Whistleblowing Wikileaks

What is Wikileaks?

In July 2010 Wikileaks released confidential documents that shed light on the war in Afghanistan. Now Wikileaks has posted online almost 400,000 similar documents detailing events in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. How has Wikileaks become one of the most important whistle-blowing sites on the web?

By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor
Published: 10:33AM BST 23 Oct 2010

Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, one of the biggest whistle-blowing sites on the web

The news that the largest leak in American military history came via the website Wikileaks will not surprise long-term watchers of the controversial, multi-award-winning site. Despite a recent period of near-bankruptcy, it has consistently released information that major corporations and governments wanted to conceal – the Abu Ghraib “torture manual”, footage from American jets allegedly committing war crimes, the secrets of Scientology and even Sarah Palin’s private emails have all been published by the site.

Founded by secretive Australian Julian Assange, Wikileaks was originally based in Sweden and garnered 1.2 million leaked documents in time for its launch in January 2007. It taps in to the world’s web users’ desire either for justice or revenge on former employers or acquaintances, but its most significant stories have been held up as largely in the public interest. The Abu Ghraib revelations resulted in international condemnation of American methods and arguably contributed to political commitments from Barack Obama to close down the detention centre. Assange claims that by using the global community of internet users, his site is able to promote accuracy, scrutiny and discussion of sensitive information.

Anybody with web access can submit a story to Wikileaks. The site, however, states that its "primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, sub-saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations." Wikileaks has now evolved an editorial policy by which only documents "of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical interest" are in fact published, and it has recently ceased to permit users to comment directly on stories. Earlier this year, Assange said that submissions are vetted by five reviewers, and that the background of the “leaker” is also checked.

A number of countries and companies, notably Australia, China and Bank Julius Baer have tried to censor the site or have it taken offline, but its complex method of web-hosting has ensured that it is very difficult for its servers to be identified. Wikileaks has also used a Swedish company called PRQ, which specialises in “bulletproof hosting”, asking no questions and maintaining few records of its clients so that it cannot be accused of promoting material that could be illegal.

The site has been heavily criticised in the past for endangering the lives of individuals, just as American and Pakistani representatives have said this latest leak of American military logs will too. But only last weak Assange told America’s Wired magazine that Wikileaks was "getting an enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of high calibre". The only reason more has not been released was a lack of volunteer journalists to verify the submissions, he said, adding that BP was set to be one of his site’s future subjects.

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Hackers Threat Growing in Britain

Terrorism and cyber attacks are key threats to Britain, 
Britain faces an increased threat from terrorism, cyber attack and small-scale wars, a National Security Strategy will say.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM BST 18 Oct 2010

The document will also highlight the threat from cyber attacks on government infrastructure Photo: CLARE KENDALL


The security and intelligence services and counter-terrorism police are to escape major cuts in this week’s public spending review due to the threats.


The strategy is a key precursor for the Strategic Defence and Security Review, to be published tomorrow, which will explain how Britain will defend itself against such attacks.

It will also form the basis for spending decisions to be announced this week, including a £500 million boost to cyber defence, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

“The security strategy will look at the issues we are going to face in coming years and the spending review will look at how to deliver that,” one source said. The security strategy is expected to outline four key threats to Britain.

The primary threat remains al-Qaeda in Pakistan and its associates in Somalia, Yemen and North Africa, who continue to plan attacks against targets in Britain, the security strategy will say.

That is likely to mean that MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism command will escape the worst of the cuts. But the document will also highlight the threat from cyber attacks on government infrastructure.

While not naming individual states, GCHQ, which is responsible for cyber defence, has been concerned for some time that states such as China and Russia are unlikely to use conventional or nuclear weapons in an attack on Britain and are more likely to attempt to shut down essential systems used to run the country.

Similar attacks have been seen when Russia has been in disputes with Estonia and Georgia, leading to problems with their internet and even cash machines.

A third risk that will be highlighted is the threat of small-scale wars in foreign countries that may escalate out of control, drawing in neighbouring countries and creating havens for terrorists.

That threat is likely to have a major bearing on the defence review tomorrow, which is likely to emphasise the need for mobile forces involving a combination of aircraft carriers and special forces.

The fourth element will be the risk from natural disasters such as pandemic flu, where strategies have been developed over recent years.

Iain Lobban, the head of GCHQ, said in a speech last week that the Government was receiving 20,000 malicious emails a month, of which 1,000 were deliberate attacks.

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How to create a Facebook Group

Facebook has launched a new Group feature that allows people to build a social network within the social network. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to create a group.

By Claudine Beaumont, Technology Editor
Published: 2:48PM BST 07 Oct 2010

Facebook Groups is a new feature that allows people to group their friends by interest, activity, or topic. You could set up a group for your netball team, your university or school project, or even to help organise a holiday or a trip.

It enables the members of a group to engage in a real-time conversation using Facebook Chat, share photos or videos that they only want other members of the group to see, and assign the group a special email address to make it easier to keep up with what’s being planned and discussed.

Facebook has always had a "groups" feature, but there are few key differences between the "old" and "new" Facebook Groups.

The "new" groups allows you to engage in group chats, and set up a single email address for the group, so that anything sent to that address will automatically appear on the group's wall. You can also set group notifications in the "new" groups tool, which means that every time something is posted to the group, all users will receive an alert. Don't worry, though, you can decide what kind of notifications you receive, so you're not deluged with alerts.

The "new" groups tool also allows you to post documents to the group; it's not the most fully featured collaborative document tool, but it does allow you to use a small amount of markup on your basic text document (such as bullet points and bold or italics), and it also saves a version history, so you can see what has been changed on the document.

Your list of "old" groups can still be found under your profile picture. There is currently no easy way to turn an "old" group in to a "new" group. Once your profile has been updated to make the "new" groups accessible from your profile page, you will no longer be able to create "old" groups, though you will still be able to access those "old" groups.

So, here's how to set up a group:

:: To create a new Facebook Group, go to www.facebook.com/groups. Some users will be able to access this new feature directly through their profile page; for the time being, others will still access the “old” groups option when they click on Groups under their profile picture. Use the special Facebook Group home page for now to ensure you’re using the right tools.

:: Give your group a name. Then decide who you would like to invite to the group – typing in the name of Facebook friends will automatically add them in to the box; you do not need to use an email address.

:: Select the privacy level for your group. By default, all groups are “closed”, which means that although your other Facebook contacts will be able to see which of your friends are in any given group, they will not be able to see any of the content of that group, such as wall posts, photos and news feeds. You could decide to set your group to “open”, which makes the list of members, and the content of the site, fully public; or you could choose “secret”, which keeps both the list of members and content of the group totally private.

:: Once you have set up your group, you can assign it an email address (on a first come, first served basis). This enables members of the group to send an email to the assigned address to turn their message in to a wall post on the group’s wall. To generate an email address for the group, you need to click on the “Edit Group” option on the group’s home page, and select the “Email address: choose for group” option. Your email address will be something like yourgroupname@groups.facebook.com.

:: You can also use a Group Chat function to talk to all the members of a group at the same time. If anyone from the group is offline when the chat takes place, they can still see the chat history when they log back on, so they don’t miss out on anything.

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