On Monday, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was released from prison after fighting a legal battle spanning more than 14 years. In , Assange launched the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, a platform that allows users to anonymously submit secret, classified documents and videos. The most recent publication by the platform was in The New York-based Nation magazine reported in January that Assange said WikiLeaks was no longer able to publish documents since potential whistleblowers were thwarted following his imprisonment, United States government surveillance and funding cuts.
During the years it functioned, the whistleblower platform published classified documents that had been never seen before โ embarrassing governments, causing diplomatic standoffs and forcing policy changes.
The United Nations reported that , people were affected by this dumping of waste. In , WikiLeaks started building out its Public Library of US Diplomacy PLUSD , which is a growing collection of 3,, US diplomatic cables between American diplomats posted to consulates and embassies from to , and their colleagues and bosses, including back home at the State Department.
In the first round of these leaks, , cables were released to the public โ arguably the single largest such dump of confidential documents ever released.
The leaks included embarrassing details of how US diplomats perceived some of their foreign counterparts and nuggets of conversations where foreign officials, including many in high positions today, expressed frustrations with their own governments. In October , the whistleblower site released 90, classified documents on the US war in Afghanistan. The United States launched the Afghanistan war in , following the September 11 attacks that year, finally withdrawing its forces from the country in The documents painted a picture of the war โ and the US struggle against the Taliban โ that was very different from the public posture of confidence adopted by Washington.
