Wikileaks

[faceless]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/aug/13/iraq-war-logs

[luke]

UK Gov issues DA notices over WikiLeaks bomb

The UK Government has issued Defence Advisory Notices to editors of UK news outlets in an attempt to hush up the latest bombshell from whistle-blowing web site WikiLeaks.

DA Notices, the last of which was issued in April 2009 after sensitive defence documents were photographed using a telephoto lens in the hand of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick as he arrived at No 10 Downing Street for a briefing, are requests not to publish, and therefore not legally enforceable.

Which means there are no 'official' repercussions for ignoring the notices, but they are generally adhered to.

The news came to light in two Tweets from WikiLeaks one of which said, "UK Government has issued a "D-notice" warning to all UK news editors, asking to be briefed on upcoming WikiLeaks stories." the follow up pointed out that the notices were "Type 1" which relates to "Military Operations Plans and Capabilities", and "Type 5" which relates to "United Kingdom Security and Intelligence Special Services."

WikiLeaks says the forthcoming mega-leak is seven times larger than the 400,000-document Iraq War Dossier and would redefine global history.

[luke]

a bit more detail ... will be interesting to see what this latest leak reveals ...

Expected WikiLeaks disclosures prompts warning for editors
Government issues defence advisory notice to remind newspaper editors about their responsibility over leaked documents

David Cameron and other world leaders were being briefed by the US state department about what American diplomats fear will be contained in the expected leak of thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington by US ambassadors around the world. The leak is expected to be co-ordinated by the WikiLeaks website, which has previously published secret details of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Newspaper editors were today asked to brief the government if they plan to publish sensitive diplomatic files. But Downing Street stressed that the DA (defence advisory) did not mean court action was likely to suppress publication of the documents. The issue of the so-called D-notice is supposed to be a reminder that newspapers should be concerned for UK military operations.

US officials, including the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, have been trying to brief allies, including Cameron, on what they expect to be in the documents. The head of the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen, called on WikiLeaks to stop the publication of the documents. "I would hope that those who are responsible for this would, at some point in time, think about the responsibility that they have for lives that they're exposing and the potential that's there, and stop leaking this information," he told CNN in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

A spokesman for Cameron declined to discuss the nature of any confidential communications that might have been obtained by WikiLeaks. It is thought that the American ambassador to the UK, Louis Susman, has been trawling files to guess what might have been leaked. Susman today personally briefed London officials, including the Foreign Office and No 10, requiring sometimes painful explanations. A Downing Street spokesman said: "Obviously, the government has been briefed by US officials, by the US ambassador, as to the likely content of these leaks. I don't want to speculate about precisely what is going to be leaked before it is leaked."

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said tonight: "I appreciate why the DA notice might make people anxious. But, from my reading of the WikiLeaks material, only a tiny part of it is covered or relevant."

Before the notice was released, a spokesman for the US state department, PJ Crowley, warned that publication could erode trust in the US as a diplomatic partner. "When this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television or radio, it has an impact. We wish this would not happen, but we are obviously prepared for the possibility that it will."

The main American concern is that the diplomatic cables will reveal either damaging episodes or duplicity by the Americans that will undermine trust in the good faith of the US. Diplomats are expected to produce unvarnished accounts of the state of the political leaders and the balance of forces, as well as to disclose any form of intelligence activity.

The Obama administration today warned that the WikiLeaks release would endanger "lives and interests". Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said he spoke with the state department on Friday, which told him that there would be documents regarding Italy in the leak, "but the content can't be anticipated". "We're talking about thousands and thousands of classified documents that the US will not comment on, as is their custom," Frattini said. He claimed to have been told that the person responsible for the leaks had been arrested.

The governments of Canada, Israel, Iraq and Norway also said they had been briefed by US officials. The US says it has known for some time that WikiLeaks held the diplomatic cables.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/26/wikileaks-documents-downing-street-editors

[Brown Sauce]

wikileaks is down

[SquareEyes]

It appears that there are torrents to download an encrypted file (rumored to be the next huge disclosure) that await the password from WL to decrypt...

[luke]

i don't know if it is the next big disclosure, the embassy cables are coming out now and throughout the week from the media ( el pais, le monde, speigel, guardian & nyt ) - although, like sauce says, the wikileaks site is down ( under a mass distributed denial of service attack ) so you can only see the medias versions of it so far, but hopefully it'll be back soon

this was from before the latest leak regarding the encrypted insurance file;

WikiLeaks Urges Public to Download ‘Insurance’ File
This is interesting, to say the least. Whistle-blowing organization Wikileaks is urging the public to download their ever-so-famous “insurance” file from The Pirate Bay, according to a recently transmitted tweet. This file, nearly 2GB in size, is said to contain thousands of secret U.S. documents aimed at embarrassing the nation’s government, and potentially causing harm to the United States’ relations with allies.

The file has been around since this Summer and is heavily encrypted [AES-256]. In the event of Wikileaks’ founder’s [Julian Assange] death (or some other unspecified reason), the secret key would be released — exposing the documents to all who have downloaded and obtained the key.

We’re not sure as to why Wikileaks is now urging users to download the file, but it just may be that they’re soon planning to release the key.

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance

http://twitter.com/wikileaks

[Brown Sauce]

it's well seeded

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/index.html

working

[luke]

is the torrent the whole archive? cos on that wikileaks page its saying only 243 of 251,287 records have been released so far!

[major.tom]

I found out last night Julian had walked off a CNN set about a month ago...



Here's a follow-up with a confused Larry King:

[Brown Sauce]

[btaylo24]

They are releasing them bit by bit, this is not connected with that encrypted file (thats something else unknown)

Now 485 released...
Makes for some great reading. The Prince Andrew one is a classic....

[btaylo24]

Here it is if you have not read it yet..
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2008/10/08BISHKEK1095.html


Also not looking good for the wikileaks guy!

http://www.interpol.int/public/data/wanted/notices/data/2010/86/2010_52486.asp

[Brown Sauce]

wikileaks down. Service removed ... no details yet.

edit

moved to Switzerland ...

http://wikileaks.ch/

[faceless]

FDP fires 'mole' revealed by Wikileaks
3 Dec 2010
thelocal.de/politics/20101203-31567.html

A day after the Free Democrats (FDP) fired a high-ranking official for feeding secret information to the US embassy, members of the party demanded on Friday that America's ambassador to Berlin be removed.

Helmut Metzner, chief of staff for FDP leader Guido Westerwelle, who is German vice chancellor and foreign minister, was exposed on Thursday evening as the source of leaks from talks in October 2009 on forming a ruling coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.

"The staff member of the FDP's federal headquarters, who has admitted his contacts with the US embassy in Berlin, has been relieved of his duties as chief of staff for the FDP chairman by mutual agreement," the party's spokesman said in a terse statement.

Diplomatic cables published this week by Wikileaks showed that an FDP mole at the closed-doors negotiations between the party and Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats had given regular updates to a US embassy contact. In the documents, Philip Murphy, the US ambassador in Berlin, describes the fly on the wall as a "young, up-and-coming party loyalist" who was taking notes during the marathon talks.

On Friday, FDP MP Hans Michael Goldmann told the daily Bild that Murphy could no longer serve as an effective liaison between Berlin and Washington. "Mr. Murphy's behaviour is unseemly," Goldmann said. "Such an ambassador should be called home." Another FDP deputy, Bijan Djir-Sarai, echoed the sentiment: "It is more than doubtful whether Mr Murphy can still be a trustworthy interlocutor."

However Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said Berlin would continue to work with Murphy. "The government is most certainly not calling for the ambassador to be recalled. It is focused on the many tasks that it shares with America, in terms of the global economy, Afghanistan, the G8-G20 process, cooperation in NATO," he told a regular briefing. "German-US ties are robust."

Among the indiscretions by the FDP's Metzner were a blow-by-blow account of an internal row over disarmament. Westerwelle had pushed to have the new government demand the United States remove its nuclear weapons from German soil but Merkel dismissed his call as pointless without a broad-based international initiative.

The source is later quoted as describing veteran conservative Wolfgang Schäuble, the current finance minister as "neurotic" and "an angry old man," before handing over several copies of documents from the negotiations. The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that despite the revelations, Metzner, 41, would continue to work for the party.

On Monday, Westerwelle told reporters he did not believe his party had a spy in its ranks. "I don't believe such stories," he said, adding that he "still had quite strong faith in the entire staff of the FDP, and particularly those who were present at the coalition talks."

Westerwelle comes in for harsh criticism in the secret documents published by Wikileaks, derided by US diplomats as incompetent, vain and critical of America.

[Brown Sauce]

not quite sure about the fellow hackers crap, but interesting ..