The author sets out to demonstrate how the case of Wikileaks - and of its founder and spokesman Julian Assange - exploits the topic of the security of information in the web to create what is defined here as a "concretion of power". By generating a climate of suspicion and paranoia, Wikileaks sets out to consolidate its own credibility and legitimacy by public opinion, although it does so without furnishing any certainty about its own justness and equity. This not only creates a degree of scepticism - itself of major significance in Wikileaks’ relations with the authorities - but also forces it to adopt an antagonist stance vis-à-vis constituted authority, for the sole purpose of legitimising an alternative form of authority that is in the process of taking shape, with the paradoxical result that it puts the freedom of information at risk.
Keywords: Wikileaks, Technology and society, Freedom of information, Formation of consensus, Concretion of power, Manners of exercising power