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The Fifth Estate

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The Fifth Estate
The film The Fifth Estate is a prime example of how communication technologies can impact individuals, groups and institutions. The film focuses on the Wikileaks saga that occurred between 2008 and 2011. To assess how communication technologies can impact individuals, groups and institutions the following will be discussed: What the Wikileaks site is about, How the wiki leaks issue impacted individuals and institutions, How technology advances have impacted the way we communicate and how the Wikileaks issue is an example of 'the problem that can arise.'

Wikileaks is a site that was designed to receive and broadcast sensitive information. Its main aim is to provide a website in which journalists and citizens can upload private information without their identity being compromised. In the film The Fifth Estate Julian Assange and Daniel Bruhl develop a Wikileaks site allowing whistle blowers to anonymously leak highly sensitive data such as government secrets and cooperate crimes. Under the banner of Wikileaks, Assange and Bruhl had made public over 1 million secret documents. Leaking information about corrupt
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However as demonstrated in The Fifth Estate, Wikileaks compromises an individual's personal information which can have devastating effects. For institutions Wikileaks has the capacity to severely restrict their operations. For example in The Fifth Estate, Wikileaks published documents about a Swiss (Julias Baer) bank's offshore accounts detailing the names and address of individuals in an attempt to expose tax evasion. Wikileaks is changing how the world views and utilises the Swiss banking system. Swiss law forbids bankers to disclose the existence of your account or any other information about it without your consent. They are very careful about protecting privacy, and Wikileaks comprises their ability to do

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