Wikileaks Needs Help
Wikileaks, the site that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak information has had to temporarily shut down while they try to raise more funds. The site currently says:
“To concentrate on raising the funds necessary to keep us alive into 2010, we have reluctantly suspended all other operations, but will be back soon.”
Wikileaks is a valuable tool for freedom, utilising the Streisand effect – the online phenomenon where an attempt to censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of causing the information to be publicised to an even greater extent, ie. once it is out there it isn’t going back in the box.
The site has a history of publishing reports and data that otherwise would have remained secret; recent leaks of note include the BNP membership list, the Climate Research Unit emails, Internet censorship lists and The Minton report. The site has won numerous awards including the Economist Freedom of Expression Award in 2008 and the Amnesty International New Media Award in 2009 and its continued operation is essential to ensure that companies and governments cannot get away with censoring the exposure of injustice.
Wikileaks is run by a non-profit organisation and doesn’t accept government or corporate funding in order to maintain its absolute integrity so all funding has to come from its supporters: human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public.
“We have received hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks, the US detainee system, the Iraq war, China, the UN and many others that we do not currently have the resources to release. You can change that and by doing so, change the world. Even $10 will pay to put one of these reports into another ten thousand hands and $1000, a million.”
In order to continue getting this information out to the public they need your help. You can donate to support Wikileaks here.
