"[52] WikiLeaks said that its "primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East" but it "also expects to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal unethical behaviour in their own governments and corporations".

[123][124]After Julian Assange was granted asylum and entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, new CCTV cameras were installed and security personnel working for UC Global and Promsecurity recorded his activities and interactions, including with his legal team.

[131][132][133] In 2011 hacktivist group Anonymous released emails from HBGary Federal showing that Team Themis proposed a plan which suggested "[spreading] disinformation" and "disrupting" Glenn Greenwald's support for WikiLeaks.

[156] Scott Shane of The New York Times stated that the involvement "shows that despite its shoestring staff, limited fund-raising from a boycott by major financial firms, and defections prompted by Mr. Assange's personal troubles and abrasive style, it remains a force to be reckoned with on the global stage.

[156] On 16 August 2017 US Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange and told him that Trump would pardon him on condition that he would agree to say that Russia was not involved in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leaks.

[283] From 2014 to 2017 WikiLeaks was reimbursed for project coordination, technical preparation, removing metadata, reviewing information, communicating with media partners costs and a new submission platform and document search.

"[328][357] According to Andy Greenberg and Wired, The Architect was the engineer who rebuilt the WikiLeaks submission system, separated the sensitive platforms from the public-facing Wiki and set up servers in various countries.

[382][383] Several Supreme Court cases, while not conclusive, (e.g. Bartnicki v. Vopper) have established that the American Constitution protects the re-publication of illegally gained information provided the publishers did not themselves violate any laws in acquiring it.

[385][397] In March 2012, Google was served with search warrants for the contents of email accounts and other information belonging to WikiLeaks staff members Sarah Harrison, Joseph Farrell, and Kristinn Hrafnsson as part of a criminal investigation with alleged offences including espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, the theft or conversion of property belonging to the United States government, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and criminal conspiracy.

[421] In April 2011 the US Department of Justice warned military lawyers acting for Guantanamo Bay detainees against clicking of links on sites such as The New York Times that might lead to classified files published by WikiLeaks.

After a question had been tabled about the report in the House of Commons under parliamentary privilege, Trafigura's law firm Carter‑Ruck said the injunction was sub judice, which MPs worried could prevent discussion of the affair in parliament itself.

[473] In April a classified video of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two Reuters employees being fired at after the pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras.

[487] On 28 November 2010 WikiLeaks and El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times started simultaneously to publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked documents labelled confidential – but not top-secret – and dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010.

In February 2011 David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian published the book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy containing the encryption key.

[517][518] In a joint statement, The Guardian, El País, New York Times and Der Spiegel said they "deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk" and "we cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data – indeed, we are united in condemning it.

[517][519] According to The Guardian, "the newly published archive" contained "more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists; several thousand labelled with a tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers".

[566][567] On 29 July 2015, WikiLeaks published a top-secret letter from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Ministerial Meeting in December 2013 which illustrated the position of negotiating countries on "state-owned enterprises" (SOEs).

According to a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, "By dribbling these out every day WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda doing Vladimir Putin's dirty work to help elect Donald Trump.

"[597] On 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks started publishing content code-named "Vault 7", describing it as containing CIA internal documentation of their "massive arsenal" of hacking tools including malware, viruses, weaponised "zero day" exploits and remote control systems.

[598][599][600] Leaked documents, dated from 2013 to 2016, detail the capabilities of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,[600] web browsers,[601][602] and operating systems.

In 2021, WikiLeaks made a searchable database of 17,000 publicly available documents, which it called The Intolerance Network, from the ultra-conservative Spanish Catholic organisation Hazte Oir and its international arm, CitizenGo.

The editor of WikiLeaks, Kristinn Hrafnsson, said "As ultra right-wing political groups have gained strength in recent years, with increasing attacks on women's and LGBT rights, it is valuable to have access to documents from those who have lobbied for those changes on a global basis".

[620][621] Yulia Latynina alleged in The Moscow Times that WikiLeaks associate Israel Shamir concocted a leaked diplomatic cable for publication in the pro-Putin Russian Reporter in December 2010.

[627][better source needed] In July 2016, the Aspen Institute's Homeland Security Group, a bipartisan counterterrorism organisation, warned that hackers who stole authentic data might "salt the files they release with plausible forgeries.

"[628] In September 2016, The Daily Dot reported that WikiLeaks' Syria Files excluded "records of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a government-owned Russian bank," citing court documents.

[629] The media and civil society organisations have commended Wikileaks for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions.

[638][639] Julian Assange received the 2010 Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence for releasing secret U.S. military reports on the Iraq and Afghan wars[640] and was named the Readers' Choice for TIME's Person of the Year in 2010.

[646] During the early years of WikiLeaks, members of the media and academia commended it for exposing state and corporate secrets, increasing transparency, assisting freedom of the press, and enhancing democratic discourse while challenging powerful institutions.

[678][679][680][681] WikiLeaks has drawn criticism for inadequate curation and violations of personal privacy[42] from transparency advocates such as Edward Snowden,[43] Glenn Greenwald,[682] Amnesty International,[683] Reporters Without Borders,[255][517][519] the Sunlight Foundation[684] and the Federation of American Scientists.

In January 2011, a congressional official said they thought the Obama administration felt compelled to say publicly that the release caused severe damage in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.