Julian Assange, the founder of wikileaks
Every so often, something happens that makes me want to get involved online a little more than I have done recently. The release of raw material from the Afghanistan war logs by wikileaks, a site that specialises in publishing untraceable material of political or corporate misconduct for the public benefit, is one such event. wikileaks has archived and published over ninety thousand US military internal records of their actions in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009. According to The Guardian, which, along with the New York Times and Der Spiegel struck an exclusive with wikileaks to digest and circulate this information internationally, these documents were leaked from two secret networks: 'the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, SIPRNET, which carries US diplomatic and military intelligence classified "secret"; and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System which uses a different security system to carry similar material classified up to "top secret". (The Guardian, 25 July 2010).
Julian Assange, the founder of wikileaks, claims that these Afghanistan war logs,'show the true nature of this war' (The Guardian, 25 July 2010).
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'THE MESSY REALITY' OF WAR
The Guardian claims that the logs 'give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years', providing 'a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency' (The Guardian, 25 July 2010). The logs provide an account of 'the messy reality experienced by commanders on the ground' (The Guardian, 25 July 2010).
wikileaks prides itself in being 'the first wiki to have political power; the first intelligence agency of the people' (wikileaks). Assange makes an analogy between the Norwegian saying 'grav ed aed i tide' ('dig down in time') on his t-shirt and the nature of investigative journalism of this kind, digging deep into archives to understand what is going on a little more. But questions remain: who will bother exploring these logs? And ultimately, just how much impact will the release of this information actually have?
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