It's been reported that WikiLeaks, your baby,

has, in the last few years

has released more classified documents

than the rest of the world's media combined.

Can that possibly be true?

Julian Assange: Yeah, can it possibly be true?

It's a worry -- isn't it? -- that the rest of the world's media

is doing such a bad job

that a little group of activists

is able to release more

of that type of information

than the rest of the world press combined.

CA: How does it work?

How do people release the documents?

And how do you secure their privacy?

JA: So these are -- as far as we can tell --

classical whistleblowers,

and we have a number of ways for them

to get information to us.

So we use this state-of-the-art encryption

to bounce stuff around the Internet, to hide trails,

pass it through legal jurisdictions

like Sweden and Belgium

to enact those legal protections.

We get information in the mail,

the regular postal mail,

encrypted or not,

vet it like a regular news organization, format it --

which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do,

when you're talking about

giant databases of information --

release it to the public

and then defend ourselves

against the inevitable legal and political attacks.

CA: So you make an effort to ensure

the documents are legitimate,

but you actually

almost never know who the identity of the source is?

JA: That's right, yeah. Very rarely do we ever know,

and if we find out at some stage

then we destroy that information as soon as possible.

(Phone ring) God damn it.

(Laughter)

CA: I think that's the CIA asking what the code is

for a TED membership.

(Laughter)

So let's take [an] example, actually.

This is something

you leaked a few years ago.

If we can have this document up ...

So this was a story in Kenya a few years ago.

Can you tell us what you leaked and what happened?

JA: So this is the Kroll Report.

This was a secret intelligence report

commissioned by the Kenyan government

after its election in 2004.

Prior to 2004, Kenya was ruled

by Daniel arap Moi

for about 18 years.

He was a soft dictator of Kenya.

And when Kibaki got into power --

through a coalition of forces that were trying

to clean up corruption in Kenya --

they commissioned this report,

spent about two million pounds

on this and an associated report.

And then the government sat on it

and used it for political leverage on Moi,

who was the richest man --

still is the richest man -- in Kenya.

It's the Holy Grail of Kenyan journalism.

So I went there in 2007,

and we managed to get hold of this

just prior to the election --

the national election, December 28.

When we released that report,

we did so three days after the new president, Kibaki,

had decided to pal up with

the man that he was going to clean out,

Daniel arap Moi,

so this report then

became a dead albatross

around President Kibaki's neck.

CA: And -- I mean, to cut a long story short --

word of the report leaked into Kenya,

not from the official media, but indirectly,

and in your opinion, it actually shifted the election.

JA: Yeah. So this became front page of the Guardian

and was then printed in all the surrounding countries of Kenya,

in Tanzanian and South African press.

And so it came in from the outside.

And that, after a couple of days,

made the Kenyan press feel safe to talk about it.

And it ran for 20 nights straight on Kenyan TV,

shifted the vote by 10 percent,

according to a Kenyan intelligence report,

which changed the result of the election.

CA: Wow, so your leak

really substantially changed the world?

JA: Yep.

(Applause)

CA: Here's -- We're going to just show

a short clip from this

Baghdad airstrike video.

The video itself is longer,

but here's a short clip.

This is -- this is intense material, I should warn you.

Radio: ... just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up.

I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees, uh, out along ...

You're clear. All right. Firing.

Let me know when you've got them. Let's shoot.

Light 'em all up.

C'mon, fire!

(Machine gun fire)

Keep shoot 'n. Keep shoot 'n.

(Machine gun fire)

Keep shoot 'n.

Hotel ... Bushmaster Two-Six, Bushmaster Two-Six,

we need to move, time now!

All right, we just engaged all eight individuals.

Yeah, we see two birds [helicopters], and we're still firing.

Roger. I got 'em.

Two-Six, this is Two-Six, we're mobile.

Oops, I'm sorry. What was going on?

God damn it, Kyle. All right, hahaha. I hit 'em.

CA: So, what was the impact of that?

JA: The impact on the people who worked on it

was severe.

We ended up sending two people to Baghdad

to further research that story.

So this is just the first of three attacks

that occurred in that scene.

CA: So, I mean, 11 people died in that attack, right,

including two Reuters employees?

JA: Yeah. Two Reuters employees,

two young children were wounded.

There were between 18 and 26 people killed all together.

CA: And releasing this caused

widespread outrage.

What was the key element of this

that actually caused the outrage, do you think?

JA: I don't know. I guess people can see

the gross disparity in force.

You have guys walking in a relaxed way down the street,

and then an Apache helicopter sitting up at one kilometer

firing 30-millimeter cannon shells

on everyone --

looking for any excuse to do so --

and killing people rescuing the wounded.

And there was two journalists involved that clearly weren't insurgents

because that's their full-time job.

CA: I mean, there's been this U.S. intelligence analyst,

Bradley Manning, arrested,

and it's alleged that he confessed in a chat room

to have leaked this video to you,

along with 280,000

classified U.S. embassy cables.

I mean, did he?

JA: We have denied receiving those cables.

He has been charged,

about five days ago,

with obtaining 150,000 cables

and releasing 50.

Now, we had released,

early in the year,

a cable from the Reykjavik U.S. embassy,

but this is not necessarily connected.

I mean, I was a known visitor of that embassy.

CA: I mean, if you did receive thousands

of U.S. embassy diplomatic cables ...

JA: We would have released them. (CA: You would?)

JA: Yeah. (CA: Because?)

JA: Well, because these sort of things

reveal what the true state

of, say,

Arab governments are like,

the true human-rights abuses in those governments.

If you look at declassified cables,

that's the sort of material that's there.

CA: So let's talk a little more broadly about this.

I mean, in general, what's your philosophy?

Why is it right

to encourage leaking of secret information?

JA: Well, there's a question as to what sort of information is important in the world,

what sort of information

can achieve reform.

And there's a lot of information.

So information that organizations

are spending economic effort into concealing,

that's a really good signal

that when the information gets out,

there's a hope of it doing some good --

because the organizations that know it best,

that know it from the inside out,

are spending work to conceal it.

And that's what we've found in practice,

and that's what the history of journalism is.

CA: But are there risks with that,

either to the individuals concerned

or indeed to society at large,

where leaking can actually have

an unintended consequence?

JA: Not that we have seen with anything we have released.

I mean, we have a harm immunization policy.

We have a way of dealing with information

that has sort of personal --

personally identifying information in it.

But there are legitimate secrets --

you know, your records with your doctor;

that's a legitimate secret --

but we deal with whistleblowers that are coming forward

that are really sort of well-motivated.

CA: So they are well-motivated.

And what would you say to, for example,

the, you know, the parent of someone

whose son is out serving the U.S. military,

and he says, "You know what,

you've put up something that someone had an incentive to put out.

It shows a U.S. soldier laughing

at people dying.

That gives the impression, has given the impression,

to millions of people around the world

that U.S. soldiers are inhuman people.

Actually, they're not. My son isn't. How dare you?"

What would you say to that?

JA: Yeah, we do get a lot of that.

But remember, the people in Baghdad,

the people in Iraq, the people in Afghanistan --

they don't need to see the video;

they see it every day.

So it's not going to change their opinion. It's not going to change their perception.

That's what they see every day.

It will change the perception and opinion

of the people who are paying for it all,

and that's our hope.

CA: So you found a way to shine light

into what you see

as these sort of dark secrets in companies and in government.

Light is good.

But do you see any irony in the fact that,

in order for you to shine that light,

you have to, yourself,

create secrecy around your sources?

JA: Not really. I mean, we don't have

any WikiLeaks dissidents yet.

We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources.

Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us,

but we're presumably acting in such a way

that people feel

morally compelled

to continue our mission, not to screw it up.

CA: I'd actually be interested, just based on what we've heard so far --

I'm curious as to the opinion in the TED audience.

You know, there might be a couple of views

of WikiLeaks and of Julian.

You know, hero -- people's hero --

bringing this important light.

Dangerous troublemaker.

Who's got the hero view?

Who's got the dangerous troublemaker view?

JA: Oh, come on. There must be some.