Truth or Dare (WikiLeaks)

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Sociopolitical Documentary hosted by Andrew Fowler and published by ABC broadcasted as part of ABC Foreign Correspondent series in 2010 - English narration

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Broadcast: 22/06/2010

Reporter: Andrew Fowler

It used to be nondescript parcels on the doorstep, cryptic phone calls at midnight or shadowy meetings in underground car parks.

Now explosive information is more likely to arrive - to the tune of a novelty sound effect - in an email.

But profound and important questions surround the transaction of secret, highly sensitive, classified material. Governments and big business are fiercely protective of their internal dynamics and increasingly are coming down hard on leakers and whistleblowers. The public though demand and defend their right to know when governments they’ve installed are making decisions on their behalf, or the actions of big business impact their lives.

And so a group of one-time hackers and activists are trying to build a global truth machine.

They call it WikiLeaks.

“We want to create a system where there is guaranteed free press across the world, the entire world..... that every individual in the world has the ability to publish material that is meaningful”. JULIAN ASSANGE – FOUNDER WIKILEAKS

A hesitant, quietly spoken Australian named Julian Assange has become the global face of a nebulous operation with secret computer servers in a number of countries and aspirations to build an information freedom zone – the leaker’s equivalent of a tax haven – in, where else – Iceland.

WikiLeaks exploded into prominence earlier this year when it released hitherto top secret video of a helicopter gunship strafing and killing more than a dozen people in Baghdad including media covering the war.

The Wiki-team spent some time stripping the video of any electronic fingerprints that would expose the insiders who leaked it and then launched it on-line under the banner ‘Collateral Murder’ replete with damning Orwellian quotes. Critics call this activism not journalism.

“They provided artificial agenda driven context . There was an operation underway in reaction to an ongoing war. Not that apache helicopters were circling looking for a bunch of guys to just shoot up and kill”. DAVID FINKEL – WASHINGTON POST

Foreign Correspondent’s Andrew Fowler enters the guarded, sometimes paranoid world of Wiki - talking extensively to Assange, supporters like Daniel Ellsberg who gave the world the Pentagon Papers as well as critics who see the operation as a reckless, potentially dangerous activist outpost.

As this intriguing Foreign Correspondent takes shape a military insider has been arrested on suspicion of leaking the Baghdad video and Assange has – according to colleagues – gone into hiding.