"We are going to need an army," Wikileaks' editor Julian Assange said during the conference, via video link from London, especially as the publishing platform prepares to publish more material related to the US election.

Although much of the conference was spent reflecting on the organisation's past publications, some attention was on how Wikileaks has come under intense criticism, particularly with its release of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and the (wrongfully) alleged disclosure of personal information of ordinary citizens in other data dumps.

"Not an army of course in a [context] of physical hostilities, but we're going to need an army to defend us from the pressure that is already starting to arrive," Assange added. "We have engaged in a new project; to recruit people across the world to defend our publications."

Part of that "necessary defense of Wikileaks" comes in the form of the newly announced Wikileaks Task Force, which recently set up a Twitter account, and created an associative hashtag, #defendWL.