[liberationtech] Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site

Thu Apr 8 11:51:51 PDT 2010

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April 6, 2010
Iraq Video Brings Notice to a Web Site By NOAM
COHEN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/noam_cohen/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
 and BRIAN STELTER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/brian_stelter/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Three months ago,
WikiLeaks<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/wikileaks/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
a whistleblower Web site that posts classified and sensitive documents, put
out an urgent call for help on
Twitter<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
.

“Have encrypted videos of U.S. bomb strikes on civilians. We need super
computer time," stated the Web site, which calls itself “an intelligence
agency of the people.”

Somehow — it will not say how — WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time
to decrypt a graphic video, released
Monday<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/middleeast/06baghdad.html?scp=1&sq=WikiLeaks&st=nyt>,
of a United States
Army<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_army/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
assault
in Baghdad in 2007 that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the
news agency Reuters. The video has been viewed more than two million times
on YouTube<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/youtube/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
and has been replayed hundreds of times in television news reports.

The release of the Iraq video is drawing attention to the once-fringe Web
site, which aims to bring to light hidden information about governments and
multinational corporations — putting secrets in plain sight and protecting
the identity of those who help do so. Accordingly, the site has become a
thorn in the side of authorities in the United States and abroad. With the
Iraq attack video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging
closer toward a form of investigative journalism and to advocacy.

“That’s arguably what spy agencies do — high-tech investigative journalism,"
Julian Assange, one of the site’s founders, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“It’s time that the media upgraded its capabilities along those lines.”

Mr. Assange, an Australian activist and journalist, founded the site three
years ago along with a group of like-minded activists and computer experts.
Since then, WikiLeaks has published documents about toxic dumping in Africa,
protocols from Guantánamo Bay, e-mail messages from Sarah
Palin<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/sarah_palin/index.html?inline=nyt-per>’s
personal account and 9/11 pager messages.

Today there is a core group of five full-time volunteers, according to
Daniel Schmitt, a site spokesman, and there are 800 to 1,000 people whom the
group can call on for expertise in areas like encryption, programming and
writing news releases.

The site is not shy about its intent to shape media coverage, and Mr.
Assange said he considered himself both a journalist and an advocate; should
he be forced to choose one, he would choose advocate. WikiLeaks did not
merely post the 38-minute video, it used the label “Collateral Murder” and
said it depicted “indiscriminate” and “unprovoked” killing. (The Pentagon
defended the killings and said no disciplinary action was taken at the time
of the incident.)

“From my human point of view, I couldn’t believe it would be so easy to
wreak that kind of havoc on the city, when they can’t see what is really
going on there," Mr. Schmitt said in an interview from Germany on Monday
night.

The Web site also posted a 17-minute edited version, which proved to be much
more widely viewed on YouTube than the full version. Critics contend that
the shorter video was misleading because it did not make clear that the
attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and that one of the men
was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.

By releasing such a graphic video, which a media organization had tried in
vain to get through traditional channels, WikiLeaks has inserted itself in
the national discussion about the role of journalism in the digital age.
Where judges and plaintiffs could once stop or delay publication with a
court order, WikiLeaks exists in a digital sphere in which information
becomes instantly available.

“The most significant thing about the release of the Baghdad video is that
several million more people are on the same page,” with knowledge of
WikiLeaks, said Lisa Lynch, an assistant professor of journalism at
Concordia University in Montreal, who recently published a paper about the
site. “It is amazing that outside of the conventional channels of
information something like this can happen.”

Reuters had tried for two and a half years through the Freedom of
Information Act to obtain the Iraq video, to no avail. WikiLeaks, as always,
refuses to say how it obtained the video, and credits only “our courageous
source.”

Mr. Assange said “research institutions” offered to help decrypt the
Army<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_army/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
video,
but he declined to detail how they went about it. After decrypting the
attack video, WikiLeaks in concert with an Icelandic television channel sent
two people to Baghdad last weekend to gather information about the killings,
at a cost of $50,000, the site said.

David Schlesinger, Reuters editor in chief, said Tuesday that the video was
disturbing to watch “but also important to watch.” He said he hoped to meet
with the Pentagon “to press the need to learn lessons from this tragedy.”

WikiLeaks publishes its material on its own site, which is housed on a few
dozen servers around the globe, including places like Sweden, Belgium and
the United States that the organization considers friendly to journalists
and document leakers, Mr. Schmitt said.

By being everywhere, yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks is, in effect, beyond
the reach of any institution or government that hopes to silence it.

Because it relies on donations, however, WikiLeaks says it has struggled to
keep its servers online. It has found moral, but not financial, support from
some news organizations, like The Guardian in Britain, which said in January
that “If you want to read the exposés of the future, it’s time to chip in.”

On Tuesday, WikiLeaks claimed to have another encrypted video, said to show
an American airstrike in Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year, and
used the opportunity to ask for donations.

WikiLeaks has grown increasingly controversial as it has published more
material. (The United States Army called it a threat to its operations in a
report last month.) Many have tried to silence the site; in Britain,
WikiLeaks has been used a number of times to evade injunctions on
publication by courts that ruled that the material would violate the privacy
of the people involved. The courts reversed themselves when they discovered
how ineffectual their rulings were.

Another early attempt to shut down the site involved a United States
District Court judge in California. In 2008, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered
the American version of the site shut
down<http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1714980,00.html>
after
it published confidential documents concerning a subsidiary of a Swiss bank.
Two weeks later he reversed himself, in part recognizing that the order had
little effect because the same material could be accessed on a number of
other “mirror sites.”

Judge White said at the time, “We live in an age when people can do some
good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability
necessarily in a court of law.”

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