We’ve been talking about this story for a while. How Wikileaks founder Julian Assange entrusted someone with access to the group’s stash of US State Department cables, many of which had the names of current employees. These are names of people who could be in danger if their names were to get out. These were cables that Assange wasn’t going to share, at least not before redacting. But the guy he gave access to did publish them and now Assange has published all the cables himself, no names redacted, it’s all out there.
The move has been strongly condemned by the five previous media partners – the Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde – who have worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents.
“We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk,” the organisations said in a joint statement.
“Our previous dealings with WikiLeaks were on the clear basis that we would only publish cables which had been subjected to a thorough joint editing and clearance process. We will continue to defend our previous collaborative publishing endeavour. We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data – indeed, we are united in condemning it.
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