2011-08-31 Unredacted Cablegate in the wild, WikiLeaks responds

It finally happened. An old cablegate file was detected on the internet, and it could be decrypted with a password that was published by a Guardian journalist. The file is not in an obvious location, and it may be doubted that anyone would have ever found it, along with the matching password, had it not been for Der Freitag publishing an article on the matter, which was then followed up by several other news outlets. Der Freitag is a media partner of Openleaks and has strong ties with the Guardian.

WL Central had guessed the source of the password early on but decided not to publish.

Wikileaks responded with the following statement:

"Statement on the betrayal of WikiLeaks passwords by the Guardian.

GMT Wed Aug 31 22:27:48 2011 GMT

A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation a signed security agreement with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive. We have already spoken to the State Department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course.

WIKILEAKS"

For our previous coverage of the topic please see this link.