Topic > The story behind WikiLeaks

In 2012, Julian Assange and colleagues at WikiLeaks deciphered a sensitive military video, which revealed a 2007 incident in which an American Apache military helicopter fired on two innocent US citizens in Iraq. This was the first major fruit of Assange's annual project on leaking classified information, and shortly after leaking the decrypted video of the military attack, the WikiLeaks group published thousands of classified information not only from the United States, but from many others countries around the world, on their website. It alarmed the US government that this massive disclosure was pursued by military personnel, Brad Manning (Hester, 2011, p.187-188). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayBrad Manning was punished for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, which criminalizes or prohibits dissemination by those who possess or do not lawfully have access to information. This generally imposes criminal sanctions on disclosure, but is limited in its enforcement by First Amendment protections for free speech and free press unless there are clear and present dangers (Fenster, 2012, p.787) . Unlike the direct punishment of Brad Manning, there is much controversy regarding the punishment of WikiLeaks for leaking confidential information of any nation without permission. Some scholars debate the legitimacy of punishing WikiLeaks as it is considered a media outlet. Kenneth L. Wainstein is not one of them; he argues that the purpose of WikiLeaks is significantly different from that of ordinary public media (Wainstein, 2010, p. 41-47). Unlike other documents, Wainstein clearly explains in what aspects WikiLeaks has different characteristics from other public media. He argues that WikiLeaks is different from public media in three respects; institutional purposes, contents and relevance. WikiLeaks exists solely to leak official secret information, while the media is generally dedicated to providing different information to the public. The media screens or corrects content in advance, to decide whether the news is beneficial or critical for citizens, while WikiLeaks focuses specifically on the dissemination of sensitive classified information. The relevance of the information held by WikiLeaks and mainstream media also varies; news typically reports issues relevant to current events, however, WikiLeaks would leak materials with little or almost no relevance to current issues. Because there are many challenging questions about whether the released documents could cause actual damage to national security or simply be embarrassing or embarrassing to foreign nations, it is difficult to legally prosecute WikiLeaks as punishment for disclosing classified information (Wainstein, 2010, p. 46 ). However, another interpretation could have been responded to in this document, i.e. an explanation of the standard mentioned by the "generalist media"; because there are many media that the government censors or puts pressure on content or imports. Additionally, the media type specifications; radio, newspapers, television news or even social media (SNS), would be suggested to make readers understand much better when comparing WikiLeaks to general media. In conclusion it only describes the difference of WikiLeaks; however, it would have been a stronger conclusion to answer the question of what the barriers to WikiLeaks prosecution are while this paper demonstrates clear differences. As a result of this disclosure by WikiLeaks, the general public's attitude towards the government has changed somewhat; the audience began todistrust in the government. Regardless of whether distrust existed and was only revealed on the surface of the water by the WikiLeaks case, or created recently, public distrust of the government is not a pleasant phenomenon for the government, of course, in the end,public or the citizens themselves. What's interesting is that the so-called “harm” that the government defines as a “threat to national security” actually relates to public trust, and this trust is a critical factor in being a healthy federal government. Once trust is lost, this will ultimately lead to real threats to national security and consequently harm not only the country itself, but also the citizens. Analyzing the loss of public trust in government through the WikiLeaks case, there were two main streams; first, disappointment with the government itself which claims that the leaked information is not transparent enough to possess citizens, and perhaps further believes that the government is rather hiding the information, second, disappointment with the government's incompetence in business national and later in international affairs as a result of the disclosures. Geoffrey Stone has found a consistent demand for free speech from the public throughout United States history (Stone, 2012, p.479-480). In his article he argues that the tension between individual freedom to speak out and national security intensified during the war. During the civil war, the government shut down “disloyal” public media and imprisoned “disrespectful” citizens against the president's policies. This phenomenon occurs exactly around the time of the World War, when the federal government enacted the Espionage Act of 1917, which justified the government to imprison critics of the government, the president's policies, the military, or the war as an illegal actor. draws the conclusion that the government cannot exercise its power over speakers even in the name of national security without a clear and present explanation of the real danger of serious damage to national security (Stone, 2012, p.478). Furthermore, he argued that the public will constantly demand that the government be clear and transparent to citizens, as it has done throughout history, so that this citizen participation creates debates and discussions to help the government do better for everyone ( Stone, 2012, p.489-490). Even though it was difficult to find a connection between free speech and government transparency in his short article (because those two things are relevant), it was nevertheless understandable that his logic came from Brad Manning's freedom. speech leaking classified information to WikiLeaks showing illegal government action and this created a huge public debate on whether or not the government overclassified the information. Excessive government classification has been one of the public's criticisms of the federal government as a result of the WikiLeaks case. Classified materials are classified presumably because they might embarrass someone rather than being easily linked to national security (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 27). However, it is likely that most of the arguments are based on questioning the government's authority regarding classification. There is a remaining burden to be demonstrated in this paper as to who decides that information is overclassified and to what extent. In contrast to Stone's smeared line, Lowell and Will presented very clearly that there should be different laws applied to espionage (or actual espionage), national defense information disclosure (NDI), and mishandling of classified information,because each of these clearly addresses different issues (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 25-38). Furthermore, this article presents clear gaps in the Espionage Act of 1917 with a problem of over-classification, while Stone would not address the scope of the Espionage Act of 1917 as he only presented the effects and controversies of the Act itself. The limitation of the Espionage Act in this document describes clarity; because of its breadth and vague language, it can be applied in a way that violates proper First Amendment practice (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 30). They also believe that courts have distorted the language of the law to insert various evidentiary requirements to conform it to both the First Amendment and due process clause (Lowell & Will, 2010, p. 31). It is also presumable that in this document they strongly doubt and devalue the government's capacity. While this document may seem slightly biased, however, it presents clear criteria asking why WikiLeaks cannot be prosecuted, which should have been demonstrated by a previous Wainstein source. In a broader government setting, the public loses trust not only does leaked information show the government's illegal or illegitimate actions, but also the exposed information affects international relations or diplomacy. According to Stone, sometimes the government may want secrecy because such disclosure could highlight its wrongdoings, the stupidity of its own incompetence (Stone, 2012, p. 480). When WikiLeaks revealed the government's clear wrongdoings; exposed video of the US military attacking innocent citizens in Iraq. The public was outraged that, first, the government was committing the crime of killing innocent citizens and, second, the government was hiding the fact (Fenster, 2012, p.800). This is exactly why the classification line was discussed in the previous paper. However, in this article, he challenges Stone's argument that increased transparency does not automatically increase healthy public debate because the argument about the beneficial effects of transparency is actually based on the assumption that the public will pay attention, understand and act or will threaten to take action. on the government information they receive (Fenster M, 2012, p.798). However, in conclusion, he argues that assuming that the public will react to the information released and open active debates, government transparency will be beneficial and necessary. Fenster also presents the damage in US diplomacy. WikiLeaks revealed evidence that the US government has been collecting information on each country's government institutions and even hiring local people to "spy" on each government's behavior to have dominant power in the world. The level of information collection is far above just the country's "information", such as demographics, GDP, GNP etc. The US government can be criminalized by this fact, as can the person hired as a “spy” (Fenster M, 2012, p. 789-790). Considering examples of how the public loses trust in government, Araiza presents how public trust distorts the nature of democracy and how this will lead to threats to national security (Araiza, 2003, p. 48-). 53). If people lose trust in the government, they easily tend to turn to ignorance and this could eventually lead to less participation in government activities, such as voting, feedback, discussions or debates, etc. Once the public does not participate in these activities, the fundamental nature of democracy will be damaged; participation and responsibility (Araiza, 2003, p. 44-57). Democracy damaged as a result of.