computer science

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand WikiLeaks rather than just read about it. In short: WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships.

Key takeaways

WikiLeaks belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect WikiLeaks to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of WikiLeaks from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange. Kristinn Hrafnsson is its editor-in-chief. Its website states that it has released more than ten million documents and associated analyses. WikiLeaks' most recent publication of original documents was in 2019, and its most recent publication was in 2021. From November 2022, numerous documents on the organisation's website became inaccessible. In 2023, Assange said that WikiLeaks was no longer able to publish due to his imprisonment and the effect that US government surveillance and WikiLeaks' funding restrictions were having on potential whistleblowers. WikiLeaks has released document caches and media that exposed serious violations of human rights and civil liberties by various governments. It released footage of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike, titling it Collateral Murder, in which Iraqi Reuters journalists and several other civilians were killed by a US helicopter crew. It published thousands of US military field logs from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq war, diplomatic cables from the United States and Saudi Arabia, and emails from the governments of Syria and Turkey. WikiLeaks has also published documents exposing corruption in Kenya and at Samherji, cyber warfare and surveillance tools created by the CIA, and surveillance of the French president by the US National Security Agency. During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, showing that the party's national committee had effectively acted as an arm of the Clinton campaign during the primaries, seeking to undercut the campaign of Bernie Sanders. These releases resulted in the resignation of the chairwoman of the DNC and caused significant harm to the Clinton campaign. WikiLeaks has won numerous awards and been commended by media organisations, civil society organisations, and world leaders for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions. The organisation has been the target of campaigns to discredit it, including aborted ones by Palantir and HBGary. WikiLeaks has also had its donation systems interrupted by payment processors. In response, the Wau Holland Foundation helps process WikiLeaks' donations. The organisation has been criticised for inadequately curating content and violating personal privacy. WikiLeaks has, for instance, revealed Social Security numbers, medical information, credit card numbers and details of suicide attempts. News organisations, activists, journalists and former members have criticised WikiLeaks over allegations of anti-Clinton and pro-Trump bias and a lack of internal transparency. Some journalists have alleged it had associations with the Russian government. Journalists have also criticised the organisation for promotion of conspiracy theories, and what they describe as exaggerated and misleading descriptions of the contents of leaks. The CIA and United States Congress characterised the organisation as a "non-state hostile intelligence service" after the release of CIA tools for hacking consumer electronics in Vault 7.

History

Founding

The inspiration for WikiLeaks was Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Assange built WikiLeaks to shorten the time between a leak and its coverage by the media. WikiLeaks was established in Australia with the help of Daniel Mathews and its servers were soon moved to Sweden and other countries that provided greater legal protection for the media. Assange described WikiLeaks as an activist organisation and said that "The method is transparency, the goal is justice". The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006. The website was established and published its first document in December 2006. It described its founders as a mixture of Asian dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. In January 2007 WikiLeaks organiser James Chen told TIME that "We are serious people working on a serious project... three advisors have been detained by Asian government, one of us for over six years." WikiLeaks said that its "primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East" but it "also expects to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their own governments and corporations". WikiLeaks was usually represented in public by Julian Assange, who has described himself as "the heart and soul of this organisation".

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with WikiLeaks

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what WikiLeaks claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to WikiLeaks before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about WikiLeaks ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of WikiLeaks

In research: WikiLeaks appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses WikiLeaks in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: WikiLeaks is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Applications of cryptography, Classified documents, Espionage, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for WikiLeaks outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study WikiLeaks in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what WikiLeaks means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain WikiLeaks out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is WikiLeaks in simple terms?

WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships.

Why does WikiLeaks matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study WikiLeaks?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on WikiLeaks.