1. WikiLeaks is a private web site where whistleblowers, and everyone else with information they want spread around the internet, can do that via WikiLeaks. It is supposed to be anonymous, but it is not foolproof, as in the case where Bradley Manning got caught. WikiLeaks publishes the data on the web for the world to see. They have published over 1.2 million documents so far, but are struggling for funding as of late. WikiLeaks is a great way to get classified documents out to the public, so we can see what is really going on at times of war.
2. As i have previously mentioned, Bradley Manning has a very large involvement with WikiLeaks. Manning was enlisted in the US ARMY, and was specializing in the intelligence field. Manning had severe "personality" and people skill issues at training, according to his superiors. They didn't want to send him in to combat, but a lack of intelligence personnel made it so he went over anyway. Manning now had access to many important classified documents due to the governments new file sharing system. Manning had seen many terrible things in combat, and in transcripts, so he decided to download the documents. Manning sent the documents to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who then revealed a video of twelve civilians and journalists being murdered at a press conference in Washington, D.C. Manning is now being held in a military prison for treason.
3. The financial blockade that has been put upon WikiLeaks has caused severe damage to the site's functionality of publishing documents. They have had to go into full time fund raising, while they try to keep the site above water. In October 2011, most of the ways WikiLeaks collected donations were cut off, as Visa and Mastercard made it so their users couldn't donate to the site, as well as freezing the site's accounts. With all of their assets except cash frozen, they have lost 95 percent of their revenue, according to Julian Assange. He believes the blockade is "un-lawful". WikiLeaks is now accepting Bitcoin donations, as they try to stay up and running. Bitcoin, an internet currency which fluxuates in market value is not backed by any real currency, and can easily be copied. It is used by many people on the internet, from hackers to grandparents. If WikiLeaks can get enough Bitcoin donations, then sure, they could help, as Bitcoin can actually be used to pay for real goods on the internet.
4. When classified government information is publicly leaked, there are different aspects of the impact that the information will have on a society. First, when information is leaked, people are initially going to be shocked, and then upset, and then they will take sides. This information will divide a society, members who agree with what happened, or with witholding the information, and those who are outraged by the information being hidden. On the ethical side, if information is hidden from the public, then it should be for a good reason, right? That is almost never the case, as the ethical thing would be to tell us the truth about what is happening, but that never happens, so the government will never win the "ethics war" with the American people. For the cultural impact, when information is released, it sets a standard of people wanting to know more, now that they have a taste of what is out there. The culture has changed, and people want all information to be released, and they will do more drastic things to ensure it's release.
As for the topic of keeping secrets from the public, the issue is a little different. For the social issue of keeping secrets from the public, it may be wrong, but there are things that would be better kept under the rug. We will never know how many secrets our government has, and we never will, but most of them will never directly affect us. Every government keeps secrets, and people always want to know more. For the ethical view, It is ethical for governments to keep some secrets from people, since some of the information needs to stay classified. But it is unethical for them to keep information from us on issues where something major is messed up, or something that they need to own up to. For the cultural aspect of keeping secrets, there can be a few positive and a few negative things that can happen. For the positive, citizens could be happy that the government isn't constantly showing them threats, or things that would make them always afraid. For the negative, citizens could be angered that the government is concealing things from them and start cults/activist groups like anonymous to find out more information and wreak havoc.
As for the WikiLeaks financial blockade, the social impact of it is that people are pretty angry about it in general, because they feel that the blockade is just a way of the government trying to shut down WikiLeaks, because it is showing files that the government does not want us to see. For the ethical factor, I believe it is unethical for the companies to freeze Wikileak's accounts, because the site has done nothing to harm any of the companies, they show that they wl comply with anything the government tells them to do. For the cultural impact of the WikiLeaks financial blockade, this could create groups in culture that will try to get other ways of keeping the site financed. For instance, groups of hackers are starting to band together to try to keep WikiLeaks afloat by donating large numbers of BitCoins, as well as attacking the credit companies web pages.
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