Oh, what a story!
So Julian Assange and his supposedly new, ground-breaking technology to protect whistle-blowers and dissidents turned out to be just more smoke and mirrors. And their arrogant new media world was no match for good ol’ fashioned investigative journalists.
“The fracas has put WikiLeaks in the position of decrying what it called the ‘reckless’ and ‘negligent’ disclosure of information,” says the Wall Street Journal. Priceless!
Alan A adds:
There is also this hilarity:
“We have already spoken to the State Department and commenced pre-litigation action.”
So, Wikileaks is threatening the Guardian with legal action. For what? The material they’ve been peddling isn’t theirs.
I’m assuming that the full cache of documents is the one which Assange has been using as his ‘insurance policy’. From memory, wasn’t the plan to release the password to these files in the event of Assange’s unexplained disappearance or death (or, possibly, conviction for rape)?
Here’s the Guardian’s side of the story:
The Guardian admits the book contains a password, but says it does not reveal the location of the file and that it was previously told by the Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, that the password was temporary and “would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours”.
The paper said it “utterly rejects” the suggestion it was to blame for the unredacted version appearing and that it had gone to great lengths to ensure “potentially vulnerable sources” were protected.
The Guardian added: “No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files.
“That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.”
What a clown Assange is.
