14 DAY TRIAL // Wikileaks latest move, releasing over 90,000 US military documents relating to the Afganistan war, has drawn a lot of attention, especially from people not regularly familiar with Wikileaks, or the internet for that matter. If the Pentagon wanted Wikileaks gone before, you can imagine what the current sentiment is.
With more and more US ‘patriots’ asking for the site to be taken down, or worse, it’s no wonder that Wikileaks felt as threatened as ever. Which would explain the existence of a mysterious encrypted uploaded to the site last week labeled “insurance.”
The file, weighing in at a hefty 1.4 GB, is encrypted so it’s anyone’s guess what it contains. Wikileaks is not saying anything, but the name, in the context of the latest leak, should be clear enough. The Register speculates that the key needed to decrypt the file could be published by people close to the site if things go sour. And you can be sure that the people and organizations which would be affected by the contents of the file have been informed of its content.
When it released the 90,000 or so documents last week, Wikileaks said it still has 15,000 more documents of a more sensitive nature which are being inspected and which will be released at the appropriate time, with the information that could put lives at risk removed. The ‘insurance’ file could very well contain the remaining documents.
However, all of the documents released so far take up only less than 100 MB so the numbers don’t really add up. Of course, the encrypted file could contain more than text documents, video files could easily take up 1.4 GB.
What is clear though is that the site could very well need to resort to its ‘insurance.’ The US government has been highly critical of Wikileaks’ actions and is already targeting people associated with the site. And with people like Marc Thiessen, the chief speechwriter for George W. Bush during his presidency and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, asking for the site to be blocked and its contributors brought before American justice, by any means necessary, even if it means breaking international law, it’s probably going to be a rough ride for Wikileaks.