Yes We Leak
Takriz
Offset, Circa 2011
Tunisia
65990
In 2010, Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested for his role in the release of 250,000 cables, videos, photographs, and military incident logs to The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel. He was a political prisoner for more than a decade, and was discharged from prison this week, thanks to the work of international press freedom groups relentlessly advocating for his release. However, this win is not without a cost. In order to have the freedom to return to his native Australia and live with his family, Assange first had to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. documents.
While his release is a victory, its conditions may negatively affect freedom of the press in the U.S. for years to come. The Espionage Act of 1917 “prohibits obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any information relating to the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information may be used for the injury of the United States.” Since the arrest of Assange, it has been increasingly weaponized against journalists and whistleblowers.
CSPG's Poster of the Week shows just how impactful the Wikileaks documents leak was domestically and internationally. The data revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to providing proof of corruption, human rights abuses, and authoritarianism in several Arab countries. One of the cables highlighted former Tunisian President Ben Ali’s greed and corruption. Takriz, a Tunisian self-described “cyber think/fight tank & street resistance network” founded in 1998, played a part in translating and disseminating this information to the Tunisian public. The Internet was the only viable option for free speech organizers in Tunisia in the late 1990s and 2000s, as other media were tightly controlled by President Ben Ali. Taks (members of Takriz) played a key role in agitating street youth and soccer fans into mobilizing against the draconian Ali government, resulting in Tunisia’s role in starting the anti-government protests of the Arab Spring and the deposition of Ali in January 2011.
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