"We will safely help you get the truth out."

 

Wikileaks is currently one of the hottest topics around, after the arrest of founder Julian Assange and the retaliation following it...

Wikileaks, which was founded in 2006, is a so-called "wiki" (webpage where anyone can post or edit information) focused on publishing unavailable documents from anonymous sources or "leaks".

Wikileaks became a media hype after it published several documents on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and also posted several documents on the international relations between the USA and the rest of the world.

Leading to political tension worldwide, this lead to the fact that the USA wanted to extradite him.

Nevertheless the reason for his arrest is on ground of being accused of molestation and rape, which supposedly all happened in August 2010.

Nevertheless my focus is on the fact that information, is not published openly through the world. Governments make agreements, create new laws etc. without the knowledge of its citizens. 

The ACTA act, which has been adopted by the European Union last month, was completely handled in secrecy, both the creation as well as all procedure up to the implementation of the act.

The ACTA act, which focuses on intellectual property rights regarding the internet, was completely unknown to the public if a draft version of the act has not had been posted by Wikileaks last year.

I wonder if we, in a democratic society, are to be pursued for publishing information which affects each and every individual citizen in Europe. Of course the information was to be kept secret, mainly because of the opposition against the act in the first place. Since the enabling of the act would create an institute which has to much power without proper control, basically taking over the American approach on intellectual property rights. Therefore creating a situation in which it becomes legal for any government to search your digital information without any regard to your (online) privacy.

This is just one of the many examples, and I do not believe we as democrats want to give up our privacy or right to know what the government is doing. Therefore I’d say we should support Wikileaks regardless of its founder.