Thanks to Mod Prakash for alerting me to Wikileaks.

For those of you who have not heard of them, here is some information courtesy Wikipedia:

Wikileaks is a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents, while attempting to preserve the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors. Within one year of its December 2006 launch, its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents,[2] leading to many front-page newspaper articles and political reforms.

The site states that it was “founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa”.

Wikileaks states that its “primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.”

In January 2007, the website stated that it had over 1.2 million leaked documents that it was preparing to publish.[10] The group has subsequently released a number of other significant documents which have become front-page news items, ranging from documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war to corruption in Kenya.[11]

Their stated goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive or classified documents, such as what happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.[12]

You can submit documents to Wikileaks via a secure link.

Wikileaks promises that it will distribute and publicise the documents widely amongst their network of investigative journalists, human rights workers, lawyers and other partners. The submission data is “cleaned” by their system so that it becomes impossible to find the original source or link back to a “PDF printing program..word installation, scanner (or) printer.”

Furthermore, Wikikeaks says it will “never cooperate with anyone trying to identify you as our source. In fact we are legally bound not to do so...”

Here is a record of Wikileaks Notable Leaks.

Related Post: On Whistle-blowers, Murder and Corruption in high places

Somewhat related posts:

IndianKanoon.org – Another tool for citizen empowerment

Two great ideas…but do they work?