Where do you go to find out the truth about the Iraq war? The non-profit media organization WikiLeaks is the answer. The organization distributes classified information to the public. They receive information from various sources and then the information gets passed on to the volunteer journalists who write the stories. The sources they receive this information from are often referred to as whistleblowers. The definition of a whistler blower is someone who makes a public disclosure of corruption or wrongdoing. It is also important for the organization to protect its journalists and whistle blowers because they can be victims of legal and political attacks.

Although WikiLeaks has no headquarters the central server is located in Switzerland. The Swedish Constitution provides total legal protection to those who leak information. Switzerland is one of two places in the world where it is safe to run this kind of organization.

The website was launched in October 2006. One of the most popular and controversial WikiLeak topics is the Iraq War Logs released in 2010. Around 400,000 documents were released and also revealed every recorded death that occurred in Iraq. The civilian death count then proved to be much higher then previously depicted to the public. U.S. authorities also withheld information and did not report multiple attacks.

There have also been many spin offs of WikiLeaks. More organizations were created that reflect similar structure of the original. One example is OpenLeaks, which happened to be created by a former spokesperson of WikiLeaks. Despite the attempt at making this more successful it still hasn’t made any progress. TradeLeaks was created as a more of a focus on trade and commerce rather than politics. Again, this site failed to be as successful as the original and its users criticized it. Other Spin offs include Friends of WikiLeaks, IndoLeaks, Ruleaks, and Leakymails.

Some people approved of the organization while others bash them. Hillary Clinton sees the organization as a danger and condemned the leaks. Viewing WikiLeaks as a member of U.S. federal government staff is currently blocked. They have been criticized by journalists for the lack of editorial discretion. Personally, I think that it’s important for the public to know the truth. As long as the leaker’s are being properly protected it should continue to develop. There is always going to be an issue regarding validity because we don’t know where these leaks are coming from or if there are true. Still, it opens the publics eyes to all the different perspectives and hopefully helps people realize that you can’t always trust the government.

Wikipedia provides a lot of information about the history of WikiLeaks, reactions of different governments, descriptions of previous leaks as well as upcoming leaks, and most of all how all the legal issues are dealt with.