Is WikiLeaks a bane or a boon?

Background:-

• WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks and  whistleblowers.
• The website of wikileaks launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organization.
• Wikileaks claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch.
• Wiki means user-editable software. In the starting, wikileaks allowed to edit its data by users. But later they changed as they will accept data, and it will be published only if they accept. Means they will finalize it.
• Wikileaks’s director is Julian Assange, an Australian.
• WikiLeaks founders are of Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
• In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi civilians and journalists were killed by an Apache helicopter, as the Collateral Murder video.
• In July 2010, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available for public review.
• In October 2010, the group released a package of almost 400,000 documents called the Iraq War Logs in coordination with major commercial media organisations.
• In November 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing U.S. State department diplomatic cables.

In Favor:-

• WikiLeaks has won a number of awards, including The Economist’s New Media Award in 2008 and Amnesty International’s UK Media Award in 2009.
• Transparency of government is possible.
• freedom of speech.

In Against:-

• Leakage of sensitive government information.
• National security will be in danger.
• Criminals may take advantage of this.
• The leading newspaper of Jamaica, Jamaica Observer, writes in its Editorial: “It is unlikely that the world will remain the same, if WikiLeaks is allowed to prevail in its quest to expose government secrets.”

Conclusion:-

By wikileaks common man knows about government. It’s helping to create a better society. But it should not leak some confidential documents which is a threat for the national security.

Image by TayebMEZAHDIA from Pixabay