Campaign material directed to create awareness about role of Wikileaks and Web-democracy, relevant to the Indian context

1. Whistleblowing,
Wikileaks
and
Web Democracy

2. Whistleblowers??!!!....

3. “A whistleblower is a person
who tells the public or someone in
authority about alleged dishonest or
illegal activities (misconduct) occurring
in a government department, a public or
private organization, or a company.”
Wikipedia

4. Whistleblowers are brave volunteers who
come forward to
disseminate suppressed information.

5. Whistleblowers in the recent past
Whistleblower The Leak
Daniel Ellsberg (1971) The Pentagon Papers: A secret
account of the Vietnam War
W. Mark Felt (1972) US President Richard Nixon's
involvement in Watergate
Ingvar Bratt (1979) Bofors Scandal in India dring the
Rajiv Gandhi regime
Mordechai Vanunu (1986) Israel's clandestine nuclear
program
Jeffrey Wigand (1996) Supression of harmful effets of
Nicotine by the tobacco industry,
dramatised in the Russel Crowe
starring The Insider
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers

6. Indian Whistleblowers
Whistleblower The Leak
N Ram (1980's) Bofors Scandal in India dring the
Rajiv Gandhi regime
Satyendra Dubey* (2003) Corruption in highway construction
projects (NHAI) in India
S. Manjunath * (2005) Adulteration of petroleum in the
India Oil Corporation
R Gokul (~2005) Belekeri port scam in Karnataka,
Iron Ore mining scam
RTI activists in India Whistleblowers of various
discrepancies in Governance.
* Many paying for it with their lives!
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54566

7. “What are we having this liberty for?
We are having this liberty in order to
reform our social system, which is full
of inequality, discrimination and other
things, which conflict with our
fundamental rights.”
B. R. Ambedkar

8. What is Wikileaks?
http://wikileaks.ch/

9. Wikileaks, or its founder
Julian Assange
are not whistleblowers.

10. Wikileaks is a non-profit media
organization who publish relevant
material, voluntarily given by
the brave whistleblowers,
coupled with investigative journalism

11. What sort of material do they publish?
“Wikileaks publishes material of
ethical, political and historical
significance while keeping the identity of
sources(whistleblowers) anonymous,
thus providing a universal way for the
revealing of suppressed and censored
injustices.”
http://wikileaks.ch/

12. Investigative journalism?
“Investigative journalism is distinct
from apparently similar work done
by police, lawyers, auditors and
regulatory bodies in that it is
not limited as to target,
not legally founded
and
closely connected to publicity.”
Hugo de Burgh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_de_Burgh

13. Recent Impact of
Investigative journalism In India
✗ Barak Missile Deal Scandal
✗ Increasing farmer suicideds` and Govt.
apathy in India
✗ Jessica Lall case
✗ 2G Spectrum auction scandal
✗ Corruption in CWG
✗ Sband spectrum allocation by ISRO
✗ Cash for votes scam
✗ And tons of other suppressed information
on a daily basis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehelka
And others

14. Are the activities of wikileaks
against law?
Not really. No law (already) present in
the US or UK can prosecute them.
Wikileaks stands for
➔ Freedom of Press
➔ Right to Information
Fundamental rights of any civilized
society in a democracy

15. What if Wikileaks/Julian Assange,
who are being accused of espionage are
convicted?
It would equal violation of Freedom of
Press.
And other media houses partnering with
Wikileaks for publishing the cables like the
NewYork Times in the US, The Hindu in
India, and hundreds of other publishers
would be analogically at the same risk
For, Wikileaks is also a publisher.

16. Important leaks published
by Wikileaks
● Document revealing the inhuman protocol of the U.S. Army
at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp (2006)
● The collected secret 'bibles' of Scientology (2008)
● Collateral Murder:Gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007
Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi civilians and journalists
were killed by an Apache helicopter (2010)
● Afghan War Diary:92,000 documents related to the war in
Afghanistan (2010)
●Iraq War Diary: 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq
War (2010)
● US Diplomatic Cables: 251,287 confidential—but not top
secret—diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies (2010)
● Cash for Votes: Cable reiterating the ruckus created in
the Indian Parliament house about 2008 no-confidence vote
(2011)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Leaks

17. Why publish sensitive information and
Govt. secrets?
“The trend has been that many
Big Corporations and Government
secrets are illegitimate and for
prolonged periods of time.”
Julian Assange

18. “The fact is that when it comes to
judgement as to what should be
secret and what should not be
secret, Julian Assange's judgment
has been pretty good so far.”
Daniel Ellsberg, The Pentagon
Papers Whistle Blower
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

19. PM Manmohan Singh about the cash-for-votes
cable
"The government cannot confirm the veracity,
content or even the existence of such
communication."
Julian Asange's response
“A deliberate attempt to mislead the public by
suggesting that governments around the world do
not accept the material...
there is no doubt, whatsoever, that the cables are
authentic”
http://is.gd/JnfAyx
http://is.gd/JBxQLr

20. Soon, more cables with details on
Black money holders in Swiss
banks
http://www.thehindu.com/system/topicRoot/WikiLeaks/

21. Dubiousness of support lent to
Wikileaks
Because Wikileaks is head on with Big
Corporations and powerful
Governments, lot of smear campaign
has been ongoing, off late.
Media houses which initially stood by
Wikileaks have retracted succumbing to
the pressure from Govt. Authorities.
Here's a comparison of the stands taken by an
influential US media house
Neutral interview: http://is.gd/4cmg3O
Smear campaign: http://is.gd/G0LPT2

22. Attacks on Wikileaks after the US
Diplomatic cables leak
● American-owned EveryDNS dropped WikiLeaks
from its entries
● Amazon.com severed its ties with WikiLeaks, to
which it was providing infrastructure services
● PayPal the payment processor cut off the
account that had been redirecting donations to
WikiLeaks
● Swiss bank, PostFinance, announced that it had
frozen the assets of Assange
● Visa Inc. announced it was suspending
payments to WikiLeaks

23. “It is important to progress
towards the idea of the Internet as
a neutral media that is not
controlled by large corporates or
governments."
Sir Tim Berners Lee,
on the role played by Internet in
the Egypt Revolution
http://is.gd/DnmPG7

24. Web Democracy

25. Why Web Democracy?
 Freedom to the users
 Freedom of expression
 Right to information
 No content discrimination
 Privacy and Anonymity

26. A Quintessential dependency
Web Democracy Freedom of Press
Freedom in the Better democracy
Web For People

27. “ We (US citizens) were taken
to war in Iraq on a lie.
Hundreds of thousands are now dead.
Just imagine if the men who planned
this war crime back in 2002 had had a
WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not
have been able to pull it off.”
Michael Moore

28. Participatory Investigative journalism
can compel the Governments to
become transparent.
Support Wikileaks!