Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com, where
Speaker 1: smart happens Him Marshall Brain with today's question, how does
Speaker 1: wiki leaks work. Let's imagine that you have learned a secret,
Speaker 1: and this secret is so important or so damaging that
Speaker 1: you need to tell someone. But let's also imagine that
Speaker 1: you need to remain anonymous. For example, you might fear
Speaker 1: that you would face retaliation, jail, or perhaps murder if
Speaker 1: people found out who revealed the secret. What would you
Speaker 1: do in a situation like this, You might go to
Speaker 1: the government, or perhaps to the police, but you might
Speaker 1: be concerned that the government might be a part of
Speaker 1: the problem, or that they might bury your secret or
Speaker 1: do something to you that would be unfortunate. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you have a big, dirty secret, especially one that
Speaker 1: involves the government itself, it may be hard to get
Speaker 1: the word out anonymously. In that case, you might want
Speaker 1: to try wiki leaks at WikiLeaks dot org. WikiLeaks describes
Speaker 1: itself in this way. Wiki Leaks is a not for
Speaker 1: profit media organization. Our goal is to bring important news
Speaker 1: and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure,
Speaker 1: and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our
Speaker 1: journalists that anonymity is important to maintaining Wiki Leak's incoming
Speaker 1: flow of information. WikiLeaks claims that it has never blown
Speaker 1: the cover of any informant, and WikiLeaks provides a number
Speaker 1: of ways to submit material, as well as instructions for
Speaker 1: ensuring anonymous Internet submissions. Based on its promise and track
Speaker 1: record of anonymity, WikiLeaks has been able to break several
Speaker 1: important releases of secret material, and this really gets to
Speaker 1: the heart of the Wiki leaks process. First, someone has
Speaker 1: to gain possession of secret material in some way, and
Speaker 1: then that someone has to trust Wiki leaks enough to
Speaker 1: send it in where might the leaked material come from?
Speaker 1: In the case of the Sarah Palin Yahoo email account
Speaker 1: and the Climate Research Unit email account, a hacker had
Speaker 1: to break into the accounts and steal the emails. In
Speaker 1: the case of the British National Party membership list, the
Speaker 1: website for that organization accidentally posted its membership list on
Speaker 1: its website for a short period of time and someone
Speaker 1: snagged a copy before it disappeared. But by far the
Speaker 1: most common and most damaging source of leaks is insiders
Speaker 1: who secretly collect the information and then send it to
Speaker 1: Wiki Leaks. Insiders might do this out of a sense
Speaker 1: of justice or as a form of retaliation against an employer.
Speaker 1: Whatever the motive, several of the resulting leaks have been spectacular.
Speaker 1: For example, an insider managed to leak an audio and
Speaker 1: video stream recorded during an Apache helicopter attack that killed
Speaker 1: civilians in Iraq. This leaked video is the one that
Speaker 1: put wiki leaks on the map, because WikiLeaks was the
Speaker 1: sole outlet for that video, and the video was so
Speaker 1: incendiary that most major media outlets around the world picked
Speaker 1: it up. It was incendiary because two Reuters reporters were killed,
Speaker 1: because the US military tried to cover up the incident,
Speaker 1: and because the military personnel involved used rather amazing language
Speaker 1: during the attack that did not reflect well on US forces.
Speaker 1: Since that watershed moment, WikiLeaks has benefited from several more
Speaker 1: major insider releases. For example, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of pages of information known as the Iraq War Logs,
Speaker 1: and it has also come into possession of hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of U S diplomatic cables. These cables revealed behind
Speaker 1: the scenes comments and actions by US diplomats that have
Speaker 1: proven quite embarrassing to the United States and its allies.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, wiki leaks should not be necessary,
Speaker 1: at least in the United States. The U s Government
Speaker 1: is supposed to be government by the people and for
Speaker 1: the people. Such a government should be completely transparent to
Speaker 1: the entire population in every action it takes. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: US government appears to be far from transparent, and wiki
Speaker 1: leaks is helping to remove that opacity, one leak at
Speaker 1: a time. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuffwork staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
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Speaker 1: today on iTunes