In 2006 Julian Assange, a young journalist and whistle-blower, founded the site WikiLeaks with the help of a few unnamed partners (scribd.com). This radical new site was slow to be noticed by big media outlets and the general public, but in 2007 the site published "a never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. Military's Guantanamo Bay...(wired.com)." After that, WikiLeaks cemented its place in history.
To help explain how WikiLeaks works, one must look at another history website: wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is maintained solely by volunteers--any of the articles can be edited by anyone and the website is paid for by public donation. WikiLeaks works in a very similar way. Volunteers and fellow journalists/whistle-blowers contribute to the site and volunteers help to edit the information. In fact, in 2008, WikiLeaks had over 1,200 registered volunteers (mirror.wikileaks.org). Since then, WikiLeaks has been going strong.
The real trouble came to WikiLeaks in mid to late 2010, when thousands of confidential diplomatic cables were released to the public. These cables came directly from the United States and held information on myriad countries (wikileaks.org). The United States government was quick to condemn the release with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton saying, "...it is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity... (bbc.co.uk)."
It is clear that WikiLeaks has both changed the way private information is handled and how citizens view their governments. And as governments begin to ramp up their attack on WikiLeaks, only the coming months will tell WikiLeaks' fate.
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