It was a curious experience for me to read a book with quite so much topicality as this. Most nights that I was reading it, the TV news in the background would include a mention of Wikileaks - in particular, the controversy surrounding its leader Julian Assange and his legal battle with the Swedish judiciary over allegations of rape . Thanks to Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book, I particularly noticed the visuals (a particularly well-attired and coiffed Julian seemingly in his element before a media scrum), and his rather peculiar rhetoric that never seemed quite commensurate with the rather banally personal (rather than world-historical) position that he’s been in of late. More of that anon.

[[julian-and-daniel]]Julian Assange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, prior to Domscheit-Berg leaving Wikileaks.

Daniel’s account of his time with the Wikileaks organisation is certainly a fascinating one, and amounts to a relatively detailed history of an outfit that clearly achieved an enormous amount in a very short space of time. His structure is chiefly chronological, detailing the background, and after-effects, of the numerous major Wikileaks publications (ranging from the ‘Collateral Murder’ video to the Scientology ‘handbooks’). The technical know-how that made them possible, and the media partners and media strategies that were employed to ensure that they had the most impact, are also discussed. There is also the revelation that the Wikileaks team – contrary to the myths that they were happy to have spreading around the world – had a very small number of core members and only modest computer resources (only one server). It was Daniel’s 24/7 responsiblity to keep things running under often huge deadline and other pressures – and in a telling aside, he describes his working life as being closer to a normal office job than the ‘sexy’, but increasingly reckless, public role Julian seemed to covet.

The personal characterisations of Julian are of course bound to be the most tendentious in the book. I for one was pretty convinced by the portrait Daniel paints of Julian – indeed, his loss of trust in a man who was in many ways his idol makes pretty sad reading. It becomes obvious in the course of reading his book that Daniel’s passion clearly lies with the ideals of Wikileaks, and the personal conflicts that developed with Julian and other members of the inner sanctum caused him much personal pain. He explicitly acknowledges Julian 'for manifesting an idea and bringing it into my life’ – but the latter’s inability to trust, his inattention to detail and prioritising, his persecution complexes and egotism - turn out for Daniel to have constituted ironically a much more real threat to the organization than any CIA or MI5 infiltration.

The book ends on a message of hope, with Daniel’s new organization ‘OpenLeaks’ planning in 2011 to avoid the pitfalls of the past and help create – in an ongoing, secure, transparent way – a much-improved venue for digital whistle-blowing that may continue the struggle against injustice in our world.

Martin Shaw is the Books Division Manager of Readings.