Julian Assange

With all that has been going around with who I would call a true "International Man of Mystery," there is no way I was going to avoid the subject. But a quick recap for those who don't know much about Julian Assange and Wikleaks (I'll bullet them, so if you know all this, just skip over to the paragraph):

• Basically Wikileaks is an international nonprofit organization that accepts, verifies, and publishes submitted documents via it's website and media partners, most notably the NYTimes (at least here in the U.S).
• It was started by Julian Assange in 2006 and within it's first year has close to a million documents sent to it. 
• Wikileaks NEVER asks or knows who sends the information. The intent of the person is irrelevant if the documents are real. In 2010 it made national news when it released a 2007 video of U.S. forces killing Iraqi civilians and 2 Reuters reporters.You can see the full clip uncut and unedited here and a shorter version here. 
• In the same year Wikileaks released what is called the "Afghan War Logs" which is 76,900 documents about the U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan that weren't available to you and I previously.
• In October 2010 it released some 400,000 documents called the "Iraq War Logs" that detailed much of the undisclosed information of the war effort in Iraq. 
• Finally, as of November, Wikileaks has just started releasing another 250,000 diplomatic cables that detail everything from UN relations to those between Russia and the U.S. or about different conflicts in the Middle East. All these can be seen (and downloaded if you really want to) at their website: Wikileaks.

So they are releasing these newest cables (at a horribly slow pace) to the world via their website as well as partnerships with different media partners. I won't go on about how they verify their documents but here is their own description of the process.

 If you want to know more details about them to go their Wikipedia page or from their own "About Us" section on their website.

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Having a better understanding of the organization, we now have the U.S. government and Sweden looking to destroy the organization because it keeps on leaking things. Why Sweden you ask? Julian Assange likes to say that the party in power and "certain leaders" are his enemies and instigated "rape charges" against him simply to get rid of him. This wouldn't be the first time that the leader of Wikileaks is under attack and has been on the run from governments; it is in his line of work. Since then, Interpol put out a red warning for the capture of Assange for the allegations. Although I'm always used to taking the side of the rape victim first, the facts seem suspicious. I won't comment further on those allegations.

The biggest issue here and now, is if Julian Assange is extradited to the United States does the Justice Department have a case against him to be sent to jail. If my legal study tells me anything, simply accepting stolen material than publishing it is perfectly legal under the Espionage Act as shown by the Supreme Court case New York Times v. United States. The Justice Department is searching to find out if Wikileaks in any way solicited Pvt. Manning (the alleged person who leaked the documents) to give them the information and break the law. If so, they can be persecuted under the Espionage Act. Furthermore, some fear that Julian Assange has talked his way into being applicable to the Act.

This all should be very interesting to watch especially when you realize that this is all history in the making. How it will end will affect generations to come in the legal applications of the Espionage Act, the explosion of whistle blower websites like Wikileaks, and our image of transparent government.