Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

712,398 views ・ 2010-07-19

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
Chris Anderson: Julian, welcome.
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It's been reported that WikiLeaks, your baby,
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has, in the last few years
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has released more classified documents
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than the rest of the world's media combined.
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Can that possibly be true?
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Julian Assange: Yeah, can it possibly be true?
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It's a worry -- isn't it? -- that the rest of the world's media
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is doing such a bad job
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that a little group of activists
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is able to release more
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of that type of information
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than the rest of the world press combined.
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00:43
CA: How does it work?
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How do people release the documents?
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And how do you secure their privacy?
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JA: So these are -- as far as we can tell --
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classical whistleblowers,
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and we have a number of ways for them
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to get information to us.
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So we use this state-of-the-art encryption
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to bounce stuff around the Internet, to hide trails,
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pass it through legal jurisdictions
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like Sweden and Belgium
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to enact those legal protections.
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We get information in the mail,
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the regular postal mail,
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encrypted or not,
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vet it like a regular news organization, format it --
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which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do,
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when you're talking about
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giant databases of information --
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release it to the public
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and then defend ourselves
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against the inevitable legal and political attacks.
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01:36
CA: So you make an effort to ensure
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the documents are legitimate,
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but you actually
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almost never know who the identity of the source is?
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JA: That's right, yeah. Very rarely do we ever know,
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and if we find out at some stage
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then we destroy that information as soon as possible.
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01:55
(Phone ring) God damn it.
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(Laughter)
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CA: I think that's the CIA asking what the code is
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for a TED membership.
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02:05
(Laughter)
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02:08
So let's take [an] example, actually.
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This is something
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you leaked a few years ago.
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If we can have this document up ...
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So this was a story in Kenya a few years ago.
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Can you tell us what you leaked and what happened?
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JA: So this is the Kroll Report.
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This was a secret intelligence report
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commissioned by the Kenyan government
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after its election in 2004.
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Prior to 2004, Kenya was ruled
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by Daniel arap Moi
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for about 18 years.
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He was a soft dictator of Kenya.
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And when Kibaki got into power --
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through a coalition of forces that were trying
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to clean up corruption in Kenya --
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they commissioned this report,
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spent about two million pounds
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on this and an associated report.
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And then the government sat on it
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and used it for political leverage on Moi,
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who was the richest man --
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still is the richest man -- in Kenya.
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It's the Holy Grail of Kenyan journalism.
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So I went there in 2007,
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and we managed to get hold of this
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just prior to the election --
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the national election, December 28.
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When we released that report,
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we did so three days after the new president, Kibaki,
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had decided to pal up with
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the man that he was going to clean out,
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Daniel arap Moi,
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so this report then
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became a dead albatross
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around President Kibaki's neck.
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CA: And -- I mean, to cut a long story short --
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word of the report leaked into Kenya,
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not from the official media, but indirectly,
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and in your opinion, it actually shifted the election.
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JA: Yeah. So this became front page of the Guardian
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and was then printed in all the surrounding countries of Kenya,
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in Tanzanian and South African press.
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And so it came in from the outside.
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And that, after a couple of days,
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made the Kenyan press feel safe to talk about it.
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And it ran for 20 nights straight on Kenyan TV,
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shifted the vote by 10 percent,
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according to a Kenyan intelligence report,
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which changed the result of the election.
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CA: Wow, so your leak
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really substantially changed the world?
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JA: Yep.
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04:21
(Applause)
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CA: Here's -- We're going to just show
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a short clip from this
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Baghdad airstrike video.
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The video itself is longer,
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but here's a short clip.
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This is -- this is intense material, I should warn you.
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Radio: ... just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up.
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I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees, uh, out along ...
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You're clear. All right. Firing.
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Let me know when you've got them. Let's shoot.
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Light 'em all up.
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C'mon, fire!
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(Machine gun fire)
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Keep shoot 'n. Keep shoot 'n.
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(Machine gun fire)
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Keep shoot 'n.
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Hotel ... Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six,
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we need to move, time now!
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All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.
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05:15
Yeah, we see two birds [helicopters], and we're still firing.
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Roger. I got 'em.
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Two-Six, this is Two-Six, we're mobile.
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Oops, I'm sorry. What was going on?
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God damn it, Kyle. All right, hahaha. I hit 'em.
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05:29
CA: So, what was the impact of that?
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JA: The impact on the people who worked on it
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was severe.
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We ended up sending two people to Baghdad
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to further research that story.
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So this is just the first of three attacks
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that occurred in that scene.
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CA: So, I mean, 11 people died in that attack, right,
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including two Reuters employees?
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JA: Yeah. Two Reuters employees,
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two young children were wounded.
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There were between 18 and 26 people killed all together.
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05:58
CA: And releasing this caused
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widespread outrage.
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What was the key element of this
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that actually caused the outrage, do you think?
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06:07
JA: I don't know. I guess people can see
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the gross disparity in force.
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You have guys walking in a relaxed way down the street,
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and then an Apache helicopter sitting up at one kilometer
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firing 30-millimeter cannon shells
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on everyone --
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looking for any excuse to do so --
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and killing people rescuing the wounded.
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And there was two journalists involved that clearly weren't insurgents
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because that's their full-time job.
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CA: I mean, there's been this U.S. intelligence analyst,
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Bradley Manning, arrested,
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and it's alleged that he confessed in a chat room
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to have leaked this video to you,
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along with 280,000
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classified U.S. embassy cables.
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I mean, did he?
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JA: We have denied receiving those cables.
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He has been charged,
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about five days ago,
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with obtaining 150,000 cables
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and releasing 50.
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Now, we had released,
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early in the year,
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a cable from the Reykjavik U.S. embassy,
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but this is not necessarily connected.
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I mean, I was a known visitor of that embassy.
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CA: I mean, if you did receive thousands
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of U.S. embassy diplomatic cables ...
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JA: We would have released them. (CA: You would?)
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JA: Yeah. (CA: Because?)
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JA: Well, because these sort of things
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reveal what the true state
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of, say,
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Arab governments are like,
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the true human-rights abuses in those governments.
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If you look at declassified cables,
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that's the sort of material that's there.
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CA: So let's talk a little more broadly about this.
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I mean, in general, what's your philosophy?
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Why is it right
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to encourage leaking of secret information?
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JA: Well, there's a question as to what sort of information is important in the world,
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what sort of information
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can achieve reform.
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And there's a lot of information.
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So information that organizations
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are spending economic effort into concealing,
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that's a really good signal
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that when the information gets out,
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there's a hope of it doing some good --
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because the organizations that know it best,
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that know it from the inside out,
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are spending work to conceal it.
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And that's what we've found in practice,
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and that's what the history of journalism is.
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CA: But are there risks with that,
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either to the individuals concerned
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or indeed to society at large,
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where leaking can actually have
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an unintended consequence?
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JA: Not that we have seen with anything we have released.
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I mean, we have a harm immunization policy.
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We have a way of dealing with information
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that has sort of personal --
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personally identifying information in it.
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But there are legitimate secrets --
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you know, your records with your doctor;
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that's a legitimate secret --
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but we deal with whistleblowers that are coming forward
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that are really sort of well-motivated.
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CA: So they are well-motivated.
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And what would you say to, for example,
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the, you know, the parent of someone
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whose son is out serving the U.S. military,
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and he says, "You know what,
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you've put up something that someone had an incentive to put out.
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It shows a U.S. soldier laughing
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at people dying.
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That gives the impression, has given the impression,
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to millions of people around the world
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that U.S. soldiers are inhuman people.
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Actually, they're not. My son isn't. How dare you?"
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What would you say to that?
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JA: Yeah, we do get a lot of that.
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But remember, the people in Baghdad,
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the people in Iraq, the people in Afghanistan --
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they don't need to see the video;
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they see it every day.
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So it's not going to change their opinion. It's not going to change their perception.
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That's what they see every day.
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It will change the perception and opinion
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of the people who are paying for it all,
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and that's our hope.
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CA: So you found a way to shine light
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into what you see
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as these sort of dark secrets in companies and in government.
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Light is good.
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But do you see any irony in the fact that,
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in order for you to shine that light,
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you have to, yourself,
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create secrecy around your sources?
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JA: Not really. I mean, we don't have
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any WikiLeaks dissidents yet.
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We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources.
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Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us,
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but we're presumably acting in such a way
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that people feel
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morally compelled
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to continue our mission, not to screw it up.
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CA: I'd actually be interested, just based on what we've heard so far --
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I'm curious as to the opinion in the TED audience.
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You know, there might be a couple of views
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of WikiLeaks and of Julian.
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You know, hero -- people's hero --
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bringing this important light.
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Dangerous troublemaker.
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Who's got the hero view?
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Who's got the dangerous troublemaker view?
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JA: Oh, come on. There must be some.
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CA: It's a soft crowd, Julian, a soft crowd.
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We have to try better. Let's show them another example.
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Now here's something that you haven't yet leaked,
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but I think for TED you are.
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I mean it's an intriguing story that's just happened, right?
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What is this?
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JA: So this is a sample of what we do
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sort of every day.
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So late last year -- in November last year --
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there was a series of well blowouts
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in Albania,
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like the well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico,
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but not quite as big.
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And we got a report --
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a sort of engineering analysis into what happened --
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saying that, in fact, security guards
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from some rival, various competing oil firms
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had, in fact, parked trucks there and blown them up.
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And part of the Albanian government was in this, etc., etc.
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And the engineering report
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had nothing on the top of it,
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so it was an extremely difficult document for us.
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We couldn't verify it because we didn't know
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who wrote it and knew what it was about.
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So we were kind of skeptical that maybe it was
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a competing oil firm just sort of playing the issue up.
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So under that basis, we put it out and said,
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"Look, we're skeptical about this thing.
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We don't know, but what can we do?
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The material looks good, it feels right,
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but we just can't verify it."
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And we then got a letter
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just this week
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from the company who wrote it,
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wanting to track down the source --
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(Laughter)
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saying, "Hey, we want to track down the source."
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And we were like, "Oh, tell us more.
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What document is it, precisely, you're talking about?
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Can you show that you had legal authority over that document?
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Is it really yours?"
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So they sent us this screen shot
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with the author
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in the Microsoft Word ID.
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Yeah.
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(Applause)
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That's happened quite a lot though.
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This is like one of our methods
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of identifying, of verifying, what a material is,
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is to try and get these guys to write letters.
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CA: Yeah. Have you had information
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from inside BP?
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JA: Yeah, we have a lot, but I mean, at the moment,
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we are undergoing a sort of serious fundraising and engineering effort.
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So our publication rate
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over the past few months
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has been sort of minimized
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while we're re-engineering our back systems
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for the phenomenal public interest that we have.
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That's a problem.
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I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization,
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we are sort of overwhelmed
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by our growth,
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and that means we're getting enormous quantity
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of whistleblower disclosures
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of a very high caliber
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but don't have enough people to actually
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process and vet this information.
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CA: So that's the key bottleneck,
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basically journalistic volunteers
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and/or the funding of journalistic salaries?
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JA: Yep. Yeah, and trusted people.
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I mean, we're an organization
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that is hard to grow very quickly
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because of the sort of material we deal with,
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so we have to restructure
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in order to have people
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who will deal with the highest national security stuff,
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and then lower security cases.
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CA: So help us understand a bit about you personally
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and how you came to do this.
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And I think I read that as a kid
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you went to 37 different schools.
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Can that be right?
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JA: Well, my parents were in the movie business
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and then on the run from a cult,
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so the combination between the two ...
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(Laughter)
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CA: I mean, a psychologist might say
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that's a recipe for breeding paranoia.
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JA: What, the movie business?
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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CA: And you were also -- I mean,
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you were also a hacker at an early age
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and ran into the authorities early on.
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JA: Well, I was a journalist.
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You know, I was a very young journalist activist at an early age.
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I wrote a magazine,
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was prosecuted for it when I was a teenager.
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So you have to be careful with hacker.
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I mean there's like -- there's a method
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that can be deployed for various things.
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Unfortunately, at the moment,
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it's mostly deployed by the Russian mafia
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in order to steal your grandmother's bank accounts.
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So this phrase is not,
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not as nice as it used to be.
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CA: Yeah, well, I certainly don't think
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you're stealing anyone's grandmother's bank account,
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but what about
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your core values?
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Can you give us a sense of what they are
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and maybe some incident in your life
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that helped determine them?
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JA: I'm not sure about the incident.
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But the core values:
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well, capable, generous men
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do not create victims;
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they nurture victims.
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And that's something from my father
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and something from other capable, generous men
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that have been in my life.
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CA: Capable, generous men do not create victims;
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they nurture victims?
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JA: Yeah. And you know,
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I'm a combative person,
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so I'm not actually so big on the nurture,
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but some way --
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there is another way of nurturing victims,
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which is to police perpetrators
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of crime.
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And so that is something
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that has been in my character
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for a long time.
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CA: So just tell us, very quickly in the last minute, the story:
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what happened in Iceland?
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You basically published something there,
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ran into trouble with a bank,
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then the news service there
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was injuncted from running the story.
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Instead, they publicized your side.
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That made you very high-profile in Iceland. What happened next?
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JA: Yeah, this is a great case, you know.
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Iceland went through this financial crisis.
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It was the hardest hit of any country in the world.
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Its banking sector was 10 times the GDP
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of the rest of the economy.
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Anyway, so we release this report
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in July last year.
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And the national TV station was injuncted
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five minutes before it went on air,
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like out of a movie: injunction landed on the news desk,
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and the news reader was like,
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"This has never happened before. What do we do?"
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Well, we just show the website instead,
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for all that time, as a filler,
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and we became very famous in Iceland,
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went to Iceland and spoke about this issue.
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And there was a feeling in the community
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that that should never happen again,
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and as a result,
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working with Icelandic politicians
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and some other international legal experts,
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we put together a new sort of
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package of legislation for Iceland
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to sort of become an offshore haven
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for the free press,
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with the strongest journalistic protections in the world,
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with a new Nobel Prize
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for freedom of speech.
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Iceland's a Nordic country,
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so, like Norway, it's able to tap into the system.
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And just a month ago,
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this was passed by the Icelandic parliament unanimously.
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CA: Wow.
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(Applause)
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Last question, Julian.
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When you think of the future then,
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do you think it's more likely to be
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Big Brother exerting more control,
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more secrecy,
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or us watching
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Big Brother,
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or it's just all to be played for either way?
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JA: I'm not sure which way it's going to go.
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I mean, there's enormous pressures
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to harmonize freedom of speech legislation
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and transparency legislation around the world --
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within the E.U.,
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between China and the United States.
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Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see.
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That's why it's a very interesting time to be in --
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because with just a little bit of effort,
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we can shift it one way or the other.
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CA: Well, it looks like I'm reflecting the audience's opinion
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to say, Julian, be careful,
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and all power to you.
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JA: Thank you, Chris. (CA: Thank you.)
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(Applause)
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About this website

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