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Leaktivism

Leaktivism is the act by which classified and sensitive information is released to the public without the consent or authorization of doing so. A great deal of leaking information stems from the issue of transparency. Leaktivists release information to the general public or to organizations/groups of people affected by the information revealed in order to hold larger organizations or authoritative bodies accountable for their decisions and actions. The morality and correctness of leaktivism and leaktivist culture is frequently called into question. This is partly due to the fact that leaktivism often involves challenging status quo power structures.

Etymology

The word Leaktivism is a portmanteau of the words 'leak' and 'activism'. It was popularized by Micah White, the co-founder of the Occupy Movement, who sees leaktivism as a means by which truthful information can be used as “an effective form of social protest”. Leaktivism can be interpreted as an offshoot of the term ‘whistleblowing'. While whistleblowing entails contacting another party that exposes information about a perceived wrongdoing, leaking information involves the process of releasing information for others to come across. Whistleblowing also involves directly contacting those affected by the information revealed and to related governing or regulatory bodies in an attempt to expose and remedy the perceived wrongdoing. Leaktivism typically seeks to reveal information without informing the necessary channels in order to fix the reason for the information leak.

Notable Incidents

Leaktivist activity has occurred in the past for varying purposes. A great deal of leaked information deals primarily with politics and governmental bodies; however, it has extended into athletics and entertainment through the notable people named in the Panama Papers. Leaktivist activity is heavily involved in politics and governmental organizations because of the desire for increased transparency.

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is an organization founded by Julian Assange in 2006 who claims “WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents.” The publisher of over 10 million documents, the website’s aim is transparency through the process of delivering “important news and information to the public”. and has a team of individuals who operate on the basis to set knowledge free. For Assange, information is key, as his belief in this is rooted through the corruption of hierarchical powers that hoard knowledge.

WikiLeaks came to prominence in 2010 following the leak of a 2008 Pentagon report that outlined the threat WikiLeaks could impose through its critique of “U.S. military procurement and its conduct in the war” The Report goes on to say that previous Pentagon documents that had been leaked and published on WikiLeaks make mention of equipment that had been sent to United States forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the Report believes could be used by the opponents of the United States to co-ordinate attacks against American soldiers.Another notable leak was the Iraq War documents leak and Afghan War documents leak. Titled as ‘Collateral Murder,’ the video was released in 2010 and depicted American attack helicopters shooting at a group of people in Iraq. The aftermath showed twelve people dead, including two employees of Reuters.Reuters attempted in accessing the video so as to conduct their own investigation, however the United States government denied this motion by successfully resfusing the release of the video. It was then made available by WikiLeaks in its entirety. The video was leaked by Chelsea Manning, a member of the United States Army who received a dishonourable discharge and a prison sentence of 35 years. When asked why she informed WikiLeaks as opposed to selling the information, Manning stated that the leak of public data should remain in the public sphere.

Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden was a former CIA contractor who notified news outlets of the spying activities conducted by the National Security Agency. Although this classifies him as a whistleblower, he later claimed responsibility for the leaks of the documents for further proof of evidence. One of these documents was a court order “showing that the NSA was collecting telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon”, despite internet and telecommunications companies reassuring their customers of the security of their services. Snowden was later granted asylum by the Russian government.

Panama Papers

The Panama Papers emerged after 11.5 million files were leaked from Mossack Fonseca, the fourth largest offshore law firm in the world. The firm is based in Panama and operates in tax havens that include the nations of Switzerland, Cyprus, and the British Virgin Islands. Given to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source, the documents revealed the ways in which the upper classes use offshore tax companies as a means to operate around the legal tax boundaries of their own respective countries. A number of world leaders have been named in the Panama Papers, including Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and most notably the former Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson who resigned from his post following a mass protest after the leak.

Leaktivist Culture

Due to the efforts of groups such as WikiLeaks and individuals like Snowden, leaktivism has gained a following by those who wish to use it as a form of activism, spawning groups dedicated to this in the process. One such group is GlobaLeaks. The group has developed the necessary technological tools to provide a secure way to leak information while maintaining anonymity. Citizen Leaks is another notable group. Based in Spain, Citizen Leaks “acts as an intermediary that accepts leaks, reviews them, and sends them on to partner newspapers”. The group became prominent when it assisted in uncovering cases of corruption of Rodrigo Rato, the former minister of the economy in Spain. Because of Citizen Leaks status as intermediary, the group remains “largely invisible to the public”. As a response, however, the United States government has embarked on a campaign to prosecute many of these whistleblowers and leakers through the insider threat program, which aids governmental agencies in reporting suspicious behaviours.

Controversy

While some consider this to be an act of treason, others view this as acts of heroism. Various people and organizations hold differing views. As outlined under the Code of Laws of the United States of America, the Espionage Act states that anyone who wilfully makes unauthorized documents available to the public can receive a prison sentence of up to 10 years, in addition to other charges. As a result, the treatment of Chelsea Manning has created much debate. Upon completing a profile of Chelsea Manning, the New York Times found that she was troubled because “classmates made fun of him for being gay”, in addition to being “ignored” by her superiors, and how she was “self-medicating”.

Juan Mendez, the United Nations rapporteur on torture, had conducted an investigation into the treatment of Manning and “formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”. He found that Manning was kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for a period of 11 months, as well as “being made to strip naked at night”. Due to public outcry, Manning was transferred to Fort Leavenworth where she was held in improved conditions. The Pentagon responded to Mendez’s report, stating that their treatment of Manning was justified by referring to his solitary confinement as “prevention of injury order”, most likely due to Manning’s suicide attempts, where she was sentenced to solitary confinement. This is supported by Barack Obama who says that Manning’s detention is “appropriate and meets our basic standards”. By contrast, Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler’s open letter condemns this action as a violation of Eighth Amendment, the “prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment” and come to the conclusion that Manning’s treatment is an attempt to dissuade future leakers and whistleblowers.

Dianne Feinstein also used the Espionage Act in an attempt to prosecute Julian Assange. Marc Thiessen, former speech adviser to President Bush, believes that there is no intrinsic value of WikiLeaks or in the content they publish, and maintains the belief that arresting Assange and taking the website down would be the best course of action. Peter Ludlow, however, states that arresting Assange, taking WikiLeaks offline and seizing their documents would not change much, as the documents in the possession of WikiLeaks would already be on the Internet. Taking WikiLeaks offline and “disabling the system” would also be difficult as WikiLeaks “relied on existing electronic communications networks”, namely, the Internet. Although arresting Assange could potentially make large changes to WikiLeaks and the leaktivist community, Peter Ludlow states that WikiLeaks would perform a type of lockdown by releasing the password for an encrypted file that is “in the hands of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of netizens already”.

Edward Snowden’s revelations of questionable NSA activities have had many regard him as a hero, all while providing the spark for protests to take place across the United States. World leaders have responded to the leaks in different ways. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron had accused the Guardian news outlet of harming the security of the British people by publishing the leaked documents. Barack Obama cancelled a trip to Russia in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s harbouring of Edward Snowden. Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff similarly cancelled a trip to the United States on the grounds that the NSA had been spying on her. In response to the growing disdain of the people, the NSA has dismissed the claims that their practices are unconstitutional, claiming that secrecy “is essential to meet their overriding aim of protecting the public from terrorist attacks” and reaffirming the public that the information they collect is the amount of a “dime on a basketball court”. Barack Obama has justified the practices of the NSA by claiming how instrumental they are in the fight against terrorism in the United States and abroad. The NSA came to the ultimate conclusion that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”. As a result of the leaks, many companies, namely telecommunications companies, have faced backlash from their customers due to their roles in granting government agencies access into personal encrypted information of their customers, so as to continue surveillance of the public. This was accomplished through the process of deal making within the industry to weaken commercial encryption. Ewen MacAskill and Gabriel Dance say that by doing this, the NSA has “compromised hundreds of millions of ordinary internet users” all while increasing the possibility of cyberattacks in the United States and United Kingdom.

Micah White believes the Panama Papers could potentially lead to social changes, where he states that a consequence to this would be the “destabilizing effect it has on governments worldwide”.. For White, an important issue that comes from the Panama Papers is how the “wrong people are in power,” and promotes the use of protests as a social movement to upheave the status quo and create a new form of global governance.. By contrast, such a leak would not necessarily yield such a change, as White also points out the efforts of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden as examples of large leaks that merely challenged the status quo rather than changing it..

See also

• Espionage Act of 1917
• Hacktivism
• List of people named in the Panama Papers
• United States v. Manning
• Whistleblower