WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is a website famous for publishing a massive amount of documentary material that various governments desperately wanted to keep secret (particularly those detailing war crimes committed by their armies), as well as for its controversial founder Julian Assange.
Some of the leaks that WikiLeaks has published include:
- Late 2007: “the operating procedures for the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which depicted psychological torture and methods for keeping certain prisoners from communicating with the Red Cross.”
- 2010: Chelsea Manning “gave WikiLeaks a massive cache of government secrets. This included the shocking “Collateral Murder” video, which depicted a US airstrike that killed two Reuters journalists and wounded multiple children.” Over the next couple of years further government secrets were trickled out, concerning:
- The Afghanistan War
- The Iraq War
- The US State Department: The extent of its meddling in foreign countries’ affairs (for example that it “neutralised” antiwar protesters in Italy).
- The CIA: Details on their hacking programs, which they used to gain access to and snoop on opponents’ devices.
- Guantánamo Bay
Operationally, WikiLeaks took digital security very seriously. They were strict about the use of encryption to protect sources, they insisted that documents they passed on to journalists (on password-protected USBs) could only be viewed on “air-gapped” computers, etc.