CHICAGO — WikiLeaks, a Web site that publishes confidential information from government and private businesses received from anonymous sources, has been creating waves since it started in 2006.
Last week, the site grabbed front pages in The New York Times, the Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor for releasing a video of a U.S. Army attack in Iraq that left 12 people dead, including two journalists.
By Friday night, six days after its release, the video had received 5.2 million views on YouTube.
Much of the media attention surrounded the mysterious nature of the site. Its sources are anonymous and its server is based in Sweden, where journalists do not have to disclose their sources. The founder of the site doesn’t give out his age and has been described as nomadic.
According to media sources, the site isn’t picky in what it publishes. It has posted everything from “Sarah Palin’s hacked emails and Wesley Snipes’ tax returns,” to “fraternity initiation manuals and a trove of secret Scientology manuals,” according to a Mother Jones article.
“It raises a whole series of ethical and legal issues of use of information when you don’t know where it came from,” said Don Craven, general counsel to the Illinois Press Association.
In the case of the Iraq assault video, U.S. military officials have confirmed its authenticity. But the military organization could still consider the information stolen, Craven said.
That legal issue wouldn’t burden WikiLeaks, however, because the recipient of the material is not responsible for the leak, said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone.
The government’s only defense is to show that publishing the material will present the public with “clear and eminent danger of grave harm,” Stone said.
“There’s never been a case” where that defense has worked, he said.
“That doesn’t mean in theory there couldn’t be one,” he added.
The U.S. military certainly thinks the potential is there.
WikiLeaks released an Army Counterintelligence Center special report: “Wikileaks.org—An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?”
“Wikileaks.org … represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security, and information security threat to the US Army,” the report states. “Such information could be of value to foreign intelligence and security services, foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups for collecting information or for planning attacks against US force, both within the United States and abroad.”
Stone said the closest thus far that federal courts have come to censoring information was The Progressive magazine’s 1979 article on how to build a Hydrogen bomb. The government dropped its case within a year; the information had spread so widely, the protection issue was moot.
When The Progressive did publish the article it said this about its decision to fight the government’s concerns of national security:
“In a time when military policy is closely linked with technological capabilities, debate about military policy that uses technical information is part of a vigorous system of freedom of expression under the First Amendment. The Government’s tendency to hide widely known technical processes under a mantle of secrecy in the national interest and prevent press commentary on these matters can only result in stifling debate, not in protecting the physical security of Americans.”
The government could probably argue that information which identified by name current government agents doing counterintelligence in Iran would pose a valid threat to both operations and American lives, Stone said.
But something like a report on the vulnerabilities of nuclear power plants holds some value to the public, he said.
Government officials could argue that the information could invite terrorist attacks by exposing weaknesses, Stone said. However, people also have the right to know that they are living near a vulnerable sight and could petition their leaders to fix the problems, he added.
Ultimately, what information makes it onto sites like WikiLeaks is up to the government, Stone said.
“In one sense, we give government more power than it could have, as long as it keeps it secret,” he said.
The government’s failure to keep their secrets to itself is no excuse to allow it to come back and suppress leaked information.
“You can use the fact of the leak to prove that it’s not such a big deal,” Stone said.
