WikiLeaks (/ˈwɪkiliːks/) is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations[13] and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources.[14] It was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian editor, publisher, and activist.[15] Since September 2018, Kristinn Hrafnsson has served as its editor-in-chief.[16][17] Its website states that it has released more than ten million documents and associated analyses.[18] WikiLeaks' most recent publication of original documents was in 2019 and its most recent publication was in 2021.[19] From November 2022, numerous documents on the organisation's website became inaccessible.[19][20] In 2023, Assange said that WikiLeaks is no longer able to publish due to his imprisonment and the effect that US government surveillance and WikiLeaks' funding restrictions were having on potential whistleblowers.[21]
WikiLeaks has won numerous awards and been commended by media organisations, civil society organisations, and world leaders for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions. The organisation has been the target of campaigns to discredit it, including aborted ones by Palantir and HBGary. WikiLeaks has also had its donation systems interrupted by payment processors. As a result, the Wau Holland Foundation helps process WikiLeaks' donations.
The organisation has been criticised for inadequately curating content and violating personal privacy. WikiLeaks has, for instance, revealed Social Security numbers, medical information, credit card numbers and details of suicide attempts.[41][42][43] News organisations, activists, journalists and former members have also criticised WikiLeaks over allegations of anti-Clinton and pro-Trump bias and a lack of internal transparency. Some journalists have alleged it had associations with the Russian government. Journalists have also criticised the organisation for promotion of conspiracy theories, and what they describe as exaggerated and misleading descriptions of the contents of leaks. The US CIA and United States Congress characterised the organisation as a "non-state hostile intelligence service" after the release of CIA tools for hacking consumer electronics in Vault 7.[44]
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^Braccini, Alessio Maria; Federici, Tommaso (2013). "New Internet-Based Relationships Between Citizens". In Baskerville, Richard; De Marco, Marco; Spagnoletti, Paolo (eds.). Designing Organizational Systems: An Interdisciplinary Discourse. Berlin: Springer Nature. pp. 157–179. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-33371-2. ISBN978-3-642-33370-5. Archived from the original on 9 May 2023. Retrieved 7 May 2023. Julian Assange had introduced a new term into the lexicon of several generations. This term was 'WikiLeaks' and described an international non-profit organisation, committed to publishing secret information, news leaks, and classified media provided by anonymous sources.
^Hindman, Elizabeth Blanks; Thomas, Ryan J (June 2014). "When Old and New Media Collide: The Case of WikiLeaks". New Media & Society. 16 (4). SAGE Publishing: 541–558. doi:10.1177/1461444813489504. ISSN1461-4448. S2CID30711318. WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 as an international non-profit organization specializing in the publication of 'classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance' obtained via anonymous sources
^Dodds, Klaus J. (2012). "The WikiLeaks Arctic Cables". Polar Record. 48 (2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 199–201. Bibcode:2012PoRec..48..199D. doi:10.1017/S003224741100043X. S2CID129682201. With a keen sense of timing, given the Greenlandic and Danish governments' hosting of the 7th Arctic Council ministerial meeting, seven 'sensitive' US diplomatic cables were leaked by WikiLeaks, an international non-profit organisation that publishes materials from anonymous sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers
^Benkler, Yochai (2011). "A Free Irresponsible Press: Wikileaks and the Battle over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate". Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review. 46 (2). Cambridge: Harvard Law School: 311–397. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 9 May 2023 – via Harvard Library. Wikileaks is a nonprofit that depends on donations from around the world to fund its operation. A second system that came under attack on a model parallel to the attack on technical infrastructure was the payment system... Like the Sunlight Foundation and similar transparency-focused organizations, Wikileaks is a nonprofit focused on bringing to light direct, documentary evidence about government behavior so that many others, professional and otherwise, can analyze the evidence and search for instances that justify public criticism.
^Fuchs, Christian (2014). "WikiLeaks: Can We Make Power Transparent?". Social Media: A Critical Introduction. London/Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publishing. pp. 210–233. ISBN978-1-4462-5730-2. Archived from the original on 9 January 2023. Retrieved 9 May 2023. WikiLeaks (www.wikileaks.org) is a non-commercial and non-profit Internet whistleblowing platform that has been online since 2006. Julian Assange founded it. It is funded by online donations.
^Beckett, Charlie (2012). Wikileaks: News in the Networked Era. Cambridge: Wiley. p. 26. ISBN978-0-745-65975-6. WikiLeaks is independent of commercial, corporate, government or lobbygroup control or ownership. It is a non-membership, non-profit organisation funded by donations
^Flesher Fominaya, Cristina (2020). Social Movements in a Globalized World (Second ed.). London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 177. ISBN9781352009347. Archived from the original on 13 July 2023. Retrieved 9 May 2023. As a non-profit organization, Wikileaks is funded by crowdfunding donations, which were subsequently blocked by PayPal, Mastercard, a Swiss Bank and Bank of America in protest over their political activity, a troubling example of 'the ability of private infrastructure companies to restrict speech without being bound by the constraints of legality, and the possibility that government actors will take advantage of this affordance in an extra-legal public-private partnership for censorship'.
^"WikiLeaks Fuels Conspiracy Theories About DNC Staffer's Death". NBC News. Archived from the original on 12 February 2021. Retrieved 8 November 2016. WikiLeaks ... is fueling Internet conspiracy theories by offering a $20,000 reward for information on a Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed last month ... in what police say was robbery gone wrong ... Assange implied this week in an interview that Rich was the source of the leak and even offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of his murderer. Meanwhile, the Russian government funded propaganda outlet RT had already been covering Rich's murder two weeks prior. RT and other Russian government propaganda outlets have also been working hard to deny the Russian government was the source of the leak, including by interviewing Assange about the Rich murder. ... The original conspiracy theory can be traced back to a notoriously unreliable conspiracy website