US can continue to withhold embassy cables already on WikiLeaks
In a summary judgment, a federal judge ruled on Monday that the United States government can continue to classify and redact 23 embassy cables that have already been released in their entirety by WikiLeaks.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had previously filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that would compel the government to reveal embassy cables on topics as diverse as torture, detention, detainee rendition, Guantanamo, and drones. The State Department still maintains that the redacted sections of those cables are classified. When the State Department responded last year with some cables that had redacted sections and some cables that were withheld outright, the ACLU sued in federal court.
Not only have these 23 cables in question been available on WikiLeaks for quite some time, the ACLU had previously created an online tool allowing anyone to compare the redacted versions of five excerpts with the full versions as published on WikiLeaks.
