WikiLeaks

Background

In 2006, Assange launched WikiLeaks, an international nonprofit organization known for publishing leaked government documents and other classified materials. WikiLeaks has published more than 10 million restricted or censored documents and analyses, sometimes through its contractual relationships and secure communication channels with more than 100 news organizations around the world. Over time, WikiLeaks has shifted from releasing troves of documents on the Internet to working more closely with select news organizations to analyze, redact, and release information.

Espionage Act

Two months after the United States entered World War I, on June 15, 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act, which prohibits the acquisition, recording, or copying of information that could injure the national defense or U.S. foreign relations. The Espionage Act was also passed to target individuals who authorities believed were disloyal to the United States or obstructed enlistment in the U.S. military.

In 1919, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions of three individuals who the government believed were dissidents and had threatened the war effort: Charles Schenck, the general secretary of the Philadelphia Socialist Party; Eugene V. Debs, the head of the American Socialist Party; and Jacob Abrams, an anti-war activist in Schenck v. United States (1919), Debs v. United States (1919), and Abrams v. United States (1919). However, in Abrams, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote a dissenting opinion in which he ruled in favor of Abrams, holding that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to dissent and disagree with the government.

Chelsea Manning Leak

During President Obama’s administration, the Espionage Act was increasingly used to target the sources of government leaks, including those who disclosed information to WikiLeaks. Perhaps most notably, in 2010, WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified military documents on its website. The documents, leaked by Manning, included incident logs from the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, diplomatic cables from American embassies, and dossiers on Guantánamo Bay prison detainees held without trial. Among the classified military documents was also a video from a U.S. military helicopter as it shot and killed a Reuters photographer in Baghdad in July 2007, an incident referred to as Collateral Murder by WikiLeaks.

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