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Home
Authors
Julian Assange
Australian
Activist
About the author
We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000 deaths. That is serious matter.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#War
#Civilization
#History
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Capitalism
Wikileaks is a mechanism to maximize the flow of information to maximize the amount of action leading to just reform.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Action
#Leading
#Information
#Reform
When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Day
#Being
#Reading
#Prison
What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Life
#War
#Iraq
#Quality
#Perceptions
Well, there's a question as to what sort of information is important in the world, what sort of information can achieve reform. And there's a lot of information. So information that organizations are spending economic effort into concealing, that's a really good signal that when the information gets out, there's a hope of it doing some good.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Hope
#World
#Information
#Question
#Reform
#Effort
Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Truth
#states
#United
#Journalism
The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#People
We like to engage in a normal publishing effort, which is to act in a responsible manner and make sure the material is not likely to harm anyone, that it is properly investigated by quality news organizations, and by lawyers and human rights groups and so on.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Publishing
#Act
#Effort
#Quality
#Harm
#Lawyers
#Rights
#Human rights
#News
These megaleaks... They're an important phenomenon, and they're only going to increase.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
True information does good.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Information
We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod ... to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I get undue credit.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Work
#Criticism
#Credit
We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Acting
#People
#Mission
We get information in the mail, the regular postal mail, encrypted or not, vet it like a regular news organization, format it - which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do, when you're talking about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Public
#Information
#Talking
#Legal
#News
#Mail
We have a way of dealing with information that has sort of personal - personally identifying information in it. But there are legitimate secrets - you know, your records with your doctor; that's a legitimate secret. But we deal with whistleblowers that are coming forward that are really sort of well motivated.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Information
#Secrets
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Government
These big-package releases. There should be a cute name for them.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Name
#Cute
The corruption in reporting starts very early. It's like the police reporting on the police.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Police
#Corruption
Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Censorship
That's a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we're getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber, but don't have enough people to actually process and vet this information.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#People
#Growth
#Information
#Quantity
Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Law
#Intelligence
#Behavior
In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Being
#History
In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#People
#World
#Fighting
#Legal
#Laws
If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Nature
#Journalism
I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world - within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#World
#Freedom
#states
#United
#Speech
#Legislation
As we've gotten more successful, there's a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Successful
#Ability
#Publishing
As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Time
#Prison
#Media
It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.
Julian Assange,
Australian
Activist
#Journalism
#Controversy