WikiLeaks Sues the Guardian Over Leak

An anonymous reader writes "WikiLeaks complaining of a leak is hard to get one's head around. That it's suing The Guardian — its great ally — is even harder. That The Guardian did such a ridiculous thing to warrant litigation in the first place almost defies belief." Update: 09/01 04:59 GMT by S : Changed the first link to point to the statement on WikiLeaks' website. The Guardian has denied the allegations, saying, "Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours."

Comments

Re:Thed saying holds true...

[flyingsquid]

The point of leaking is to expose malfeasance. The point of redacting the leaked material was to limit collateral damage to those who had not acted poorly. You only leak what you need to leak in order to expose the bad acts and bad actors, but no more than that.

WikiLeaks' act of leaking the original (redacted) leaks and their suit against this new (non-redacted) leak are a consistent stance from the point of doing the most good while avoiding the most damage. But oh, to live in your simple world...

From the New York Times, August 30: "WASHINGTON — In a shift of tactics that has alarmed American officials, the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks has published on the Web nearly 134,000 leaked diplomatic cables in recent days, more than six times the total disclosed publicly since the posting of the leaked State Department documents began last November. A sampling of the documents showed that the newly published cables included the names of some people who had spoken confidentially to American diplomats and whose identities were marked in the cables with the warning “strictly protect.” State Department officials and human rights activists have been concerned that such diplomatic sources, including activists, journalists and academics in authoritarian countries, could face reprisals, including dismissal from their jobs, prosecution or violence."

In other words, Wikileaks no longer gives a s*** about protecting peoples' identity as long as they can get some media attention, and probably never have. As soon as Wikileaks stopped being front-page news, they increased the volume of the leaks and stopped editing them. Headlines, after all, are far more important than people's heads. But oh, to live in your simple world...

Re:Thed saying holds true...

[c0lo]

is there any category of information that should not leak?

Many say no. But claiming special dispensation on a leak .. that is just delicious.

-Seraphim

I wonder what you understand on the difference between "secrecy in governance" and "personal privacy"/"anonymity"/"pseudonimity"?