WikiLeaks Publishes Cable Archive In Full

We recently discussed news that WikiLeaks had complained of a password leak which threatened the encryption of unredacted documents contained in the Cablegate archive. Now, reader solanum writes with this update: "According to the Guardian, 'WikiLeaks has published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables, without redactions, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention, harm or putting their lives in danger. The move has been strongly condemned by the five previous media partners – the Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde – who have worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents.' In the same article The Guardian gives further explanation of the controversy reported earlier, suggesting that Assange went against standard protocol in providing the master password to the newspaper."

Comments

What are they thinking?

[Haedrian]

The guardian password thing was a mistake. A big mistake.

The solution however is NOT to go all in and betray the trust of the sources. This sort of thing is just what you'd need to kill Wikileaks forever.

If it was due to a mistake, an accident or hacking, we might move on, but this is big stuff.

There is a deeper meaning here

[HBI]

The release of the whole batch means that any negotiation to avoid the worst criminal penalties for Assange and others has failed. These people know they are going to be seeing little but the cinderblock walls of a detention facility for many years. They're giving up.

Re:There is a deeper meaning here

[drolli]

No. It means that hey want to cover up the fuckup which JA and *only* JA is responsible for to the media.

He gave the password without specific instructions. He put the files somewhere where they don't belong (i think not mixing redacted and unredacted material would be a good principle) and did not inform the administrator that these are there. He lacked responsiveness in communicating with the responsible admistrator. He lacked openness to address the issue and take control of it of give the responsibility in a controlled way to somebody else. He did not delete the documents which he put there. He chose a single, simple password instead of a two-factor authorization. He did not (as would have been appropriate) use a physically safe way of transferring the data to the journalist (1 DVD would have been enough). He did not make sure the journalists computer is safe.

Re:Fantastic, stunning deceit by The Guardian

[Baloroth]

This. Back when Wikileaks was actually redacting the documents, people praised them to high heaven and criticized anyone claiming that the documents could potentially cause harm. Now, we see that Wikileaks having those documents was in fact dangerous all along, and that there is damn good reason the government doesn't like them being handed to random people on the Internet, and prosecutes people who do. You might even say that this problem was one good reason the US government wanted Wikileaks shut down in the first place, because the potential for Assange to loose control over the raw information was extremely high.

This situation is why classified and secret information doesn't get handed to civilians. They cannot be trusted to keep it secret. And now that this has happened, you can count on governments worldwide being far more careful and restrictive of all information. Good job, Wikileaks! You made the world a worse place in the long term just so you could cry out against "the man" for a few months.

I wouldn't go so far as to assume Assange wanted this all along, although I would agree it isn't impossible. But it was inevitable. Oh, and I don't think it is a coincidence that a few weeks before this happened, Daniel Domscheit-Berg destroyed a bunch of documents. Maybe he realized that Assange couldn't be trusted? Maybe. I don't really know, just a thought.