Wikileaks

The word WikiLeaks has been added to our everyday vocabulary only a couple of years ago. Yet, it has surged in its usage in perfunctory conversation with astounding pace. The organisation created by Australian hacker Julian Assange and a few of his close associates, the closest being fellow German hacker Daniel Domscheit-Berg, has captured the rapt attention of the world media by its activities. WikiLeaks has been an influential organisation and has created waves, whether beneficial or detrimental, across the international community. The intent of writing this term paper is to explore the origination of the organisation with its set of goals, ideals and methodologies, and assessing the impact that it has had on the contemporary global and domestic scenarios. This assessment is further validated by a detailed case study on the specific impact of WikiLeaks on the diplomatic relations between the United States and Pakistan. The paper tries to establish a link between WikiLeaks and a change in the international structure, as it were. Issues relating to the tyranny of a uni-polar world and future prospects of change (in facilitating which WikiLeaks plays a part) are discussed. WikiLeaks has been at the wrong end of many a pointing finger with regard to the kind of work it does. Towards the end, the paper discusses the ethical questions raised about WikiLeaks and presents arguments both for and against the correctness or wrongness of the objectives of and the means used by WikiLeaks.
The term wiki came into popular internet usage after the conception of Wikipedia by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. The term, in fact, was anointed with a new meaning in the parlance into which it was introduced. Any wiki website is one where the content is user generated and relies completely on contributions, both intellectual and financial, from internet users sitting in any remote corner of the earth. WikiLeaks was started as a wiki but could not serve the purpose it was meant for