21 October, 2010 — Mathaba.net
Advice on whistleblowing by Wikileaks Editor-in-chief Julian Assange (photo). The video can be found at the end of the transcript.
You have secret information that the world needs to know. Here are some simple things that you need to know.
Blowing the Whistle – A Guide
Over the last four years, as editor of WikiLeaks I have dealt with thousands of confidential sources. We have never lost a source. None of our sources has been exposed or come to harm.
During that process, I’ve learned a lot, and I want to convey what I’ve learnt, to people that are considering blowing the whistle, who are considering getting information out, either directly to the public or through the press.
Blowing the Whistle – A Guide
First off, understand not just the risks, but also the opportunities.
Think not just what the worst thing that could possibly happen is, but also what is the best thing that could possibly happen.
Once you have these risks and opportunities in the balance and some information, then you can plot a path through that is sensible, safe and effective.
Usually the whistleblowers who approach us do so when they have a moment of moral clarity. They can see something wrong with the situation they are in, or they can see something that needs to be revealed by a particular document.
That moment of moral clarity should be seized. That moment of courage, if a source has it, should be seized and used either to immediately get the material out or as an incentive to understand the situation and plot a path forward that is effective and safe.
Looking for successful whistleblowers…
Usually if a whistle-blower scours the media to find examples of other whistle-blowers, they find examples of people that have been caught or who have not been successful. That is because when whistle-blowers are successful — confidentially revealing things to the press — they are never mentioned, they are never named, they make their hopefully great impact and go back to their jobs and lead their lives happily, until such time they find something else.
So it can be quite difficult to find positive examples, but there are many but they are “between the lines” [of the news media]: you will often see “documents seen by the Guardian”, or “documents seen by the New York Times, or “an official speaking under condition of anonymity”.
This [such a phrase used in the news media] is only a passing reference so it is hard to see it as an example, but nearly all disclosures are in fact successful.
Getting advice…
After the understanding that the plan should be made to go ahead, the most important thing for the whistle-blower to do, is to find someone who can be trusted. Trusted to advise them, trusted to provide a safe conduit for them to get their information out to the public. Wikileaks is such an organization, we are specialists in that. But there are also particular journalists in the mainstream press that have similar experiences and can be trusted.
Finding your champion…
So how can the whistle-blower find their champion. Well, the important thing to do is to look at who has been a successful champion, over a number of years, of other whistle-blowers. You can do that by looking at stories that have come up into the press that have clearly come from some kind of confidential source. Now remember the sources usually are not referred to or named, unless they are caught.
Whistle-blowers should look for not only for a champion that will protect them but one that will help get the most impact for the risks that they are taking. Remember there’s risks on the one hand, but also often extraordinary opportunities for reform on the other.
Contacting your champion…
So once you’ve identified someone that you think will protect you and get your story out, how can you safely contact them?
First off, it’s important to not be too paranoid. There are some simple ways to get in contact with someone you think will protect you. The simplest is going to a telephone booth, away from where you live, you don’t intend to use (again), possible be distorting your voice slightly and calling up the person concerned.
Another simple way is sending something in the post, with no return address.
Another simple method is using a computer that is not associated with you. Say at a library or at a net cafe and being a little bit cautious about the content, or any surveillance cameras that happen to be around.
If you know the location where your champion works, visiting their building in person, and once inside contacting your champion is a moderately discreet way, of engaging in specific conversation.
Organisations like Wikileaks have more sophisticated methods. Sophisticated methods that use encryption, bouncing around many hosts on the Internet, to conceal your precise location and identity.
Different organisations, if they take source protection seriously, will advertise what is a good way to contact people there who will help get your message out.
Don’t talk about it
It’s only natural for people taking a serious decision to want to talk to their friends and relatives about doing it. Don’t.
Many whistleblowers have been exposed not by the champion they went to, the organisation they researched who they thought would protect them but rather by their friends, mother-in-laws or other journalists who are peripherally involved. For example Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower behind the Pentagon papers, perhaps the most famous whistleblower in the United States, was undone by his mother-in-law.
There will come a day when it is safe to disclose to the world your involvement, or it is safe to disclose to a limited set of people your involvement. But first you have to see how it’s going, first you have to see where things are going legally, where things are going politically and where things are going in terms of evidence. Discuss it only with the person you have selected as your protector and champion.
Plan for more disclosures
If you safely get your information out to the public, and it achieves some reform, you want to be in a position where you can do it again and again and again and again.
Similarly you want to encourage and inspire other people to do the same thing by your success. It is your responsibility to not get caught, not only for yourself, not only for future disclosures you might make but because getting caught sets a really negative example for other people.
The only experience most people have had with investigations is Hollywood. That tends to cause whistleblowers to become extremely paranoid when they engage in a disclosure. Unfortunately that tends to change their behaviour and make them appear suspicious. You want to always be the same person. Try and remember what it was like two weeks before you decided to go on this course of action. You want to be that person all the time.
Your strength is in how relaxed you are. Your strength is in being the same. Do not look around for people spying on you. If they’re any good, you will not see them. Do not fiddle with your phone suspecting it is tapped. Do not mention that your phone might be tapped. Do not speak in abbreviated language or codewords with your friends. If you need to speak in a secretive way to someone, meet them in person. Don’t act in a way that draws suspicion to yourself. That’s what all spies are trained to do, all under-cover police informants. Act normal.
Don’t get paranoid
When people are in a situation where they feel that they may be under surveillance they tend to look for signs of surveillance, and that leads to a confirmation bias. Events, such as a car passing by the house, which once would’ve seemed perfectly normal, suddenly arouse a whistleblowers attention. And that tends to make them act in a more and more suspicious way.
Should you have to deal with the police…
For western countries there are some simple and effective methods for dealing with the police. If you know these methods it will give you a self-confidence that will make you look less suspicious.
There are two simple pieces of advice:
The first is, get the name of a good lawyer and their telephone number and keep that with you at all times. You can usually find these lawyers either through personal contacts and recommendations or by looking at lawyers who have defended famous and successful cases.
If that doesn’t work you can always go to the bar association or legal association and ask for recommendations dealing with a similar subject area to you.
The second simple method is to defeat a trick which is often used by investigators into forcing people to talk. The trick works like this: The investigating officer will ask you a question in relation to an accusation about the disclosure.
Then you have one of two choices; to cooperate with the question or to not cooperate with the question. In many jurisdictions it can be an offence to not cooperate with the question if you are not a suspect, if you are just a witness.
The police will tend to exploit that by saying “tell us about this disclosure, do you know anything about it?” If you then say “I do not want to speak about that matter” or “I am busy”, the police will respond with “are you refusing to assist a police investigation?” They will typically then allege that it is some sort of crime to refuse to assist with a police investigation.
Your response must be this: “are you accusing me of committing a crime or are you suggesting I may be about to commit a crime in this conversation?” The police will answer either “no, we do not suggest that” in which case you can say “OK, goodbye, I am busy now”. Or they will say “yes, it is a crime to not answer police during the course of an investigation”.
It is your task to get them to make that allegation. You must structure your replies to get them to make an allegation against you in relation to the question. Once they make that allegation that you are about to commit a crime by refusing to cooperate with the police, your response is then to say: “you are making a serious allegation against me, you are suggesting that I am or may be about to commit a crime”. “Under that circumstance I cannot possibly engage in further conversation without speaking to my lawyer”.
Don’t use your home computer
One thing to be sure to avoid, is using your home computer to send out emails that identify you as a source. Or, to Google or web-search anything to do with your case, such as press publicity, the names of your contact, who is helping you get out the information.
How The Authorities May Investigate You
There are two types of investigating efforts; One, is to try and get a list of suspects. The other is, if (they) already have a suspect, to try and confirm that, that suspect is the genuine source.
Both of those types of investigations can use, de facto, certain information that came out of your home computer, or your office computer, or another computer that is affiliated with you.
They can also be done retrospectively; ISPs keep record of every single web-search that you have done, in most European countries.
Similarily in the United States, big security agencies will keep these records, or, Google, Yahoo, or other web-search services, will keep those records.
So if you are going to use a computer to establish an email contact, or you’re going to use a computer to search for information about what you are doing, do it out of the home, or out of your office.
The same goes for using your home phone, or any mobile telephone that is associated with you.
How to use your phone
Now there are some simple facts about mobile phones that many people don’t understand: Every mobile telephone carries within it, its own unique serial number. That is a separate number, to the number that is on the sim-card. It is not enough, to simply change the sim-card for a mobile phone.
Telecommunications companies, will automatically pair the changed sim-cards, with the same phone. Similarily, it is not enough to transfer the sim-card from one mobile phone to another.
To have convenient mobile phone communications, with people whom are facilitating, getting that information out, or your lawyers, what you want is a pre-paid, disposable mobile phone.
That means, both the phone, and the sim, are not traceable to you, through any sort of payment records or registrations. That should be paid for in cash, and preferably bought by someone else, or bought second-hand.
Now in some countries, you have to provide an ID to buy a mobile phone, or sim-card.
However, there are usually shops, some Turkish shops, some other Chinese shops, little shops of importers, typically ethnic importers, whom will not be engaged in that paperwork process.
You can usually get an untraceable mobile phone in those locations. You can also order in sim’s from other countries, or order in full phones.
A good way to do that could be on a auction site that will send across a mobile phone and sim, second-hand, from somewhere else, that is already associated with a totally different identity.
But when paying for mobile phones, sim’s, or second-hand orders, or postal information, you should be careful to not use your creditcard, or another sort of payment method, that is associated with you.
When you do find a good source, of untraceable mobile phones, and sim card’s, get a whole lot, but not all at once.
Phone Hygiene…
Never use the mobile phone you are using to communicate with the journalist, or human rights lawyer, or someone else whom is getting your disclosure out to the public, for anything else.
Do not use it to call your mother, do not use it to call your children, do not use it to call your work, do not use it to call your home phone, do not even try and carry it around, at the same time as you carry around another mobile phone.
Keep it off, as often as possible, try not to leave it on next to the house. If you wanna establish contact conveniently, keep the phone off, and when someone calls you, there will be a record kept on the mobile phone.
When you turn it on, away from the house, you will see that someone tried to call you, and you can then return their call.
After you finished speaking to them, turn it off again.
Final Thought…
It is important to remember, that not only are the real risks of getting information out to the public, much lower than people can see, but also, the opportunities are extraordinary.
Sources that I have worked with, whom to this day remain anonymous, have been involved in helping us, to bring down corrupt elements.
Exposed billions of dollars worth of money laundering around the world, exposed assasinations, and through to in the end, reform entire constitutions.
Those sources, no doubt, are very proud to see the effects of their courage, and I have been proud to work with them, in realising that effect.
http://www.viddler.com/player/f6703762/
Julian Assange: How A Whistleblower Should Leak…
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— Videographer / Editor: Tristan Copley Smith
— Produced by: The Centre For Investigate Journalism ( cij )
— Transcribed by: Johnnie Eriksson (johnnie.eriksson@gmail.com) and the Mathaba News Agency
The New Dark Age 
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