Scientology and Wikileaks
Wikileaks is a controversial website that allows whistleblowers to anonymously upload corporate and government documents. Since its launch last year, it has leaked several high-profile documents, including the Guantanamo Bay Standard Operating Procedures (covered by Chris Vallance here).
The site recently published a huge amount of material which it claims comes from the Church of Scientology, including the 'Operating Thetan' levels that purportedly set out the philosophy of the Church. A request from the Church's lawyer to take the material down on grounds of copyright violation was met with the following response last Monday:
Wikileaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than Wikileaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, London Banks, Russian off-shore stem cell centers, former African Kleptocrats, or the Pentagon. Wikileaks will remain a place where people of the world may safely expose injustice and corruption. Indeed, in response to the attempted suppression, Wikileaks will release several thousand pages of additional Scientology materials next week.
Their threat was made good, with a flood of new material being published daily over the course of the week. So, what will the Church of Scientology do in response? Here's a long version of the interview we broadcast on Saturday with their copyright attorney, Bill Hart.
We also planned to interview someone from Wikileaks on the programme, but this fell through at the last minute. That interview will - fingers crossed - take place on today's PM programme.
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