German papers Der Freitag and Der Spiegel reported on Monday that a batch of unedited WikiLeaks documents had been discovered, exposing the identities of sources and informants, potentially posing a threat to the safety of these people.
The New York Times, which has helped facilitate some WikiLeaks releases in the past, chimed in to say that a series of “screw-ups” caused the whistle-blowing organization to lose control of its clandestine documents.
When WikiLeaks makes an official release, it usually omits some sensitive information, like names of sources. Theoretically, that could help protect these people, but access to the unedited documents was opened to a number of different channels.
When former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg left the organization last fall, he took a batch of documents with him, which the Times says includes some of these unredacted cables. The Times also claims WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange gave the password to these files to an “external source.” After Domscheit-Berg returned some of these files, WikiLeaks published that data online as a “public archive of the documents that WikiLeaks had previously published." According to the Times, this included the unedited versions as well as the password.
But WikiLeaks says the Times is flat-out wrong.
“Totally false that any WikiLeaks sources have been exposed or will be exposed. NYT drooling, senile, and evil,” WikiLeaks tweeted, with a link to the Times story.
Domscheit-Berg left WikiLeaks last year to open rival site OpenLeaks. He also penned a tell-all book about his time at WikiLeaks, which shed a rather sleazy light on Assange. Der Frietag wasn’t hesitant to point the finger at Domscheit-Berg for opening the door to these sensitive documents, although the former WikiLeaker recently claimed that he deleted around 3,500 WikiLeaks documents, saying he feared Assange would not be able to guarantee the safety of the people named within the files. It appears that Domscheit-Berg and Assange could share culpability, but OpenLeaks says this debacle proves what Domscheit-Berg has long alleged: WikiLeaks is not secure.
However, other suspects could include staffers at WikiLeaks’ many publishing partners, which include the Guardian, El Pais, and the New York Times.
Perhaps Assange, the self-proclaimed freedom of information defender, is getting a lesson in irony. Or perhaps the fears of WikiLeaks critics are finally being realized.