We are the WikiLeaks staff. Despite our editor Julian Assange's increasingly precarious situation WikiLeaks continues publishing

Why do you only seem to have information on Democrats?

If you were as Noble as you say you would believe in government accountability at all levels, not just for one party.

Edit: Thank you for my first gold kind strangers.

To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump’s campaign, or other campaigns. If it were to be submitted now we would happily publish it. Information on how campaigns are fought is important in the moment, and after to learn lessons from. We certainly believe in accountability and transparency for the powerful. And this includes for all the campaigns in the election. We can of course only publish what we receive. If anyone has information on any of the other campaigns we urge them to submit it now before it is deleted - https://wikileaks.org/#submit

Are you concerned about the Trump administration's positions on net neutrality and surveillance?

We are concerned about anyone that gets access to the mass spying system the US has built. We will be happy to publish any documents on changes/abuses/policy changes on these topics and others from the Trump administration.

This should be good, they've been cheering for him for awhile now.

Nah, they'll just ignore the question.

We answered it. Sorry, there are a lot of questions here, which is great, just taking time to read them all!

The second they publish anything against him, they're fucking gone that's for sure.

We are used to retaliations against us by the subject(s) of the information in our publications. However, it has never, and will not stop us. We call for submissions on any US administration. Once we have validated it we will publish it.

What is your response to Snowden's remarks saying:

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

This sort of conversation about a journalist's role in controlling information is an important one. We have also had public conversations with Glenn Greenwald on this too. I like that these happen publicly, so that the public can follow and interact with the position of both sides and make up their own minds.

I think it was clear even before this twitter exchange that WikiLeaks and some others have different stances on this. For example it has been said the whole Snowden archive will never be published - something we highly disagree with.

Regarding the curation comment - I would disagree with Snowden's comment here. Working at WikiLeaks I know we do work with our submissions a lot for validation, how to present and where and when.

What we do not do is censor. We believe in full access to information and knowledge for all citizens. We do not think we are the gatekeepers of information and your right to know. We publish what we receive that is true, for you all to see. Your right to information shouldn't be controlled by others.

Curation and deciding "how to present and where and when" is gatekeeping. Editorial voice is as much about deciding where and when to say something as it is about what is said. Thinking that somehow you're not a gatekeeper when you are timing the release of information for maximum political impact is either disingenuous or dangerously naive.

We decide for maximum impact, source protection etc with the goal to publish as soon as possible after submission as we are ready (things like source protection and validation can take some time) according to our editorial policies. We do not withhold or censor information and we publish full archives. If we didnt that would be gatekeeping. We have published more classified or otherwise supressed documents than the rest of the worlds media combined. We do publish as fast as we can. We always call for leaks early and often to ensure that as fast as possible is as fast as needed.

What we do not do is censor.

But you do selectively release information. I honestly don't see much of a difference.

We dont. We can only publish what we receive and are able to validate. But as long as its within our editorial policy (true and important for the historical, diplomatic or political record) we publish as soon as we can.

How do you determine what to release and what to keep as insurance? Are you holding onto anything that could benefit people, or mostly things that would hurt those in power?

Insurance files are made from unpublished files we are still working through. As soon as we can we will publish all submissions we received that adhere to our editorial strategy.

Are those of us investigating the Comet Pizza/Human Trafficking scandal on the right track? And if not, where should we be looking?

EDIT: This is very real and we need to SAVE these kids. If the Wikileaks staff is uncomfortable posting this here, please give us a bat signal somewhere else.

It is curious. So far we dont know what to make of it.

Why have you been silent about Assange's situation at the embassay?

We at the team are monitoring his situation very closely. It is of course highly concerning that his internet is still severed without explanation. He has over the period occasionally been able to do interviews in person or over the phone which showed publicly he was still alive.

Generally the staff, except a couple that have a public profile do not speak publicly. There are obvious security risks for the team (a US secret Grand Jury still continues to this day), however, we have at this moment decided to do this AMA as a team to answer questions at this difficult time when we are very aware that our editor's communications situation is tricky.

What do you mean "without explanation"? The Ecuadoring government is sheltering him with an agreement to not interfere with international elections, which he is doing (one-sidedly, at that). He violated the agreement he has with his current protector, so they cut his internet. The Ecuadorian government even released a statement saying as much.

You guys sure like to spin things for an organization that ostensibly supports transparency and honesty.

EDIT: The gold is much appreciated, whomever gave it.

His internet hasnt been turned back on, despite the elections being over, and we dont know why, though it was meant to just be turned off over the elections.

Many people have suggested that WikiLeaks was brazenly partisan in this election and colluded with Team Trump (and by extension, Russia). Just today a top Russian ally to Putin is quoted as saying Russia did not interfere in the election but "maybe helped a bit with WikiLeaks".¹

How much do you consider the impact of selective releasing, insinuation, the timing of releases and the intentions of your sources when preparing to release documents?

Would there ever come a point when these factors outweigh the benefit of informing the public or is informing the public inherently worthwhile regardless of the circumstances?

Many thanks.

^1. Note: the ally was speculating, not admitting - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/putin-applauds-trump-win-and-hails-new-era-of-positive-ties-with-us?CMP=share_btn_tw

The allegations that we have colluded with Trump, or any other candidate for that matter, or with Russia, are just groundless and false. We receive information anonymously, through an anonymous submission platform. We do not need to know the identity of the source, neither do we want to know it.

The intention of the source is irrelevant in our editorial process. Every source of every journalist has an intention and an agenda, may it be hidden or clear. Requesting the intention from our sources would firstly likely jeopardize their anonymity, and secondly form a bias in our understanding of the information we received.

Their authenticity and their relevance to the public or the historical record are the only preconditions for us to publish the documents we are given.

How did you decide timing of #PodestaEmails and how to groups emails into parts?

We publish according to our promise to sources for maximum impact, along with our goal of informing the public, so often we split large archive releases into sections to ensure the public can fully absorb and utilise the material. For the Podesta Emails our release strategy was based on our Stochastic Terminator algorithm. We are of course also only able to publish as fast as our resources allow. You can help us to publish faster by supporting us here: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

Why did you want Donald Trump to be elected president?

Sorry to just see this one now. We arent ignoring the question. There are a lot of questions coming in - which is great, just please forgive us for taking time to go through them....

We were not publishing with a goal to get any specific candidate elected. We were publishing with the one goal of making the elections as transparent as possible. We published what we received.

I know that many media, including the New York Times, did editorially back one candidate over another. We didnt and havent. We would have published on any candidate. We still will if we get the submissions.

You take pride in making enormous document dumps with no regard for censoring or altering the information contained in the dump, but you're asking people for money so you can flick the switch and turn on the webpages "faster"?

Let's be honest, your whole mission is to publish documents without any interference or editorial control, or it's supposed to be. What part of the process is creating some kind of publishing speed bottleneck?

You are right that we take great pride in not censoring our publications. We believe in the value of pristine archives. However, we do have a lot of editorial control and much work is done to make these publications. We must search through all our submissions (we get many every single day) and validate them. We research and contextualise them. We then have to prepare them for publishing. As we make each publication as searchable and useable as possible this takes a lot of highly skilled work. All this is time and money......

Why wasn't the DNC corruption, or any of Hillary's corruption scandals released; you know, when Bernie was still in the race?

We publish as fast as we can. When we started that publication it was the first day we were ready. We were able to go out just before the nomination, but to do that we had to work all through the night. As we say: leak early and leak often.

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We will definitely publish on war crimes if and when we get the submissions. Without commenting too much on upcoming publications we do have documents regarding war we will be publishing soon.

Are there any things that you wouldn't condone leaking? Anything that has come in that was just too much of a risk, or would have too much impact on something?

We have an editorial policy to publish only information that we have validated as true and that is important to the political, diplomatic or historical. We believe in transparency for the powerful and privacy for the rest.

We publish in full in an uncensored and uncensorable fashion. We have had to, and will have to, take risks ourselves (the secret Grand Jury that began due to our 2010 publications continues to this day) in a number of the publications we do. But we are not risk adverse and will continue to publish fearlessly.

What inspired you to upload encrypted future WL publications on Tuesday?

The encrypted files we released a few days ago are insurance files. We have done this before. Insurance files are encrypted copies of unpublished documents submitted to us. We do this periodically, and especially at moments of high pressure on us, to ensure the documents can not be lost and history preserved. You will not be able to see the contents of any of our insurance files, until and unless the we are in a position where we must release the key. But you can download them and help spread them to ensure their safe keeping. To download them you will need a torrent client (like Transmission or uTorrent for example).

I understand where you are coming from. At the same time I think its fucked up that you have some sort of information that must be so very important and you withhold it. How does that not go against your group's purpose?

We are not withholding that information. We publish as fast as we can. The insurance files contain the publications we are working on, as soon as they are ready we will publish them. However, we are under many attacks at this moment and so, to ensure they are not lost, whatever happens to us, we put out these insurance files.

So you're sitting on news that's incredibly important to someone who might want to harm you, and you keep that for your own personal protection. How is that not directly contrary to your stated goals?

Thats not whats in them or why they are there. just answered this now above. Hope that explains.

Why do you withhold certain leaks, specifically ones involving Russian and Syria?

We publish what we receive. But just to remind you, https://www.wikileaks.org/syria-files/ . We have also published many documents relating to Russia, in fact we have published about every country. But, again, we can only publish what we receive.

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I dont know. We are rather annoyed though he tried to take credit for our work! ;)

He is just a political pundit, akin to the likes of Bill O'Reilly, and was just repeating speculative claims.

Why did you choose to expose Clinton and not trump?

There was no choice to be made. We release information that we receive. We cannot release what we don't have.

How much information comes from sources wikileaks is aware of vs. those that are anonymous?

Our submissions system is based on the concept of sources being as anonymous and protected as possible. We dont want to know who our sources are for their protection, and ours.

Stats on the DDoS attacks? What are plans to mitigate the attacks?

For the last 5 days we had a non-stop attempt at basic SYN flood. What's worse, a lot of traffic, about 20TB burned in the same time.

How often does the Wikileaks team browse Reddit and has it influenced any of your own ideas about the Wikileaks material and Clinton/DNC scandals?

We have definitely followed the great citizen journalism that has been happening on Reddit. Its the public being able to interact with material in this way and gain the knowledge first hand that is a main goal for us. So, thanks Redditors!

Do you feel like Reddit unfairly suppressed your publications during the election cycle?

There were subreddits that were very active and dedicated for the whole time. We have been watching the Reddit citizen journalism with great excitement and its great to be answering these questions here in a community where we have seen so much interaction with our material, that is a large goal of our work.

What is your most unique trait? There's plenty of other sites that expose the truth but why do people like you so much?

I think our most unique trait is our ability to push the boundaries of journalism. This began a decade ago when we were founded by Julian Assange with his invention of an online anonymous submissions platform. This has now become common place in many news rooms.

We then pushed the boundaries of publishing in full and allowing the public direct access to the searchable archives of source documents.

Along with our perfect track record in verifying documents and years of dealing with government hostility we will continue to publish fearlessly for the publics right to know.

I have two questions:

0) Did Julian Assange really write strobe (the precursor to nmap)?

1) I badly want to donate to Wikileaks, but I'm worried that the U.S. government views you as an evil organization (even though you are definitely not). Would donating negatively affect me?

Edit: I want to state that in my opinion, the Wikileaks staff are journalists, and as such, their actions are protected under the first amendment (freedom of speech and press). No one should consider them as evil. I'm going to donate to them directly.

re 0) that would be a question for Julian. Sadly with his internet still severed he is unable to join this AMA. 1) You can do so anonymously using Bitcoin. There are details about how and where here: https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

What ways other than financial donation can I help Wikileaks?

As Julian Assange announced at our ten year anniversary on the 4th of October we are currently building ways for our community to support us. The first part has already been launched: you can join the WikiLeaks Task Force @wltaskforce on twitter to help fight disinformation about WikiLeaks on social media. You can call out people who post wrong information about our organization on Facebook. And for more information on how to support WikiLeaks in the future please follow WikiLeaks Community @communitywl on twitter.