We Steal Secrets, l'histoire de WikiLeaks

I found it to be a good documentary but it is not consistent over the 2hrs. It tells the story of Wikileaks & Julian Assange & Peter Manning. But it barely manages to scratch surface of the subjects, does not focus on each subjects properly & switches to something else. In my opinion it would have been great if it focused on one topic say Peter Manning & act of whistle blowing. In the last 10 minutes , 2 guys who were affiliated to Wikileaks talk about whistle blowers. "Whistle blowing is an isolating act. You are doing something which your colleagues and friends won't like you to do or they won't understand. That alienated you further from them. " "In the end everybody is just human, if you are leaking something important to a reporter , something that's really makes a difference, then from a human perspective it is difficult not to get credit for it, no one can tap you on shoulder & say courageous thing you did. & that's the complicated part about it , how do you make sure your source don't compromise themselves" It would have been better if more insight into mind of whistle blower was given to us. That would be something which I have n't seen, (except in The Insider (1999), which is a masterpiece). The interviewees could tell more about how the delicacy of the whole process of getting some classified information, protecting the source of information. The whole material of the documentary, with proper story telling can make a very good movie, but not an excellent documentary. I believe documentaries are supposed to be about insight into something & draw some conclusion. It does provide us with lot of information but less insight.

Both the US government and Julian Assange come under lots of criticism in this movie. One of the major arcs of the movie is Assange's descent into what he claims to hate: a power-mad autocrat obsessed with secrecy. Meanwhile, the US government comes across poorly for their treatment of Bradley Manning, along with them casting Assange as a villain but ignoring the mainstream media that worked with Assange.

The doc probably could have used a little bit more of a pro-Assange viewpoint. To be fair, they did ask to interview Assange, but (according to the doc) he asked for $1 million.

While the movie doesn't have interviews with Assange or Manning, they do have interviews with former Wikileaks employees, people who knew Bradley Manning, and others. The film focuses on more than just Assange, as it also looks at the impact of the cables released by Wikileaks, along with the US government's policies before and after Wikileaks.

It should be noted that Wikileaks disputes the accuracy of the film, while the director disputes the account of Wikileaks. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Steal_Secrets#Response_from_Wikileaks

Looking at the other reviews, this review will probably be voted as "unhelpful" by Assange supporters, but oh well. Watch the movie and make up your mind for yourself.

This two hour documentary attempts to tell the story of Wikileaks and does so using TV footage, interviews with government people and former Wikileaks employees and even Adrian Lamo.

Is it a fair documentary? I don't really know. It builds the case against Assange, but it keeps a friendly and supportive view of Wikileaks. It shows that Bradley Manning is practically being tortured under US incarceration, but does its best to describe the boy as an uber-gay mal-adapted geek. It seems to try to be as objective as possible, but does not interview either Assange or Manning and makes them both look like defective weirdos.

My opinion? If this were a politically commanded documentary, then it is a very subtle one, trying to polarize the audience, break any collaboration between Assange and his former employees and fans, even going so far as to show the regret of Adrian Lamo (the guy that ratted out Manning) when he cries on camera, so that he can never be an objective party in the story. This is the usual way official documentaries work, though. They gain power through polarization.

But if this is not a political order, then the documentary doesn't actually say much, other than go through a weak and one sided timeline amongst the various special effects and dramatic music that fill the movie and make it rather boring. At one time I fell asleep while watching it.

Therefore I cannot rate it but below average. I have this fear that the makers of the film were actually trying to show the story and report it accurately, but I fell into the trap of sympathizing with one side or another, but then again, if they wanted objectivity, they should have surfed the middle line, not throw Assange to the wolves.

If this film tells us anything its that the mainstream media like their corporate paymasters are very much in bed with the governmental organizations who Julian Assange and others looks to expose.

From its title its clear that this is film offers little in the way of objective journalism and instead tows the mainstream media line that Assange is not a whistle blower but in fact an irresponsible thief. There is some interesting facts included in the documentary but its inability to remain objective for me at least undermined its credibility and its value as a serious work.

Of course without Assange and people like Bradley Manning the worst excesses of government and corporate society would never come to light. A message this film conspicuously overlooks.

This is a fairly straightforward documentary with some fancy graphic interludes between segments, but some character development that was somewhat surprising. It proceeds primarily chronologically, from an early hacking of NASA & government sites to the establishment of Wikileaks as a self-made depository of accountability and "open source" government. It progresses through the early publishing of government data through the Bradley Manning data provided at the behest of background hacker and the final outing of the State Department cables. I thought the film did a reasonably good job of depicting Assange and his motives, from his early teenage hacking of government sites purely for fun to his firm belief in the right of the public to know what its government is doing behind its back. I had followed some of the developments around 2010-11, but learned a lot more about the background of the other players besides the charismatic and rather self-serving Assange. In particular, a fair amount of time is spent on Manning, including interviews with friends, a superior in his unit, and video and photo clips of him prior to the story breaking. I had known nothing about Adrian Lamo, a mysterious hacker in the background whom Manning confided in anonymously and eventually trusted enough to follow through with recommendations for disclosing the material, only to have Lamo rat him out. Although the popular press had always depicted Manning as simply "apparently gay" the film delves much deeper into his sexual identify conflicts (prior to and during his deployment and throughout the leaking process he struggled with whether to pursue transgender surgery) and marked self-esteem and isolation issues. Assange initially comes across as a quasi-anarchist on a mission to make government accountable, but narcissistic and borderline personality traits become quite apparent as his fame and infamy grow. The "rape" charges are explored, including an interview with one of the two women. What we've heard in the press about one of them being a CIA agent affiliated with Miami/Cuba is blown apart, and (IFF the woman is to be believed) the charge that he had sex and broke a condom but kept going are depicted as true. The woman sounds like she just wants him to admit it. However, the take home message from this film is that everyone may-- or may not-- be lying part or all of the time: Assange, Manning, Lamo, the two purported "rape" victims, and above all governments. Lamo is described in the film as having Asperger's syndrome, but his stilted speech suggests he falls more to the autistic side of the pervasive developmental spectrum. The film succeeds as a character study of the major players even if it does not move in interesting directions or reveal much more than is already known. The saddest aspect is the fate of Manning, whose naiveté is likely to result in a lifetime of torture in a Supermax while the real criminals in the Bush administration remain free.