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LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks disclosed its entire archive of U.S. State
Department cables Friday, much if not all of it uncensored – a move
that drew stinging condemnation from major newspapers which in the
past collaborated with the anti-secrecy group’s efforts to expose
corruption and double-dealing.
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Many media outlets, including The Associated Press, previously had
access to all or part of the uncensored tome. But WikiLeaks’
decision to post the 251,287 cables on its website makes
potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone,
anywhere at the stroke of a key. American officials have warned
that the disclosures could jeopardize vulnerable people such as
opposition figures or human rights campaigners.
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A joint statement published on the Guardian’s website said that the
British publication and its international counterparts – The New
York Times, France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Der Spiegel and Spain’s El
Pais – “deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted
State Department cables, which may put sources at risk.”
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Previously, international media outlets – and WikiLeaks itself –
had redacted the names of potentially vulnerable sources, although
the standard has varied and some experts warned that even people
whose names had been kept out of the cables were still at
risk.
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But now many, and possibly even all, of the cables posted to the
WikiLeaks website carried unredacted names.
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There’s a debate over what kind of an impact that will
have.
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In an interview with the AP earlier this week, former U.S. State
Department official P.J. Crowley warned that the new release could
be used to intimidate activists in authoritarian countries. Crowley
said “any autocratic security service worth its salt” probably
already would have the complete unredacted archive of cables, but
that the fresh releases mean that any intelligence agency that did
not “will have it in short order.”
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WikiLeaks staff members have not returned repeated requests for
comment sent in the past two days. But in a series of messages on
Twitter, the group suggested that it had no choice but to publish
the archive because copies of the document were already circulating
online following a security breach.
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WikiLeaks has blamed the Guardian for the blunder, pointing out
that a sensitive password used to decrypt the files was published
in a book put out by David Leigh, one of the paper’s investigative
reporters and a collaborator-turned-critic of WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange.
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But the Guardian, Leigh and others have rejected the claim.
Although the password was in fact published in Leigh’s book about
seven months ago, Guardian journalists have suggested that the real
problem was that WikiLeaks posted the encrypted file to the Web by
accident and that Assange never bothered to change the password
needed to unlock it.
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In their statement, the Guardian’s international partners lined up
to slam the 40-year-old former computer hacker.
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“We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data –
indeed, we are united in condemning it,” the statement read. It
added: “The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his
alone.”
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The media organizations’ rejection is a further blow to WikiLeaks,
whose site is under financial embargo and whose leader remains
under virtual house arrest in an English country mansion pending
extradition proceedings to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault
allegations.
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It’s also a sign of the borderless online whistleblower’s
increasing estrangement from traditional media outlets. Assange and
his supporters have long feuded with the Guardian and The New York
Times, and in a recent statement the group noted that other Western
media organizations had “slowed their rate of publishing” stories
derived from the cables.
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As a result, the anti-secrecy site said it would increasingly turn
to “crowdsourcing” – that is, relying on Internet users to sift
through its leaked documents and flag important
material.
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It’s a relatively new tactic for the group, which has in the past
relied on mainstream partners to organize and promote its
spectacular leaks of classified information – including hundreds of
thousands of U.S. intelligence documents detailing the course of
America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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WikiLeaks says the process is working, pointing to one document
flagged by Twitter users who’ve already begun perusing the newly
released files.
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The cable, filed in 2006, carries an explosive allegation that U.S.
forces entered a house during a 2006 raid in Iraq, handcuffed 10
members of the same family and executed them.
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Although the U.N. letter in which the allegation was made was five
years old, its publication put new pressure on the already strained
negotiations over keeping U.S. forces in Iraq. Iraq’s government
said Friday that it is investigating, and some officials said the
document is reason enough for the country to force the American
military to leave instead of signing a deal allowing troops to stay
beyond a year-end departure deadline.
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“Crowdsourcing has proved to be a success,” WikiLeaks
said.
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But amid the controversy over the unredacted cables, some
supporters are keeping their distance. The press freedom group
Reporters Without Borders said Thursday that it had temporarily
suspended its WikiLeaks “mirror site.” Such sites act as
carbon-copies of their originals, relieving pressure due to heavy
traffic and preserving data in case of attack.
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In a statement, Reporters said it had “neither the technical, human
or financial resources to check each cable” for information that
could harm innocent people and thus “has to play safe.”
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Greg Keller in Paris contributed to this report.
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