic Call to Arms.” In Julian Assange, Appelbaum, Jacob, Müller-Maguhn, Andy, and Zimmermann, Jérémie. Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 1-6. New York: OR Books, 2012.
Assange, Julian. “Don’t Shoot Messenger for Revealing Uncomfortable Truths.” The Australian, 7 December 2010: http://archive.fo/SmXpG
Assange, Julian. “Conspiracy as Governance.” Cryptome.org, 3 December 2006: http://archive.fo/kr8Pr
Avila, Renata, Sarah Harrison, and Angela Richter. Women, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks: A Conversation. New York: OR Books, 2017.
Harrison, Sarah. “Why the World Needs WikiLeaks.” New York Times, 17 November 2016: https://archive.fo/ddQHT