“Cablegate” - The Wikileaks’s biggest cable disclosure and Freedom of information

Table of Contents Opening 2 Wikileaks and Julian Assange 2 Who is Julian Assange? 3 Cablegate 3 Circumstances of unleashing Cablegate 5 Freedom of information and Whistleblowing 6 The Freedom of Information Act 6 Protected disclosures i.e. Whistleblowing 6 Conclusion 7 Reference List/ Bibliography 8

Opening
Wikileaks is a worldwide known organization and Cablegate has been one of the most recognizable, shocking and revealing affair for past years. This report will explain a little what the Wikileaks really is, along with its goals, principles, security structure and ideology. It will try to unravel Julian Assange’s personal trait and the role he has been playing for years within and beyond this organization. In the main and the most important section dedicated to Cablegate, the reader will find out the secrets about the political system in Russia, who is the real leader of that superpower county and what relationship is there between government and organized crime. It will also be revealed why Google was forced to withdraw from Chinese market and how many users it potentially lost. Circumstances of the cables disclosure will be discussed in separate paragraphs. And finally, definitions such as The Freedom of Informational Act and Protected disclosure Bill will be explained.
Wikileaks and Julian Assange
Wikileaks is a non-profit media organization whose purpose is to deliver crucial material and documentation to the people (Wikileaks, 2011). Their sources can dispatch information in innovative, secure and anonymous way via a high security anonymous drop box protected by cryptographic information technologies (Wikileaks, 2011). The principles of their work are to protect the freedom of speech and media publishing, and to defend the rights of society, which were derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Wikileaks, 2011).
Wikileaks has combined high-end security technology with journalism and ethical principles (Wikileaks, 2011).). After information arrives, their journalists examine the material, validate and then write news to describe its importance (Wikileaks, 2011). They publish both, material and story afterwards, for reader to analyze the story with the original source (Wikileaks, 2011). As Wikileaks does not censor their stories they can black out revealing details and delay publishing, because of information, that could endanger individuals or to protect their lives (Domscheit-Berg, 2011).

Who is Julian Assange? Julian Assange is an Australian, previously known under his hacker’s name Mendax, one of the members of famously recognisable group “international Subversives” (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). But nowadays, he perceives actual hackers as “useless” idiots if they do not employ their talent toward larger goals (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). He is also founder, editor and spokesperson of Wikileaks (Harding & Leigh, 2011). His communication with the colleagues and the outside world is encrypted and render anonymous by a number of mechanism and for security reasons, he used a remote computer to sending e-mails rather than his own laptop (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). Along with Mark Zuckerberg, he was nominated for Time magazine’s Person of the Year award for his persistent commitment and determination to change the world for a better place (Domscheit-Berg, 2011).
Cablegate
On Sunday 28th November the cables commenced appearing on specially constructed website Cablegate.org (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). The cables were confidential communiqués between US State department and 274 embassies and consulates in 180 countries around the world from 1966 to 2010(Domscheit-Berg, 2011). 15,652 out of more than 250,000 dispatches were classified as secret and over 101 000 were confident (Wikileaks, 2011). Iraq was the most discussed country and Ankara with Turkey had the most cables coming from (Wikileaks, 2011). The US State Departments system of labeling helped to reveal that the most frequently discussed subjects were external political relations (145,451 cables), followed by internal government affairs (122,896) and Human rights (55,211) (Wikileaks, 2011).
Wikileaks has chosen five exclusive media partners - the Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El País - which they had exclusive access to truly controversial details (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). The publication strategy was obvious, to start out easy with the banal stuff, focusing largely on what US representatives had revealed about the world leaders: they described French president Nicolas Sarkozy as a authoritarian and hypersensitive, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was portrayed as a vain party animal, German chancellor Angela Merkel indecisive and uninspired, and Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin presented as an alpha male (Domscheit-Berg, 2011).
The American diplomacy dispatches were coming from many different places all over the world (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Not only information centres like London and Paris, but also places such as Yerevan, Ashgabat and Bishkek produced cables containing sensitive data about corruption, abuses of human rights and financial relationship between G8 leaders (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Another cables disclosed dirty tricks, corporate espionage and secret overseas private bank accounts (Harding & Leigh, 2011). This way of diplomacy could more likely be classified as spying, rather than providing service to favour the country’s interests, respectively when Washington requested their secretaries for UN officials’ email addresses, phone and pager numbers, credit card numbers, password and encryption codes (Harding & Leigh, 2011).
The most dramatic reveals came from Russia - widely known to be conducted by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin instead of President Dmitry Medvedev (Harding & Leigh, 2011). The US embassy cables revealed the secrets of weapon trading, money laundering, security protection for mafia bosses and hidden private foreign accounts (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Russia was also painted as a country governed by the political system with the annual bribery worth of $300 billion and where is hard to distinguish between government activities and organized crime (Harding & Leigh, 2011). According to reports, although most of the illegal activities within Russia were conducted by mafia, the police, prosecutors and other law enforcement agencies were providing a protection to execute such a criminal acts (Harding & Leigh, 2011). One of the gossips says that President Vladimir Putin deliberately selected a weak candidate as his successor, because he was afraid of possibility that upcoming investigation would discover his accumulated secret offshore wealth (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Another concerning cables were sent about Russia from Madrid (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Jose Gonzales spent over decade unravelling activities of Russian organized crime in Spain and held an evidence of certain political parties in Russia being involved in working hand in hand with mafia gangs (Harding & Leigh, 2011). The evidence also proved that intelligence officers set up gun shipments to Kurdish groups to destabilize Turkey (Harding & Leigh, 2011).
This huge database of documents also came away with a depressing view of mankind, depicting outstanding greed and corruptness of many politics (Harding & Leigh, 2011). One of the cables accused the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir of moving $9 billon into the Lloyds Bank in London -Lloyds Bank denied all accusations (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Another identical story of kleptocracy occurred in Afghanistan, the country with a similar government to Russia (Harding & Leigh, 2011). In one incident in 2009, the then vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud was caught in Dubai carrying a suitcase with $52 million in cash, but was let go without any charges (Harding & Leigh, 2011).
The cables also revealed that China obliged Google to withhold from their internet market (Harding & Leigh, 2011). A Communist Party member was looking up for his name through their search mechanism and got disappointed of what he uncovered (Harding & Leigh, 2011). “As a result Google was forced to drop a link from its Chinese-language search engine to its uncensored Google.com page and lose a potential market of 400 million internet users” (Harding & Leigh, 2011).
Circumstances of unleashing Cablegate
The reaction on the biggest confident documents revelation differed, at least in public, as some brushed it off, and the others trying to defend themselves by going to counterattack (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the Wikileaks material and claimed that US wanted to discredit him by intentionally leaking their own files (Harding & Leigh, 2011). Turkey’s prime minister behaved outragedly to dispatches after they suggested him being a corrupt Islamist (Harding & Leigh, 2011). The Russians performed a remarkable overturn as their President Medvedev firstly dismissed the cables as “not worthy” to later publicly announce that Julian Assange should be nominated for Nobel peace prize (Harding & Leigh, 2011). In January 2011, Washington was pressured to remove its ambassador from Libya (Harding & Leigh, 2011). In Tunisia, after publishing unflattering reports about regime, the country’s president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali blocked the Lebanese newspaper’s website (Harding & Leigh, 2011).
On the other hand, the service providers such as Switzerland’s PostFinance, Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and Moneybookers refused to sustain contracts with Wikileaks shortly after an open disapproval with US State Department emerged (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). As stated by Wikileaks (2011) since December 2010, Western Union and Bank of America have commenced a financial blockade, and together with all other service providers, destroying 95% of Wikileaks’s revenue. Ten of millions of pounds were lost as a result of the blockade (Wikileaks, 2011).
There were huge question marks whether American law enable to bring charges against Wikileaks and the journals that published their materials (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). In order to charge Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, US prosecutors would have to prove that he acted in a way to deliberately harm the United States (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). Meantime, American attorneys focus on to confirm that Assange solicited specific information (Domscheit-Berg, 2011). By doing so, he would breach one of WL’s core principles (Domscheit-Berg, 2011).
Freedom of information and Whistleblowing
“The great American president Thomas Jefferson once observed that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance” (Wikileaks, 2011).
The Freedom of Information Act
The Freedom of Information Act came into effect on 21st April 1998 and was amended on 11th April 2003. The Act gives you the right to access records held by Government Departments and certain public bodies. You do not have to give a reason as to why you want to see any records. The Government Department or body must give you an explanation if you are not given what you ask for. A decision on your application must normally be made within 4 weeks (Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, n.d.).
Protected disclosures i.e. Whistleblowing
Protected disclosure Bill from 2013 provides a national and international protection for whistleblowers across whole range of divisions of the economy (Department of Public Expenditure & Reform - DPER, 2013). “The legislation provides a comprehensive suite of employment and other protections to whistleblowers that are penalized by their employer or suffer a detriment from a third party on account of raising concerns regarding possible wrongdoing in their workplace” (DPER, 2013). Regardless the seriousness of the damage of whistleblowers’ actions, they can still benefit of civil immunity (DPER, 2013). Along with special arrangement for disclosures relating to law enforcement matter, the Bill contains a wide definition of wrongdoings, which could affect Ireland’s security, defence or international communications (DPER, 2013).

Conclusion
Wikileaks has become notorious over the years for its infinite effort trying to protect the freedom of speech and media publishing and the people’s rights. They pioneered the usage of high-end security technologies such as an anonymous drop box and cryptographic technologies which are the necessities for dealing with secret and confidential documents in today’s world. Its founder Julian Assange has become a worldwide celebrity with enormous base of supporters and followers as well as with a vast camp of opponents and enemies.
Cablegate has revealed lots of documents; someone would surely wish to be well-hidden and never released. Disclosure of these documents has caused, in some cases, troubles, but never too big to commence something extreme or destructive. Dispatches about world leaders helped us to perceive, how international politics is conducted these days. Thankfully, any of the superpower countries, unpleasantly mentioned in dispatches, did not get too disturbed to use their force to show, that it was not worthy upsetting them.
This topic was extremely rich and interesting, but the length was limited and it did not leave room to cover other subsections such as Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden and his surveillance reports aimed against US government. Also whistleblowing was broadcasted only superficially with no chance of digging deeper and reveal more of how society copy with this tool in its hands. These uncovered themes leave room for future report to be written about.

Reference List/ Bibliography
Department of Public Expenditure & Reform, 2013. Protected disclosures (i.e. Whistleblowing) [Online], Available at: http://www.per.gov.ie/protected-disclosures-i-e-whistleblowing/ [Accessed 10 April 2014].
Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, n.d., What is Freedom of Information? [Online], Available at: http://foi.gov.ie/what-is-foi? [Accessed 10 April 2014].
Domscheit-Berg, D., 2011. Inside Wikileaks. Translated from German by Jefferson Chase. London: Jonathan Cape.
Harding, L. & Leigh, D., 2011. Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange’s war on secrecy. London: Guardian Books.
Wikileaks, 2011. About [Online], Available at: https://www.wikileaks.org/About.html [Accessed 9 April 2014].
Wikileaks, 2011. Banking Blockade [Online], Available at: https://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html [Accessed 9 April 2014].
Wikileaks, 2011. Secret US Embassy cables [Online], Available at: https://wikileaks.org/cablegate.html [Accessed 9 April 2014].