Can Wikileaks be trusted?

As the DNC email leak story grows, maybe it’s time to question the motives of the single largest source of “persecuted documents”.

With ten years under its belt, Wikileaks is held up as a paragon of true democracy and transparency by some and as an arrogant, even hostile, security risk by others. This polarisation is aptly demonstrated in the character of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks; loved zealously and hated utterly in equal measure. Wikileaks has once again returned to the news this week, leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee. And it may well only be the beginning of a long drawn out drip feed of emails and data to come.

The emails that have been leaked so far come from the accounts of seven DNC officials, according to Wikileaks. There are so many emails it would take a truly dedicated soul to go through them all but some indicate a bias on the part of DNC officials for a Clinton nomination over a Sanders one.

They mention concerns that “Bernie Sanders’ supporters will be reluctant to back Hillary” as well as a conversation about potentially bringing Sanders’ faith (or lack of one) into the mix. There are also mentions of Sanders’ staff not being co-operative and the Sanders’ campaign being a “mess”. I won’t link to them directly here, for reasons that will become clear, but for an insight into the inner workings of a political party, they’re interesting reading. Anyone in the UK watching the almost daily self-flagellation of the Labour Party will get a strange sense of deja vu.

Personally, I don’t see any proof of a conspiracy to usurp Bernie as nominee (I freely admit I have not read all the emails). I do see seven or so people expressing an opinion on problems they had with Bernie Sanders, and a desire to not have him as their nominee. That doesn’t equal a conspiracy, though the Democrats should look into the responsibilities of the DNC and whether anyone was breaching guidelines and policy. Just as they should look into Sanders’ campaign staff accessing Clinton’s campaign database last December and pulling data on voter information.

The important issue here is not the emails or their content. It’s the timing of the leak, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention, and the source of the information that are the key points everyone should be demanding details on. There is a growing argument that the source of the hack may be agents working for Russia.

Trump certainly seems to believe it, calling on Russia to release even more emails allegedly deleted by Hillary Clinton. And here’s the rub; Wikileaks would be more than happy to do exactly that. In Julian Assange’s own words, printed on their About page, “WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.”

This seems fine apart from the fact they don’t appear to “analyse” anything. Any journalist worth their salt knows sources matter as much as the content of what they say. So, we would assume, any self respecting publishing outlet would check the sources of their data and the content of that data before releasing it into the world. If it turns out that Russian agencies were in any way involved in obtaining these DNC emails then Wikileaks has a serious question to ask itself; do we truly stand for transparency and democracy, if we can be so easily used to manipulate a democratic election, in a sovereign nation?

Recent leaks of Turkish emails do not do much to reassure anyone about Wikileaks motives and processes. They claim the emails are from the AKP, the ruling party of Turkey led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They state, “The material was obtained a week before the attempted coup. However, WikiLeaks has moved forward its publication schedule in response to the government’s post-coup purges.”

Most, if not all, of these emails are in Turkish. Did Wikileaks ensure they got a Turkish speaker to check these 294,548 emails, to verify that they are actually from the AKP, and not just emails from various online discussion groups? Well, it doesn’t look like it. Reports have been surfacing from Turkish journalists that the emails, rather than being top-secret government messages, are in fact just ordinary citizens messages to each other. Some even include recipes to traditional Turkish meals.

Of more concern is Wikileaks linking to an expanded database of emails, which seemed to contain information on every female voter in 79 out of Turkey’s 81 provinces. It has since come to light that this database was due to hackers unaffiliated with Wikileaks, who just got caught up in the timing of the supposed AKP leaks. That database has since been taken down, but that will be of little comfort to anyone whose details were leaked.

What does Wikileaks stand for? They have been defensive with regard to the alleged AKP email leak, and continue to vigorously deny any Russian link for the DNC emails. The argument is that the public have a right to know and they are only publishing data — it’s up to individuals what they make of it. But in the case of the DNC email leak, the information is biased by the very fact we don’t also get to see Donald Trump’s tax records or his campaign’s emails. People are inclined to jump to conclusions at the best of times; even more so when the information they have access to doesn't tell the whole story.

Wikileaks appear to care nothing for the sources of their data, or the impact of releasing that data on the very democracy they claim to support. Until their true motivations are clear can any of us really trust what they choose to share with us?

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