Timeline of WikiLeaks

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Time period Development summary
1990s " Then, in the 1990’s, Assange and other black hat hackers gained control over MILNET for two years with the use of a back door. This gave them full access to the Pentagon Security Coordination Center. The IT rebels were also able to use their computers to interfere with the authorities who were investigating them. "[1]
2010 – 2011 "2010: First massive information leak

Things began with the first series of leaks released by Wikileaks back in 2010." "250,000 American diplomatic letters and 500,000 classified defence documents flooded the media and social networks from November 2010 to September 2011."[2]

2016 "2016 presidential elections and more precisely the Democrats political campaign were also disrupted by an intervention made by Wikileaks."

Full timeline

Year Month and date Event type Details
1971 United States military analyst Daniel Ellsberg releases the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. This study would be Julian Assange inspiration for Wikileaks.[3]
1971 July 3 Julian Assange is born in the province of Queensland, Australia.[4][5]
1991 Assange, now a noted computer hacker, pleads guilty to a host of cybercrime charges, but because of his youth he receives only minimal punishment.[3]
c.1993 Assange cumulates 31 counts of computer hacking and related crimes, eventually pleading guilty and paying a minimal fine.[4]
1999 Assange registers leaks.org.[1]
2006 Assange starts using leaks.org actively.[4]
2006 December Sunshine Press launches the wikiLeaks.org website, as part of an international non-profit organization that obtains and publishes sensitive information.[1][3]
2006 December The first posting on leaks.org is a decision (never verified) by a Somali rebel leader to execute government officials.[4]
2007 Assange announces the formal launch of Wikileaks.[4]
2007 Assange initiates a relationship with British daily newspaper The Guardian, which reportedly receives regular emails from WikiLeaks “editor-in-chief” Assange, sometimes with a "good story to tell".[4]
2007 August 31 Wikileaks and The Guardian work in tandem for the first time, with WikiLeaks posting the full text off, and the Guardian running a story on, a report by the private investigations firm Kroll about the alleged corruption of former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi.[4]
2007 November Wikileaks posts the standard operating procedures for the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[3]
2007 December Wikileaks posts the United States Army manual for soldiers dealing with prisoners at Camp Delta, a permanent American detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay.[6]
2008 March WikiLeaks publishes internal material from the Church of Scientology. This would lead to the group threatening suit on the grounds of copyright infringement.[3][6]
2008 April Recognition Wikileaks is awarded The Economist's New Media Award at the Index on Censorship Awards.[7]
2008 September WikiLeaks posts emails from the Yahoo email account of US politician Sarah Palin.[6]
2008 November WikiLeaks posts a list of names and addresses of people it claims belong to British National Party, a far-right, fascist political party in the United Kingdom.[6]
2009 March 16 The Australian Communications and Media Authority adds WikiLeaks to their proposed list of sites that will be blocked for all Australians if the mandatory internet filtering scheme is implemented as planned.[8][9] The blacklisting would be removed by 29 November 2010.[10]
2009 June Recognition Wikileaks is awarded the Amnesty International's UK Media Award.[11][12]
2009 November WikiLeaks posts more than half a million pager messages sent within a 24-hour period around the September 11 attacks. Revealing messages include exchanges from "The Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department" officials. WikiLeaks states about the release: "We hope that its entrance into the historical record will lead to a nuanced understanding of how this event led to death, opportunism and war."[13]
2010 February Wikileaks announces it has been given the US$200,000 in donations it needs to continue work.[14]
2010 April 5 Wikileaks posts a classified military video showing a Boeing AH-64 Apache firing on and killing two journalists and a number of Iraqi civilians in 2007. The military claims that the helicopter crew believed the targets were armed insurgents, not civilians.[6]
2010 May The first formal charges are filed when low-level U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning is arrested in connection with the release of the 2007 helicopter video.[3]
2010 May 19 Recognition The New York Daily News lists WikiLeaks first among websites "that could totally change the news",[15]
2010 May 26 The United States Armed Forces detains Bradley Manning on charges of illegally downloading hundreds of thousands of classified US documents, including the US helicopter gunship attack posted on WikiLeaks, and classified State Department records. Manning is turned in by threat analyst Adrian Lamo, who Manning confided in about leaking the classified records.[6][4]
2010 July 6 The United States Armed Forces announce having charged Bradley Manning with violating army regulations by transferring classified information to a personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system and of violating federal laws of governing the handling of classified information.[6]
2010 July 17 Reception American independent journalist Jacob Appelbaum speaks on behalf of WikiLeaks at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City, replacing Assange because of the presence of federal agents at the conference.[16][17] He announces that the WikiLeaks submission system is again operating, after it has been suspended temporarily.[16][18][19]
2010 July 25 WikiLeaks posts more than 90,000 classified documents relating to the War in Afghanistan. This would be called the biggest leak since the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. The documents are divided into more than 100 categories and touch on everything from the hunt for Osama bin Laden to Afghan civilian deaths resulting from US military actions."[6]
2010 August WikiLeaks decides to move their headquarters to Uppsala and begins to mainly be hosted by the Swedish internet service provider Bahnhof, where there are now a couple WikiLeaks servers in the Pionen facility.[1]
2010 August 18 The Thai Government blocks access to WikiLeaks website in its country.[20]
2010 October 22 WikiLeaks publishes nearly 400,000 classified military documents from the Iraq War, providing new figures of deceased Iraqi civilians, as well as the role that Iran has played in supporting Iraqi militants and many accounts of abuse by Iraq's army and police.[6] "So, WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs on October 22nd of 2010. In so doing, it became the biggest leak in the military history of America up to that point, far surpassing the Afghan War Diary of July 25th from that same year."[1]
2010 October 23 Recognition WikiLeaks and Assange are awarded the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award for releasing secret U.S. military reports on the Iraq and Afghan wars.[21]
2010 November 28 WikiLeaks begins publishing approximately 250,000 diplomatic cables from the United States Department of State dating back to 1966. The site says the documents will be released "in stages over the next few months."[6][22]
2010 November 28 wikileaks.org suffers an attack designed to make it unavailable to users. A Twitter user called Jester claims responsibility for the attack.[6]
2010 November 29 Thailand Blocks Access To WikiLeaks Website.[23]
2010 November 29 Reception Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez states his support for WikiLeaks following the release of US diplomatic cables in November 2010 showing the United States attempts to rally support from regional governments to isolate Venezuela.[24]
2010 November WikiLeaks releases selections from a list of some 250,000 classified diplomatic cables between the United States Department of State and its embassies and consulates around the world. These secret documents contain U.S. efforts to politically and economically isolate Iran, primarily in response to fears of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.[3]
2010 December 1 Amazon.com removes WikiLeaks from its servers after political pressure.[25][26][27]
2010 December 2 Reception Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard makes a statement that she 'absolutely condemns' WikiLeaks' actions and that the release of information on the site is 'grossly irresponsible' and 'illegal.'[28]
2010 December 3 The Obama administration bans hundreds of thousands of federal employees from calling up the WikiLeaks site on government computers because the leaked material is still formally regarded as classified.[29]
2010 December 9 Reception United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank LaRue supports the idea that Julian Assange is a "martyr for free speech." LaRue goes on to say Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face legal accountability for any information they disseminated, noting that, "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."[30]
2010 December 15 Reception Philipino President Benigno Aquino III condemns WikiLeaks and leaks documents related to the country, saying that it can lead to massive cases of miscommunication.[31]
2010 December wikileaks.org faces a number of setbacks, being forced to go off-line once again when the site’s domain name provider terminates its account in the wake of a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks. However, as with previous service interruptions, WikiLeaks remains available on mirror sites or by directly linking to its IP address.[3]
2010 December The British police arrests Assange on an outstanding Swedish warrant for alleged sex crimes.[3]
2010 December PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard suspend online payment processing for donations to WikiLeaks.[3]
2010 December Recognition Assange is named "Person of the Year" by Time Magazine.[5]
2011 January Reception Libyan politician Muammar Gaddafi blames WikiLeaks for the Tunisian revolution stating "[Do not be fooled by] WikiLeaks which publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos."[32]
2011 April WikiLeaks begins publishing more secret files from the military facilities at Guantanamo Bay, containing detailed information about the majority of prisoners detained at the detention camp from 2002 to 2008, including photographs, health records, and assessments of the potential threat posed by each prisoner. The files also indicates that dozens of detainees have passed through radicalized British mosques prior to their departure for Afghanistan and, ultimately, their capture by United States forces.[3]
2011 April 24 WikiLeaks obtains nearly 800 classified US military documents revealing details about the alleged terrorist activities of Al Qaeda operatives captured and housed in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
2011 September 2 Assange releases its archive containing more than 250,000 unredacted US diplomatic cables.[6]
2011 October 24 WikiLeaks announces a temporary halt in publication in order to focus its efforts on fund-raising. Assange states that a financial blockade by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union has cut off 95% of WikiLeaks' revenue.[6][3]
2011 December 16 "Manning's Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing that will determine whether enough evidence exists to merit a court-martial, begins."[6]
2012 February 23 " Manning is formally charged with aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet, transmitting national defense information and theft of public property or records."[6]
2012 February 26 "- WikiLeaks begins releasing what it says are five million emails from the private intelligence company, Stratfor, starting with a company "glossary" that features unflattering descriptions of US government agencies. The authenticity of the documents can't be independently confirmed."[6]
2012 February WikiLeaks publishes secret emails from American geopolitical intelligence platform Stratfor that shows US authorities have drawn up secret charges against Assange.[33]
2012 July 5 WikiLeaks begins publishing more than 2.4 million emails from Syrian politicians, government ministries and companies.[6]
2012 April "During this time Assange remained under house arrest pending the resolution of his extradition hearing, and he began recording The World Tomorrow (later called The Julian Assange Show), an interview program that debuted on the state-run Russian satellite network RT in April 2012."[3]
2012 June " With his extradition appeal having been denied and the Swedish arrest warrant pending, in June 2012 Assange applied for asylum in Ecuador and sought refuge in that country’s embassy in London. "[3] "According to a New York Times article, Assange came to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in June 2012, seeking to avoid extradition to Sweden. "[5]
2013 February 28 " Manning pleads guilty to some of the 22 charges against him, but not the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, which carries a life sentence."[6]
2013 July Assange launches the WikiLeaks Party in Australia and announces his candidacy for a seat in the Australian Senate.[3]
2013 August "Although he was acquitted of aiding the enemy, the most serious of the charges against him, in August 2013 he was sentenced to 35 years in prison."[3] "A military judge sentences Manning to 35 years in prison."[6]
2014 April Sony Pictures becomes the target of a massive data breach, and a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace soon begin releasing sensitive company information in small batches. The hack is eventually attributed to North Korea. The following April, WikiLeaks published more than 200,000 of the stolen documents in a searchable database, a move that was immediately criticized by Sony."[3]
2016 March WikiLeaks unveils a searchable archive containing 30,000 e-mail messages and attachments retrieved from a private server maintained by Hillary Clinton during her tenure as United States Secretary of State (2009–13). The collection is made public by the State Department through the Freedom of Information Act.[3]
2016 July 20 The Turkish government blocks access to Wikileaks after it releases nearly 300,000 emails involving the ruling Justice and Development Party. The email releases are in response to the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.[34]
2016 July 22 An amount of nearly 20,000 emails from Democratic National Committee staffers is released by Wikileaks. The emails appear to show the committee favoring Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the United States presidential primary.[6]
2016 July WikiLeaks publishes more than 60,000 Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mail messages and documents, days before the Democratic Party officially nominates Clinton as its candidate in the US Presidential Election 2016.[3]
2016 October 7 "On October 7, 2016, a damaging video recording surfaced in which Trump boasted that his celebrity allowed him to grope women with impunity. Less than an hour later, WikiLeaks published a trove of e-mail messages from the personal account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. "[3][5]
2017 January 3 Assange announces in interview that Russia did not give WikiLeaks hacked emails.[6]
2017 January 12 WikiLeaks tweets that Assange will agree to be extradited to the United States if Obama grants clemency to Chelsea Manning.[6]
2017 January 17 United States President Barack Obama commutes the sentence of Chelsea Manning, setting the stage for her to be released on May 17.[35]
2017 February Assange claims he has damaging information on the leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron having a homosexual affair.[36]
2017 March 7 WikiLeaks publishes thousands of internal CIA documents (known as Vault 7), including alleged discussions of a covert hacking program and the development of spy software targeting cellphones, smart TVs and computer systems in cars. Assange states that the website published the documents as a warning about the risk of the proliferation of "cyber weapons". However, the documents are not independently authenticated.[37]
2017 May 3 FBI Director James Comey refers to WikiLeaks as "intelligence porn" during a Senate hearing, and declares that the site's disclosures are intended to damage the United States rather than educate the public.[6]
2017 May 17 Chelsea Manning is released from prison.[38]
2017 October "CNN reports that in 2016 a Cambridge Analytica executive reached out to WikiLeaks requesting access to Clinton emails. Assange confirmed the exchange in a tweet, saying "I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] and can confirm that it was rejected by WikiLeaks.""[39]
2019 January WikiLeaks sends a 5,000-word email to journalists listing 140 things they should not say about Assange, from asserting that he has been an agent of any intelligence service to that he has ever bleached his hair.[40]
2019 April Assange asylum is rescinded, and he is indicted in the United States for violating the Espionage Act.[5]

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How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by FIXME.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

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What the timeline is still missing

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See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "A History of WikiLeaks". medium.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  2. ↑ "US intelligence versus Julian Assange - a brief history". euronews.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 "WikiLeaks". britannica.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 "WikiLeaks: a brief history". ccnmtl.columbia.edu. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 "Julian Assange Biography". biography.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17 6.18 6.19 6.20 6.21 6.22 "WikiLeaks Fast Facts". edition.cnn.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  7. ↑ "Winners of Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards Announced". Index on Censorship. 22 April 2008. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  8. ↑ Moses, Asher (16 March 2009). "Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day". The Age. Melbourne. Archived from the original on 2012-11-06. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  9. ↑ "Australia secretly censors Wikileaks press release and Danish Internet censorship list, 16 Mar 2009". Mirror.wikileaks.info. 16 March 2009. Archived from the original on 15 April 2011. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  10. ↑ Taylor, Josh (29 November 2010). "Wikileaks removed from ACMA blacklist". ZDNet Australia. Archived from the original on 2010-11-29. Retrieved 1 December 2010. 
  11. ↑ "The Cry of Blood. Report on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances". Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. 2008. Archived from the original on 9 February 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  12. ↑ "Amnesty announces Media Awards 2009 winners" (Press release). Amnesty International UK. 2 June 2009. Archived from the original on 22 October 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  13. ↑ "Six big leaks from Julian Assange's WikiLeaks over the years". usatoday.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  14. ↑ Nickson, Chris. "WikiLeaks fixes its money leak". techradar.com. Retrieved 25 July 2019. 
  15. ↑ Reso, Paulina (20 May 2010). "5 pioneering Web sites that could totally change the news". Daily News. New York. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Singel, Ryan (19 July 2010). "Wikileaks Reopens for Leakers". Wired. New York. Archived from the original on 2014-02-09. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  17. ↑ McCullagh, Declan (16 July 2010). "Feds look for WikiLeaks founder at NYC hacker event | Security". CNET News. Archived from the original on 2011-08-27. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  18. ↑ "Jacob Appelbaum WikiLeaks Next HOPE Keynote Transcript". "Hackers on Planet Earth" conference. 17 July 2010. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  19. ↑ Template:Cite video
  20. ↑ "Thailand Blocks Access To WikiLeaks Website". forum.thaivisa.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  21. ↑ "WikiLeaks and Assange Honored". consortiumnews.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  22. ↑ "State Department Tried To Dissuade WikiLeaks From Posting U.S. Documents". npr.org. Retrieved 10 July 2019. 
  23. ↑ "Thailand Blocks Access To WikiLeaks Website". forum.thaivisa.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  24. ↑ Cancel, Daniel (29 November 2010). "Chavez Praises Wikileaks for `Bravery' While Calling on Clinton to Resign". Bloomberg. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  25. ↑ "WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure". theguardian.com. Retrieved 8 July 2019. 
  26. ↑ O’CONNOR, ANAHAD. "Amazon Removes WikiLeaks From Servers". nytimes.com. Retrieved 8 July 2019. 
  27. ↑ "WikiLeaks: Amazon.com Kicked Us Off Servers". cbsnews.com. Retrieved 8 July 2019. 
  28. ↑ Paul Ramadge, ed. (2 December 2010). "Gillard condemns WikiLeaks". The Age. Australia: Fairfax Media. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  29. ↑ "US blocks access to WikiLeaks for federal workers". theguardian.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  30. ↑ Hall, Eleanor (9 December 2010). "UN rapporteur says Assange shouldn't be prosecuted". abc.net.au. ABC Online. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  31. ↑ Esplanada, Jerry E. (15 December 2010). "Foreign Office slams WikiLeaks". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Archived from the original on 18 December 2010. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  32. ↑ "Libya's Gaddaffi pained by Tunisian revolt, blames WikiLeaks". Monsters and Critics. 16 January 2011. Archived from the original on 19 February 2011. 
  33. ↑ "Ecuador shows up Australian government on Assange asylum". greenleft.org.au. Retrieved 25 July 2019. 
  34. ↑ "Turkey blocks access to WikiLeaks after ruling party email dump". Reuters. July 20, 2016. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  35. ↑ "Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning". edition.cnn.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  36. ↑ Fearnow, Benjamin. "Emmanuel Macron Emails: Wikileaks Releases French President's Campaign Messages". ibtimes.com. Retrieved 25 July 2019. 
  37. ↑ "WikiLeaks claims to reveal how CIA hacks TVs and phones all over the world". money.cnn.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  38. ↑ "Out of prison, Chelsea Manning looks forward to exploring life as a woman". edition.cnn.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  39. ↑ "Trump campaign analytics company contacted WikiLeaks about Clinton emails". edition.cnn.com. Retrieved 27 May 2019. 
  40. ↑ "Julian Assange arrested after almost 7 years in embassy". euronews.com. Retrieved 25 July 2019. 
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