The U.S. government wants to press charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assauge. The details remain to be seen.
Assauge became the target of investigations by the American government after a series of embarrassing data dumps were made public by the whistle-blowing organization. WikiLeaks gained the attention of American authorities after it hosted video of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed two members of Rueters. More than 90,000 U.S. military documents on the war in Afghanistan were later released. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was arrested and charged with supplying WikiLeaks with the classified information, but the probe to go after WikiLeaks did not stop with the detainment of the American citizen.
The U.S. Justice Department requested information from Twitter on users with ties to WikiLeaks. Assauge says that the court order represents nothing more than harassment, and he has vowed to fight the actions.
Using the Internet as a place to dump classified documents displays the evolving nature of information. The actions by the American government show that those in power do not enjoy seeing their secrets revealed. The legal groundwork to go after Assauge or other members of WikiLeaks stands wobbly ground. Other news organizations including the New York Times re-published the classified information. What laws did non-American citizen such as Assauge violate in publishing classified documents?
Legal experts note that the best chance the Justice Department has of bringing charges against WikiLeaks is to establish a conspiracy by the organization to steal classified documents, but proving a conspiracy is difficult if not impossible.
The efforts of WikiLeaks show that secrets are more difficult than ever to keep. Governments will resist the efforts of whistle blowers even if it requires using questionable legal means. Even if the U.S. government prefers it otherwise, WikiLeaks seems to indicate the opening of Pandora’s Box more than an isolated case of conspiracy to steal documents.