Here are several Wikileaks milestones that anticipate in some way Wikileaks and Cablegate. These are for an MA class at McMaster University.
June 13th, 1971 – Release of the Pentagon Papers
The New York Times publishes the first article in a series of classified documents termed the Pentagon Papers, given to them by former U.S. Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg
July 3rd, 1971 – Julian Assange is born
Internet activist Julian Assange is born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia
March 25th, 1995 – First wiki developed
Ward Cunningham launches the world’s first wiki and calls it wikiwikiweb. The website is named after a shuttle bus at Honolulu International Airport called the ‘Wiki Wiki Shuttle’
July 1999 – Leaks.org is registered
Assange registers leaks.org but says he then did nothing with it
October 4th, 2006 – Wikileaks.org is registered
Wikileaks.org is registered and claims to be founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists
December 2006 – Wikileaks posts its first document
Wikileaks posts a leaked classified document that involves a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Somali political figurehead. The document leads to a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi, and is published by The Guardian
January 2007 – Wikileaks preparing for very large document leak
Wikileaks states that it is preparing to publish over 1.2 million leaked documents on its website
February 18th, 2008 – Wikileaks faces Government censorship
A California judge rules that the company hosting the domain of Wikileaks must shut down public access to the website
March 2008 – Release of Scientology documents
Wikileaks releases documents originating from the Church of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs. The documents include the official procedures of how to detect ‘thetans’ in the human body
September 2008 – Release of Sarah Palin’s Emails
Wikileaks leaks a series of personal emails belonging to Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, after an online hacker group compromised her Yahoo! account
November 28th, 2008 – Wikileaks calls for help
Wikileaks sends an email to its subscribers asking them to tell Wikileaks their ‘most radical ideas for our vision of justice and how they might be economically, politically, legally, technically and socially sustained’
June 2009 – Wikileaks claims to have many volunteers
Wikileaks claims to have over 1,200 volunteers working for them, and lists an advisory board that includes Assange and eight others
November 25th, 2009 – Release of 9/11 pager messages
Wikileaks posts over half a million pager messages that were sent on September 11th, 2001
December 24th, 2009 – Shortage of funding
Wikileaks announces that is experiencing a shortage of funds and removes all access to its website, including material and leaked documents that were previously available
July 25th, 2010 – Release of Afghan War Logs
Wikileaks releases 91,000 war documents relating to the Afghanistan War. The documents are written by soldiers and intelligence officers and include lethal actions involving the U.S. Military
October 15th, 2010 – Loss of funding
The Guardian reports that all funding to Wikileaks has been blocked
November 28th, 2010 – Release of U.S. diplomatic cables
Wikileaks releases over 250,000 U.S. classified documents to several news agencies
November 29th, 2010 – Move to Amazon
Wikileaks moves their website to Amazon Web Services after a denial of service attack took the site down for a couple hours the day before
December 1st, 2010 – Amazon drops Wikileaks
Amazon.com stops hosting the Wikileaks website under pressure from Senator Lieberman and the U.S. government