On the morning of April 5, 2010, a tall, thin man with silver hair walked onto the podium of the National Press Club in Washington, DC. ‘s scoop, but failed. Many of the 40 or so journalists in attendance (myself included) had barely heard of him.
Still, it’s hard to ignore his point. Three days ago, we received an email promising “never-before-seen confidential footage” containing “dramatic evidence and new facts.”
But even that bit of hype may have underestimated what happened after Julian Assange pressed play. The nature of evidence—the amount and granularity of digital evidence, and how it comes to light—is about to change.
Previously, information leaked by insiders to the public was largely limited by paper. In 1969, Daniel Ellsberg spent an entire night secretly copying a secret study of the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers.
Now, thousands of these files—as well as images, videos, spreadsheets, email spools, source code, and chat logs—can be dragged onto a USB stick and transferred in seconds To all parts of the world. Any security system can be compromised by finding an insider with sufficient access or a talented enough hacker. Sources may be obscured. All that’s missing is a middleman – a publisher who can spot leaks, publish the content and take the heat after it’s published.
Assange’s video has an incendiary title: “Collateral Murder.” It started with a still photo of a son holding a photo of his dead father, a driver for Reuters, and then leaked footage from a 2007 airstrike showing a U.S. helicopter shooting and killing a man on a Baghdad street. Reuters photographer and driver.
A U.S. soldier drawled and cursed as he pointed at a man hundreds of feet below – one of the Reuters employees killed in the attack. The video appeared to contradict a Pentagon spokesman who claimed the strike was part of “combat operations against a hostile force.” Within hours, the story was picked up by Al Jazeera, MSNBC and the New York Times.
What followed was a series of shocking revelations, some from Assange’s website WikiLeaks and some from other media outlets. This continues to this day: the trove of State Department cables released by WikiLeaks and The Times (2010-11), Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency revelations (2013), the Sony Pictures hack (2014) ), Drone Documents (2015), Panama Papers (2016), Hacked Democratic National Committee Emails (2016), Details of U.S. Offensive Cyber Programs (2017), Hunter ‧Biden’s laptop (2020) and Facebook profile (2021) and more.
Looking back, it’s easy to view Mr. Assange as the father of the digital revolution in leaks. At the time, he was more of a brilliant promoter, successfully placing himself at the center of several trends that were beginning to converge around the turn of the century.
Harvard anthropology professor Gabriella Coleman’s new book, “Weapons Geeks,” will include two chapters on the history of hacking and leaks.
Mr. Assange was the first to figure out how to bring his work to the large audiences of traditional news media. Although his legal saga ended with his guilty plea and return to Australia, it’s clear that his larger legacy – an uneasy fusion of illegal hacking and leaking methods with the influence and credibility of established American publishers – is still unfolding .
Assange pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring with one of his sources, Chelsea Manning, to obtain and publish government secrets in violation of the Espionage Act. Ben Wizner, director of the Free Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the conviction could have far-reaching consequences.
“This is the first time in modern American history that the publication of factual information has been criminalized,” Mr. Wizner said. “It’s not necessarily because of the law that this has not happened before. It’s probably because of custom. This custom depends on the relationship between the media and the government, which is that although they may have different views on the public interest, their views on the public interest are The interests were all inherently American. Then WikiLeaks came along and they saw American imperialism as the greatest threat to world peace, which put pressure on the old consensus. .
Fundamentally, Assange’s activities are very similar to those of traditional news media. He is gathering and distributing factual, newsworthy information. However, his goals were different.
Instead of claiming to be neutral or objective, Assange has cast himself as a warrior, pledging himself to the cause of radical transparency. He refused to acknowledge that even democratic governments require a degree of secrecy to function. Instead, he sought, in his words, to “change regime behavior” by making secrecy itself untenable. In its place is “people’s will to pursue truth, love and self-realization.”
This is a utopian vision, more of an excuse than an argument. The paradox of Assange’s criminal case is that his freedom depends in large part on the behind-the-scenes diplomatic dealings he has spent years trying to ridicule and expose.
As director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama, James R. Clapper Jr. dealt with the aftermath of numerous hacking breaches. In an interview via email, he rejected the idea that Assange’s revelations changed anyone’s view of the ethics of U.S. intelligence agencies. Instead, he said, WikiLeaks only serves to reinforce the faction’s pre-existing views, which already believe the U.S. spy agency is “evil.”
“I don’t think this is going to push the envelope one way or another,” he said.
Still, Ms. Coleman said, the history of leaks is still being written, in part by groups like Decentralized Denial Secrets and XnetLeaks. Like WikiLeaks, these sites solicit and publish large amounts of digital leaks. But they have higher standards when it comes to editing information and vetting sources.
As for Mr. Assange, he is “conducting a very bold experiment,” Ms. Coleman said. “There are bound to be successes and failures in experiments. But you need someone to be brave enough to do it.
