Full database of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables appears online
For the second time in a year, WikiLeaks has lost control of its full, unredacted cache of a quarter-million US State Department cables—and this time the leaked files are apparently online.
The uncensored cables are contained in a 1.73GB password-protected file named cables.csv, which is reportedly circulating somewhere on the Internet, according to Steffen Kraft, editor of the German paper Der Freitag. Kraft announced last week that his paper had found the file and easily obtained the password to unlock it.
Unlike the cables that WikiLeaks has been publishing piecemeal since last fall, these cables are raw and unredacted, and contain the names of informants and suspected intelligence agents that were blacked out of the official releases. Der Freitag said the documents include the names of suspected agents in Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan, and noted that interested parties—such as the Iranian government or intelligence agencies—could have already discovered and decrypted the file to uncover the names of informants.
