What's up with Wikileaks?

This may seem like a random blog post. But I was watching a documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. I truly enjoyed the documentary as it was informative and it gives the audience an insight to the wonderful world of the world wide web. (See what I did there?)

If I were to pick out the main points of what I got from the documentary, the points would include:

1. Dangers of fame
2. Rule of Law
3. Individual Ministerial Responsibility (or the lack of)

Okay, I learnt this when I was researching on my Hackitivism essay. Julian Assange has Asian ancestors. How cool is that? Anyway, moving on....

1. Dangers of fame

Anyway, when I started watching the documentary that showed past video footage of him, I really admired him for trying to achieve a world where there is justice and truth by the creation of Wikileaks. However, as the documentary progressed and his fame increased, I started doubting him. 

His dressing changed drastically and so did his mindset (in my opinion, a viewer's opinion) To a certain extent, I felt that he was trying to "please people" by changing his fashion style and by releasing reports of "sub standards" that jeopardised the safety of the sources or civilians (this was something that he said he wouldn't do in the beginning).

2. Rule of Law

This seems to be a familiar theme in my recent blog posts. The definition of the rule of law "everyone is equal before the law." This would mean that regardless of their position in society, if they committed a crime, they would be punishable for it.

In the documentary, supporters of the WikiLeaks organisation seem to overlook the rule of law. From what I saw in the documentary, they believe that WikiLeaks is a "good" organisation as it hunts for the truth. Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks and so supporters equate that he is overall a "good" person and is still a "good" person when there are facts presented before them that he committed the sexual crimes. 

You know, if Assange really seeked the truth, his (teenage) hacker nickname wouldn't be translated into Noble Liar. Just putting it out there

3. Individual Ministerial Responsibility

Yes, it was wrong of American soldier Bradley Manning or now known as Chelsea Manning to pass top secret government information to WikiLeaks. But Aren't Ministers supposed to take responsibility for their department's actions?

The Minister of Defence got away scott free. He didn't take responsibility for what had happened. There was little or no news of the Defence Minister responding to this issue. Strange isn't it?

Here's an article to help you better understand the WikiLeaks case

Overall, I find the documentary thought provoking and it made me question the government's actions that happens behind closed doors. It's really strange.... But after researching for my hacktivism essay I did earlier in the year, I felt that "hacktivism was haunting me"! Each news article I read seemed to be about Hacktivism and/or the implications of it.

Xoxo

Marissa