Wikileaks.org is one of the most controversial websites on the internet to this day and strikes fear into the hearts of leaders , politicians and corrupt governments alike. This is because millions of leaked previously confidential diplomatic files , communications between leaders , emails and videos and documents depicting war crimes have been shared on this site.
This is partly due to the site founder (Julian Assange) wishing for no information to be withheld from the public and for all of it to be available online to be scrutinised overall. This is because often governments have undertaken high profile cover ups of things they are afraid the general public would not react well to overall.
Why Is Transparency So Important For Governments?
One of the main reasons why Wikileaks continues its operations overall is transparency. Transparency for governments is of significant importance. This is because traditionally history has shown that governments that are not transparent with their citizens are not trusted and often face protests or direct rebellion as a result.
So therefore many governments try as much as practically possible to portray a positive impression of themselves to their citizens in order to discourage them from civil unrest. One of the main reasons why wikileaks was established was the lack of transparencey from many governments in the west such as the UK and the United states.
Multiple leaks over the course of several years have highlighted a variety of different issues in these countries overall. One of the most significant was that of war crimes committed by US and UK forces during the Iraq war.
How Have Wikileaks Prompted Change Overall?
There have been many ways in which Wikileaks has prompted change overall. As previously mentioned in 2010 the mass release of documents form the Iraq war brought to the forefront war crimes perpetrated by the western powers. In addition to this there have been significant leaks about intelligence and surveillance agencies and how they choose to use our data overall.
Once this information became public knowledge this sparked mass protests worldwide and also provoked people to think more about how governments and security organisations use people’s data overall. Without the help of Wikileaks this data may never have come into the public realm overall.
What Has Been The Response Of World Powers?
Unfortunately the response of world powers has not been very positive overall. Both the US and the UK have tried multiple times to have wikileaks shut down both through court action and also through cybre attacks. However despite these attempts the site continues to remain active partly due to the location of its servers which means it is very difficult to completely take offline as backups can have the site back online on a different server within minutes.
Many governments believe that the internet should be governed and regulated. However it is important to note that regulation on the internet is not completely enshrined in law and is therefore a dangerous practice for governments to undertake.
Conclusion
Overall to conclude it is clear that Wikileaks provides a thought provoking insight overall into what goes on in the wider world and the different surveillance as well as scandals that have been uncovered. It should be viewed as an important uncensored information source that ca hold governments to account.