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

Fantastic, stunning deceit by The Guardian

[Anonymous Coward]

The Guardian essentially pretends now that Wikileaks have taken this decision and by doing so have placed a lot of people at risk.

This deceit is evident several places in the article. That is the deceitful picture they are trying to paint.

The truth is that all of the cables were already accessible to anyone who wanted that access worldwide, including intelligence agencies.

You can argue about "blame": was the blame on Assange who apparently reused a password, on the Wikileaks people who spread that file around as a form of "insurance", or on the person from The Guardian who wrote what the password was in his book?

But you can't argue that Wikileaks now has sole responsibility for placing people at risk. That responsibility is down to all the aforementioned participants.

The exact division of blame can be argued about, but a picture that Wikileaks now places someone at risk that wasn't placed at risk earlier through joint efforts is monumentally deceitful.

Re:What are they thinking?

[Samantha Wright]

That's not it at all. The documents were already in enemy hands because the file was shared over BitTorrent. The password was already in enemy hands because the Guardian published it. All WikiLeaks is doing at this point is evening the playing field by letting those interested parties who didn't get a chance have an opportunity to dig through them. This mostly means the people without the resources to have put things together already—i.e., the informants at risk, whose names were redacted in the first place.

Re:What on earth were they thinking?

[Samantha Wright]

They were thinking something along the lines of "the Guardian already gave the bad guys our secrets, so let's make sure the people at risk have a chance to look through the cables, see if they're mentioned, and take appropriate self-defensive measures, since we don't have the resources to approach them all privately."

Re:Buckle up folks...

[NeutronCowboy]

I know it's an AC, but I'm replying anyway because this is a widely held belief in certain circles.

When media asked Assange about the risks to human lives because of their first releases, Assange stated that he didn't care and that their deaths served his purposes well. Assange is a sociopath and repeatedly on recorded saying people deserve to die for his cause and that its a just death.

Complete bullshit. I know exactly what story you're talking about: http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/07/which_is_it_mr_assange The deaths occurred because the Kenyan people decided to riot and face death of their own accord, a decision they based on information leaked on Wikileaks. These people actively chose to fight a tyrant. They weren't executed based on information in the leak.

In short, just the fuck up. You don't have a clue.