Bird’s-Eye: Julian Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, an organization devoted to revealing what’s really going on behind the curtain of government secrecy. As Clay Shirkey says, “WikiLeaks has had more scoops in three years than the Washington Post has had in 30.” This past month, Wikileaks released 90,000 previously secret documents about Afghanistan. Some media found nothing new there (Slate: “Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many Afghan officials and police chiefs are corrupt and incompetent. Certain portions of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service have nefarious ties to the Taliban. If any of this startles you, then welcome to the world of reading newspapers. Today’s must be the first one you’ve read.”) Other media did see important material there. and praised (or dammed) Assange for releasing them. What do the files really show? Who is this Assange guy anyway? Why hasn’t the CIA killed him yet? We answer those questions below.
* Massive Leak Of Secret Files Exposes Truth Of Occupation The Guardian
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers’ website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Timesand the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.
* Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks | Video on TED.com
The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad.
* WikiLeaks Posts Mysterious ‘Insurance’ File Wired
In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.” The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site.
… Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the new file added days later may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.
