Accountability 101: Wikileaks – Sharp Tool for Whistle Blowers

WikiLeaks is a media organisation and publisher that was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange and publishes classified documents and other media that are provided by anonymous sources namely whistle-blowers. Image source: The Daily Beast

Preamble

In Malaysia when it comes to activities of the Government and the ruling political party and its close-knit members, almost everything comes under the Official Secret Act and that includes, ridiculously, among other things, the daily API readings. There is no place for whistle-blowers in Malaysia.

But when Anwar brought up the incident of a lawyer making dubious deals over the phone involving a judge, now famously known as Lingam gate or Correct, correct, correct, there were calls for the protection of the whistle-blowers.

Of course, at first, the Government was not so happy with the turn of events and threatened Anwar with jail terms unless he turned over the whistle-blowers to the Government but Anwar did not buy into the threat. The aggressiveness of the Governmental agencies wanting to get their hands on the whistle-blowers certainly did not provide a comforting feeling that whistle-blowers would be protected.

Witness Protection Act?

Then there was this big blunder by the Nazri fellow when he claimed that there was a Witness Protection Act in Malaysia but later was proved to be wrong. He then said that the Government is GOING to enact a Witness Protection Act.

From China Post:-

Nazri Aziz, minister in the prime minister’s department, said the first draft of the Witness Protection Act — initially proposed in 2000 — has been circulated to government agencies and ministries for feedback.

He said the draft will then be presented to cabinet for approval, the official Bernama news agency reported late Sunday.

“Then it will be brought to parliament for the first reading and debated before it is passed and gazetted as an Act,” Nazri, the de facto law minister, was quoted saying by Bernama.

All looked fine until the Government made a big U-Turn on the decision to enact the Witness Protection Act. The question was whether there were any credible reasons given by the Government for the U-turn. Nazri tried to up his points by saying this:-

…the witness will not only be protected by the Government but will also be given a new identity and a new face through cosmetic surgery

If the Government have certainly bugled any attempts to protect those who leaked out the wrongdoing, where then potential whistle-blowers go from here? Not far, if you ask me.

Independent News Media

They could go to the police or ACA but everyone knows what would be the outcome. That is probably the last you will see of the whistle-blower and the evidence with another stamp “no case to investigate” on the files.

Another option was to go to the opposition political party – one good example was the SD by the private investigator Bala. But we all know what happened to the “original” SD and the Bala character. The original SD was retracted and the maker of the SD has “run” away to another country. His guilty conscience must have been too great.

That leaves a potential whistle-blower one final option – to turn in the evidence to independent news media or bloggers like Malaysiakini or Raja Petra and stand back and see how they increase the temperature with ” itself being uncertain and with numerous “raids” by the police to look for the evidence, just how safe is the whistle blowers’ evidence and identity?

Wikileaks

WikiLeaks is a media organisation and publisher that was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, a computer programmer and activist. WikiLeaks aims to obtain and disseminate classified documents and data sets from anonymous sources and leakers, and claims to be an intelligence agency for the people.

WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of formerly secret documents and videos related to the Afghan and Iraq wars, the U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. WikiLeaks has faced legal challenges, financial difficulties, and controversies over its role and impact on global politics.

Assange has been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, which he denies, and to the U.S. over espionage charges, which he fears.

Come Wikileaks to the rescue! From the About Page:-

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis.

Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of nations who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their governments and corporations.

We aim for maximum political impact.

Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.

Cross over to search on Malaysia and you will find nothing much (this looks interesting though). Those who are privileged to the information are either too scared to take the risk or are unable of alternative solutions. And we all know what happens when a website is being blocked by the Government, right?

We can start by uploading the leaked toll concessionaire agreement…