LEARNING WITH GT WIKILEAKS Q:What is Wikileaks?

A: Wikileaks is a non profit International organization that established itself as new Internet media by publishing confidential international news leaks of any unethical behavior of the government from various anonymous sources. The anonymous sources are those who fear retribution on direct release to the press. Wikileaks provide a way for them to release information without the fear of identification which will release the information to the world.Within a year of its launch in Dec 2006,the site claims to have 12,00,000 lakh documents. Q:Who is Julian Assange? A: The Wikileaks site was claimed to have been founded by certain Chinese people who disagree with their government policies,along with journalists , mathematicians and technologists from few countries like US,Taiwan, Europe,Australia and SA.The identity of the founder was initially unknown,when Assange proclaimed himself to be the heart and soul of the organization when he was one of the members of the Wikileaks Advisory Board.He claims to protect the victims from the unethical governments and insists in transparent governance to lessen corruption.The site has even received an award from Amnesty International for exposing the corruption and policy killings of Kenyan government . Q:Why Wikileaks is based in Sweden? A: Sweden has the strongest laws to protect confidential journalism. Even the servers are now located in the nuclear bunkers of the post cold war era in the Swedish capital,Stockholm. Lately, Wikileaks has registered itself as a business in media friendly Iceland in the name of Sunshine Press Productions which so far had no permanent office. Q:What are the charges and future of Julian Assange? A: He had been accused of two sexual molestation charges in Sweden for which he was arrested in London and granted conditional bail but no case was filed against him.To avoid FBI trouble,he now protects himself with not even a password but a passphrase for a file called insurance consisting of 77000 Afghan war documents strongly encrypted.If something happens to Wikileaks or Julian Assange,volunteers will release the passphrase,with many volunteers already with the file, which will be open to all and the US has to answer the questions that rise from the international community,particularly the Taliban.