We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is the most nuanced and best documentary that I’ve seen in a long time. Most documentaries want to tell a story with obvious and absolute villains and heroes, but We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks manages to examine a recent new story and represents all the interpretations of the events and the people surrounding those events. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks effectively unpacks a complex set of stories and personalities.
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks explains how WikiLeaks got started, what made it an effective tool against bureaucratic corruption and how it was flawed. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks provides a detailed examination of the case of Bradley Manning, now known as Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of violating the Espionage Act, on a human and bureaucratic level. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks compares and contrasts what has already been revealed to the public with what could be considered a violation of the Espionage Act, and shockingly sometimes there isn’t much of a difference except one is just text and the other is a visual representation.
We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks firmly acknowledges that a system needs to be in place to protect people who may be harmed by revealing those secrets while simultaneously and correctly suggesting that too much is not revealed to the public and leads to widespread corruption and atrocities. Government has failed to do so, but WikiLeaks cannot fill the void. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks effectively separates Julian Assange as a public figure from the human being and takes great pains not to conflate him with WikiLeaks, which the documentary suggests that Assange tries to do to avoid taking personal responsibility for such things as the Swedish sexual assault allegations-he seems to be a character out of the John Stamos episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He may like to impregnate women without their permission. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks alludes to the fact that he has four children with different mothers on different continents, but does not elaborate whether or not he actually cares for them financially or has nurtured them in any way. Unless one of the four is in Ecuador, the answer seems to be not at all. Assange is a man who may have helped to create a noble project, but later overwhelmed that project with his personal foibles.