you know where you can go? had the [ bleep ] to sleep. >> obviously, we are beeping the "f" part of that. so adam, thank you, adam mansbach. it's amazing. continued success. we really appreciate it. >> all right. it's called "go the f to sleep." that's what i am going to do right now. i'm ♪ >> holy [ bleep ]. >> "the guardian" from this morning. 14 pages. >> julian believes that if you overthrow secrecy in the world, you will overthrow the corrupt political establishments that are oppressing everybody. >> we don't see any difference

in the white house's response to this case to the other group we have exposed. >> for the internet generation, this is our challenge and this is our time. >> reporter: over 20 years ago, the berlin wall came down and it marked the end of a cold war between two super powers. now there's a new battle that is waged for control of information. its front lines aren't brick and mortar walls. it's firewalls. the warriors, hackers, activists, and anarchists. it's an epic struggle for state secrets between institutions and individuals. and at the center of this war is julian assange. >> my function in wikileaks is to take all the heat. >> reporter: the 39-year-old australian founder of wikileaks

is leading a whistle blowing surgency. >> the state is surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while, hiding behind cloaks, insecurity and opaqueness. >> reporter: armed with a virtual army of volunteers, assange has taken aim at corporations and nations. >> the material exposes an extraordinary range of abuses. >> reporter: exposing secrets that have helped fuel anger and revolt in the middle east. drawing the ire of the most powerful government in the world and galvanizing a global following of cyber warriors ready to fight. >> we feel obligated to step out in wikileaks' defense, because if wikileaks goes down, that leaves very bad implications for the rest of us. >> reporter: a maverick and a

game changer, he's also under attack for his own behavior. >> he has taken aim at his foot and shot it. >> reporter: assange has arrived at the courthouse. you can see him. he is going to come through the gated area into the courthouse. that's my first glimpse of julian assange. this is one of the most intimate portraits yet of julian assange. >> how far will this group go? >> locations of weapons, absolutely. >> channel 4 news. >> thanks, steven. a [ bleep ] gun pointed at me. and he is person number 21. >> reporter: rare candid moments captured by australian journalist mark davis, who spent months traveling with the ini guess leader of wikileaks. >> he went from a hobo character if you like, to a rock star. >> reporter: you followed for him months, spending time with

him. what is he like? >> i think in private he's actually a very charming guy, when he relaxes. he has an intense computer nerd sort of mind. but when he is off on that, he is very funny. >> my voice will get sexier and sexier as the day goes on. >> reporter: nomadic and secretive, like the hero of a spy novel. >> see, he is seeing this whole thing as some kind of, i don't know, weird james bond kind of thriller. he believes that everyone's constantly being tapped and followed. >> reporter: at his core, assange is a hacker. an outsider mining secrets that are supposed to be off limits. his outsider persona has its roots in an unusual nomadic childhood. this is magnetic island, a place of exotic wild life and beauty off the coast of australia, a

place julian assange once called home. but as a boy, he was often on the move. assange claims he attended 36 different schools. julian's bohemian mother christine and his stepfather together ran a traveling theater company. >> we enjoyed this as a child until i was about 10, we had a mixed experience. >> reporter: a life on the move turned into a life on the run. after his mother fled a troubled relationship there were difficult years. but assange seems to relish his unconventional childhood. >> in fact, people tell me they spent all their life in one city, i think, oh, you poor thing, how did you survive? >> reporter: eventually, julian and his mother settled outside of melbourne. >> i had a horse and i sold the horse and bought a computer, and

i was fascinated. >> reporter: for assange, it becomes a portal into an entirely new world. he joins a group of hackers and under the screen name mendax, he taps into a secret networks, including the pentagon. by the time he was 20, assange was a sophisticated computer hacker. >> and this was before there was public access to the internet. this was an incredibly liberating thing to go out and explore the world with your mind. >> reporter: authorities would eventually bust the young assange. in 1991, he was charged with 31 counts of hacking and related crimes. after a lengthy legal battle, he walked away with only a fine. but he had caught a glimpse inside a hiding world. >> to read generals' e-mails of

the pentagon was an incredible thrill. >> reporter: that fascination would grow into a mission to change the world. >> the times we are going through at the moment constitute a generational challenge. >> reporter: a mission that would expose some of america's most closely guarded secrets. . in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural communities, giving them a new choice. we'll deliver better service, with thousands of new cell sites... for greater access to all the things you want, whenever you want them. it's the at&t network... and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say. i don't always have time to eat like i should. that's why i like glucerna shakes.

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>> reporter: as a teenager, julian assange believed he had the right to hack into any computer network that interested him. >> that needs to be thought about and then it needs to be set up. >> reporter: but his ambition grew from cracking codes to helping whistle-blowers and assenters to anonymously divulge inside secrets. >> when you have this information, you chose it or not. >> reporter: his cause, nothing

less than a new world order, where nations and corporations could no longer hide corruption and injustice. with a network of servers, in 2007 assange launches a website for whistle-blowers where secret documents can be released to the public. he calls it wikileaks. >> i hack people's minds. i get people within the organizations to release material for a just cause. >> reporter: i went to berlin to meet one of the early wikileaks insiders and one of the few people who worked closely with assange. daniel domscheit-berg became wikileaks' spokesman. >> i picked a name named after my cat. >> reporter: named after your cat? >> yes, my cat is mr. schmidt. >> reporter: assumed named and secret locations, assange himself, never in one place too long. >> when i met him, he was notoriously difficult to track down. there's not a lot of people that are around him for a long time.

they play a purpose at a point in time and move on. >> he is a very smart person. very intelligent. he doesn't really care about what other people think of him. he's actually just his very own character, and that was kind of appealing. >> reporter: what was it about wikileaks that appealed to you? >> i thought that exposing such secrets, exposing immoral stuff that people are trying to hide for the public eye, that this actually a very simple and genius idea. >> reporter: armed with a global troop of explorers, assange shifted through secrets in a hidden network of servers. he was on a hidden network to change the worlds, one leak at a time. starting in kenya. after a violent dispute after a election in 2007, wikileaks a report that revealed hundreds of killings at the hands of kenyan police. the expose put wikileaks on the map, earning them an award from the human rights group, amnesty

international. there were leaks from everywhere from sarah palin's personal e-mails to the membership rosters of neonazis. and then wikileaks turned to the united states. and when the operating manual for the guantanamo bay prison camp was leaked, wikileaks published it. >> defense says honor bound to defend freedom is on the front of it. the value is on the front of guantanamo bay. >> reporter: wikileaks soon found itself in the cross hairs of the u.s. army. this 2008 secret counter intelligence report ironically leaked to wikileaks, identified it as a threat and revealed ways to shut it down. assange, though, remained defiant. >> when we're attacked, that is usually the worst move that someone can do. the information is not going to disappear any time soon.

>> reporter: growing pressure drove wikileaks underground. two of its servers was moved to a james bond style bomb proof bunker in sweden. assange went into a safe haven and found one in iceland. by 2009, iceland was a country on its knees. a banking crisis had brought it to the edge of bankruptcy, causing riots president streets. banks went under and thousands lost their life savings. >> iceland was hit harder than any other country by the banking collapse. >> reporter: enter wikileaks. in july 2009, they posted a book from one of the largest failed banks, revealing risky loans to the bank holders. the bank launched a counterattack. >> we got letters from the bank saying they could try to attack us and try and put us in prison for a year unless we removed it. and of course we did, don't be ridiculous, we're not going to

remove it, we're not going to tell you our sources. >> reporter: the leak became the story across iceland. [ speaking foreign language ] >> reporter: but the bank won an injunction prohibiting ruvtv from airing the story. >> five minutes before the news was going to air, the news desk was indicted. >> reporter: but the network had another card to play. directing the viewers to the wikileaks website. >> we had tens of thousands of icelanders descending on us to get this material. >> reporter: the expose made assange and wikileaks heroes. iceland became a haven for whistle-blowers and wikileaks. in a small apartment, assange and his team became working on a

secret, their most explosive yet. >> he locks the door. we put the chain on. and he types all these passwords into his laptop and he starts playing this film. i never seen anything like it in my life. these sweet honey clustery things have fiber? fiber one. almost tastes like one of jack's cereals. uh, forgot jack's cereal. [ jack ] what's for breakfast? uh, try the number one!

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found the missile. >> roger, i'll get it. you're clear. >> i'm firing. >> reporter: iraq 2007. u.s. military might on display. an apache helicopter camera capturing raw images of combat and voices of war. video kept hidden until someone leaked it to julian assange. in a daring move, he crossed into enemy territory, washington, d.c., to release the video. >> we have a mission to promote political reforms by releasing suppressed information. >> reporter: assange placed a george orwell quote in the

beginning entitled the video "collateral murder." what did you think of julian assange titling this "collateral murder"? >> he has an agenda to meet and he doesn't understand what he's talking about. >> reporter: i met retired brigadier general to read through the video. >> it is my understanding that this unit on the ground had been engaged in combat probably for the last couple hours. >> he's got an rpg. i'm going to fire. >> reporter: this clip is where they, i believe, they identify an rpg. it turns out it was a long lens telephoto camera held by a reuters journalist. you can see. that reuters photographer, his assistant, and the men around him, were all gunned down.

>> this photographer should not have been walking around with an instrument that looks like a weapon. >> reporter: is the blame on the photographer or a causal series of mistakes by the crew there that led to the ultimate negative consequences? >> warfare is not perfect. there are mistakes that are sometimes made. he shares much of the blame for what happened here. >> reporter: i want to move to the van video. >> where is that van at? >> right be by the body. >> reporter: and what you see is a van that's coming to help, grab some of the wounded people on the ground. the apache crew asks for permission to engage. >> come on, let us shoot. >> again, that is an active battlefield. that van could have fighters in it with weapons. those fighters could put our soldiers at risk, could kill those soldiers that they're fighting. >> come on.

>> we can see in this video that the young pilot in the apache helicopters have become debased in their character. >> yeah, look at that, right through the windshield. >> they are playing video games with real human lives and looking for excuses to kill people. >> reporter: it turned out that there were children inside the van. >> it's their fault for bringing their kids to the battle. >> that's right. >> reporter: as you know, i have a decade experience in naval warfare. soldier to sailor, should they have exercised more restraint? >> i don't think so. what we have here, from everything that i have seen, is that they have followed the proper procedures. >> reporter: if they did everything by the book, is there something wrong with the book? >> i don't think so. the book doesn't have every scenario. doesn't have every possible outcome. >> reporter: secret u.s. military video. a stunning wikileaks exclusive.

who is responsible for leaking it and why? military investigators soon point the finger at one of their own. private first class bradley manning, who has since been arrested. but manning may have never come to their attention if not for this man. >> we are on our way to meet adrian lamo, who turned himself into authorities. and lamo, he screens all his phone calls. he changes e-mails. he doesn't respond to e-mails. he had one condition for our interview today. that's his location had to remain completely anonymous. what is with all the cloak and dagger stuff? >> there are people in opposition to my cooperation with the government in this case. and i just want to be able to

sleep soundly at night. >> reporter: bradley manning first approaches lamo by sending him an e-mail. >> manning essentially introduced himself saying he was an intelligence analyst in base in iraq, just outside of baghdad. >> lamo and manning began chatting extensively online. lamo said he provided the chat logs to the website wired.com who eventually published about a quarter of the transcripts. entering one of those chats, manning asked lamo, if you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for 8 plus months, what would you do? alarmed, lamo contacts u.s. officials. the convicted computer hacker says he took action because his own strong belief in government transparency is not without limits. >> where i draw the line is when it comes to the point that it can cause harm.

>> reporter: we tried to get in contact with manning's attorney, but he never returned our calls. in the online chats, lamo, now a government informant, asked manning how he got the information out. manning explains that he copied classified files and video on to a cd that he had labelled lady gaga. no one suspected a thing. kind of sad. in their chats, manning mentions julian assange. i mean, i'm a high-profile source, and i've developed relationship with assange. but, assange continually denies knowing manning. >> we don't know if this guy is our source or not. >> reporter: manning's confessions to lamo have landed him at ft. leavenworth, kansas. facing a possible life sentence, manning is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of u.s. secrets.

secrets he allegedly gave to julian assange. soon, the press would pick up the set. >> i just started running around "the guardian" building saying this is the biggest story on the planet. we have to get ahold of this information. 8% every 10 years. wow. wow. but you can help fight muscle loss with exercise and ensure muscle health. i've got revigor. what's revigor? it's the amino acid metabolite, hmb to help rebuild muscle and strength naturally lost over time. [ female announcer ] ensure muscle health has revigor and protein to help protect, preserve, and promote muscle health. keeps you from getting soft. [ major nutrition ] ensure. nutrition in charge! we get double miles on every purchase, so me and my lads earned a trip to san francisco twice as fast! we get double miles every time we use our card... i'll take these two...

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and firing. >> reporter: julian assange's collateral murder video did not spark the outrage he had hoped for. and now his alleged source, private bradley manning, was in custody. >> journalist mark davis was with assange in the summer of 2010. >> i believe he was a little bit paranoid but i'm not surprised

that he was in a state of high anxiety and highly security conscious. >> reporter: security conscious because assange had another weapon in his arsenal, a secret data base of government documents from the war in afghanistan. assange was more and more focused on what he saw as abuses within the u.s. government. now he believed he had evidence of actual war crimes. does he operate as if he is constantly being followed, constantly being watched? >> yeah, because he probably is. this information was known and essentially people, important people, knew he had this. more surveillance around him than almost anybody else in the world. >> reporter: one of the people on assange's trail was nick davis from the "guardian"

newspaper in london. he read about wikileaks and sensed a big story. so you started looking for julian assange? >> he was laying very low. it took me four or five days to find out where he was and make contact. >> reporter: in a cafe in brussels, davis came face to face with assange. >> i wanted to create an alliance between "the guardian" and him and get serious impact. we will be scattered. and he rapidly locked on to that idea. >> reporter: straight out of a spy novel, davis headed back to london with a secret pass code assange had written on a napkin. one day later, he had the database. assange invited "the new york times" and german newspaper der soeule to join them.

they began to sift through the thousands of documents. i have come here to london to the headquarters of "the guardian" newspaper to meet up with some of the journalists who were holed up for weeks in a bunker with julian assange as they sifted through the cables and documents that would eventually become known as iraq and afghanistan war logs. this is the famous bunker? >> yeah. >> reporter: david lee is another investigative journalist with "the guardian." >> these are some of the headlines that came out of the war logs, the earlier, first batch, of afghan and iraq. >> reporter: what were your impressions of the julian assange, the man, when you first met him? >> he didn't behave like earthlings. he would stay up late at night tapping on the laptop and then suddenly keel over and go to sleep where he lay. >> reporter: the more than

90,000 documents revealed a side of the afghan war hidden from public view. >> we started to come across information about the pakistani service and the taliban. so this was rich stuff that was buried in this database. >> you want to see it on the map -- >> reporter: but there was growing tension with assange. >> all of us came across material which was clearly likely to lead to the death of innocent civilians. all of us brought it to his attention and were told if an afghan civilian brought the hope they deserved to die. >> reporter: does assange realize they are flesh and blood consequences to releases the documents? >> he has to have it explained to him. he is not a person who is very high on empathy with other humans. finally before the last few days before we published, he got it. and he made a rather crude

attempt to make the material which he was publishing on the website safe by withholding 15,000 documents out of the total of 92,000. but it wasn't enough. >> reporter: on the eve of the launch date, names of afghan civilians were still in wikileaks documents. >> we go at 10:00 p.m. london time tomorrow. >> reporter: on july 25th, 2010, wikileaks released over 70,000 classified documents on the afghan war. >> the material exposes an extraordinary range of abuses. >> reporter: and all three newspapers published stories on the war logs. >> within 48 hours other news organizations were finding material on the wikileaks website which clearly was dangerous, and that meant that the political damage was done.

his moral authority was reduced. he had made a terrible, tactical mistake. >> reporter: the release set off a firestorm in washington. >> the battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies, and afghan partners. >> secret files exposes true afghan war. >> there are a dozen camera trucks outside. surprising? >> no. i knew if we did our work right, it would have this effect. i knew this material was serious. >> you said that this is the most comprehensive history of the war. >> why the folks in print? >> are there any circumstances in which you wouldn't print information? >> reporter: julian assange finally had the world's attention. >> i think twitter has gone off

the roof. >> he went from a hobo character if you like to a rock star. it's like having a hit movie overnight and suddenly everyone wants to see you. over night and everyone wants to see you. >> reporter: but that could come with a price. the press began to drill him. >> where will all this lead? how far will his group go? locations of weapons? >> absolutely. >> thanks, steve, every [ bleep ] gun pointed at me. >> reporter: still, assange seemed confident he was beyond the reach of governments. >> i'm untouchable now in this country. >> reporter: untouchable for now. but his star was about to be tarnished. this time, the leaks would be about him. [ male announcer ] 125 years ago...

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>> reporter: by the summer of 2010, julian assange's war on secrecy is in high gear. >> the course of the war needs to change. >> this is "the guardian." >> reporter: the afghan war logs are makes headlines around the world -- >> it's one damn thing after

another. >> reporter: -- and making assange famous. >> i'm a combative person. i like crushing bastards. >> reporter: but now, he is at the center of a scandal. the swedish government had requested extradition in order to question him about all investigations of sexual assault. two swedish women have come forward accusing assange of aggressive or unwanted sexual advances, which, under swedish law, can constitute rape. as yet, no charges have been filed against assange and he strongly denies the allegations. >> surveillance has been a bit more intense. >> reporter: undistracted by what he calls a smear campaign, assange begins working around the clock on what will become his biggest leak yet. >> they bring in this 8130 -- >> reporter: in october 2010, wikileaks releases the mother lode, nearly 400,000 secret u.s. documents on the iraq war.

>> the start of the iraq war involved very serious lies which were repeated and amplified. >> reporter: the stories reveal troubling new details about the war. numerous cases of torture and abuse of iraqi princer ins by iraqi police and soldiers and cases where u.s. troops killed innocent civilians. but this time, assange sensors documents. >> we have redacted everything except for things that we have cleared by hand. and that approach has left black ink all over the material. >> reporter: but that doesn't ease the fears of many, including general kimmitt. julian assange has put forward that nobody has been attacked or killed due to the disclosures of wikileaks. do you agree with that? >> i think a lot of our soldiers have been in put in harm's way. we want to protect. we don't want to give an

advantage to our enemy that can be used against our soldiers in combat. >> reporter: the steady leak of secrets doesn't end there. one month later, wikileaks publishes diplomatic cables. the u.s. government fires back. secretary clinton, who only months before championed internet freedom, is now on the warpath. we are taking aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information. >> reporter: so what has been the government's counter attacks to wikileaks? the cia established the wikileaks task force, known in the agency as wtf. additionally, the justice department has subpoenaed the twitter account of wikileak supporters and is rumored to be marshalling an investigation that could lead to the extradition of assange to the u.s. then a series of blows. amazon.com kicks wikileaks off

its website. and sweden issues an arrest warrant. on december 7th, 2010, assange is put in jail. in an ironic twist, a leak exposes the lured details of the sexual assault allegations against assange. >> by a sheer fluke, someone i dealt with in the past contacted me and said, guess what, i have the whole preliminary police file to the swedish investigation of the sexual assaults. are you interested? >> reporter: nick davies who worked with assange on the afghan war logs was given a copy of the report. >> we put it in the paper. what are you going to do? >> reporter: what was julian's reaction? >> he was berserk. he felt we owed it to him to repress him.

he had been a source for us, "the guardian" and therefore we owed it to him, to suppress it. >> reporter: cnn made several requests for an interview with assange but not no response. assange's attorney tells cnn that he asked for a delay in publication because assange was in prison. but "the guardian" maintains assange was given several days to respond. in rhetoric, assange is a proponent of transparency but he doesn't seem to walk that walk. is that true? >> yeah, that's -- that's true, certainly. >> reporter: daniel domscheit-berg, then a wikileaks insider, said assange kept him and others in the dark. >> he just said it's not your business, and next question? and that is one of the major reasons why i and a few others actually left the project, because that's a contradiction.

>> reporter: leak after leak, assange's platform grows. but his relationships are fraying. domscheit-berg and others leave wikileaks. >> you can see a pattern. he alienates the people that he works with. he alienates most of the people who works with wiki leaks. >> reporter: a man who spent most of his life on the move now is forced to stay in one place and face the accusations against him. coming up, in prison but not alone. cyber warriors in support of assange go on the attack. >> we have the whole project of assange. we feel obligated to do something about it. reach out to other people and tell them this is their fight as well. nothing helped me beat arthritis pain.

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>> reporter: after nine days in prison, julian assange emerges into a crush of supporters and media. >> well, it's great to smell fresh air of london again. >> reporter: vowing to continue the leaks and fight the sexual assault allegations against him. >> i hope to continue my work and continue to protest my

innocence in this matter. >> reporter: by now, wikileaks is radioactive. paypal, visa, mastercard have all cut their financial lifeline. but a global force of cyber activist began to launch a counter attack. they call themselves anonymous. so we have been trying to get an interview with a member of anonymous for weeks. we finally tracked someone down who is willing to talk to us. these guys are committed to the cause of defending wikileaks. we are skyping now with base and chris, two members of anonymous. base, what is anonymous? >> an monday nous is an internet subculture based around an anonymity. it's free democrat of thought, the freedom of speech and freedom of information taken to

a logical extreme. >> reporter: why do you have to remain anonymous? >> you have the government agencies after us. you have other people that don't appreciate what we are doing after us. so it would not be very good if our identities were exposed. >> reporter: why are you such ardent supporters of wikileaks? >> they expose secrets, transparency, freedom of speech, freedom of information on the internet. and that resonates with us. >> corrupt governments of the world, we are anonymous. >> reporter: in december 2010, anonymous launched operation payback. >> in the beginning of operation payback, we went after paypal, visa, mastercard, and eventually amazon because they were the ones that publicly withdrew funding and support for wikileaks. especially paypal which actually withheld funds. >> reporter: anonymous unleashed a cyber attack.

>> the deny server attack. you send a request to a server, then it shuts down. >> reporter: temporarily, bringing down some of the websites. do you think the government can stop groups like you or wikileaks? >> they are not going to stop wikileaks. even if the government were to take down wikileaks, they would eventually be martyring wikileaks. the only thing they can do is turn the internet off. even then, that didn't stop the people of egypt. >> reporter: in some sense the wikileaks phenomenon is unstoppable. part of a reality where whistle-blowers can go global and make governments quake, where a leak can add fuel to a revolution, but governments will fight back. the u.s. justice department has assange in its sight. rumor has it, building a case for conspiracy. >> if i'm a conspirator, then all the other media

organizations and principle journalists are also conspirators to commit espionage. >> reporter: for now, assange remains in the uk under house arrest, fighting the request for extradition. in february, i traveled there for his first hearing. we are 45 minutes out of central london to the woolwich crown court. like everywhere assange goes, he seems to draw a huge media crowd. there are representatives from every media source in the world. assange actually just arrived. he's going to come right through this gated area into the courthouse. >> a black box has been applied to my life.

on the outside of that black box has been written the word "rape." >> reporter: he's at the center of attention, but still very much alone. >> he is alone, and he has become an island. the circle has become very small because he no longer trusts anybody. he has been betrayed by people who have come in the circle. >> reporter: to some, assange is a clear danger. a self appointed judge of good and evil. >> julian assange has this self-proclaimed mantle that he has put around himself that he can be the judge for what governments can do and can't do. that's a very dangerous assertion on the part of any single individual. >> reporter: politicians have taken aim. on fox news, former house speaker newt gingrich callses assange a terrorist. >> information warfare is

warfare. and julian assange has engaged in warfare. information terrorism which leads to people getting killed is terrorism. and julian assange is involved in terrorism. >> reporter: hero or villain, julian assange has created a powerful platform. >> the more people get to read what really goes on in the world, the more chance they have on educates themselves ability realities. reality is what we need. >> reporter: even some of assange's critics are following in his footsteps. daniel domscheit-berg has opened a new whistle blowing website, open leaks. >> what is the future of wikileaks. >> it has set something in motion all over the world that cannot be stopped anymore. it has carried this debate of what is secrecy, what must be secret, and what must not be