Wikileaks, a king of the scoop under threat

"Wikileaks has probably released more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the last thirty years." The formula of the American newspaper "The National" summarizes well the history of this collaborative site specialized in the publication of confidential files. Launched in January 2007, Wikileaks already boasts an impressive track record: documents suggesting that the Swiss bank Julius Baer may have helped its clients launder money and practice tax evasion in the Cayman Islands, the US Army's Guantanamo procedures manual, a corruption case in the entourage of former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, working documents on the secret negotiations of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on copyright, details on how the Church of Scientology works, and more.

The site also disseminated a lot of information about the Icelandic banking crash of 2008: a list of loans and lines of debt erased for the benefit of certain leaders of the Kaupthing Bank shortly before its collapse, the negotiations between the Icelandic governments, British and Dutch on the reimbursement of the victims of the Icesave bank ( http://file.wikileaks.org/files/icesave1.pdf et http://file.wikileaks.org/files/icesave2.pdf) ...

The sources of these revelations come from "whistleblowers" (whistleblowers in English), lawyers, civil servants, employees or ordinary citizens in possession of confidential documents, wishing to make public sensitive information and to whom Wikileaks ensures total anonymity thanks to a data encryption system. A community of 800 journalists, computer scientists, mathematicians and activists strive to verify the authenticity and validity of information before publishing it on the site.

Attacked a hundred times in court, its publishers are fighting for new legislation on freedom of expression. They thus created an international collective and pushed for the drafting of a bill currently being examined by the Icelandic parliament. This texts, which compiles different laws around the world, would make the island, chosen for its favorable legal environment, a cyber paradise of information guaranteeing the protection of communications and sources and prohibiting the filtering of the Web.

But the success of Wikileaks is causing its downfall. Overwhelmed by the number of connections and documents to store - several million pages - officials temporarily slowed down its activity to focus on fundraising. Because the site, with an annual budget of 600.000 dollars, lives only on donations from individuals, refusing any support from companies or communities. “We have received several hundred thousand documents relating to corrupt banks, the United States detention system, the war in Iraq, China, the United Nations and many others that we are technically not in possession of. able to publish", promises the homepage of the site, supported by many "traditional" media.

Another threat would also hang over Wikileaks. The latter published Monday a classified document from an agency of the US Department of Defense and which presents the site as a "threat to the US Army". Dated March 2008, this 32 report pages states that certain information may have "value to foreign intelligence services, foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and terrorist groups to gather information or plan attacks against U.S. forces." The authors of the report suggest identifying and prosecuting possible informants of the site within the American administration in order to dissuade the population from using it, thus shattering confidence in the Wikileaks encryption system. "We have already been confronted with all kinds of governments and private intelligence agencies, says Julian Assange, one of the site managers. Fortunately, we also have many friends who want us well. We are in the process of to investigate this issue and, when the time is right, we will have more information to reveal about the actions of the US military." According to him, so far, no source has been revealed since the creation of the site.