Massive Release of Raw WikiLeaks Files Threatened

CommonDreams

"Julian Assange's lawyer has warned that supporters of the WikiLeaks founder will unleash a "thermonuclear device" of government files containing the names of spies, sources and informants if he's killed or brought to trial.

Assange, the 39-year-old Australian who has most recently embarrassed the U.S. by leaking hundreds of previously secret diplomatic dispatches over the past week, has dubbed the unfiltered cache of documents his "insurance" policy. The 1.5-gigabyte file, which has been distributed to tens of thousands of fellow hackers and open-government campaigners around the world, is encrypted with a 256-digit key, reports The Sunday Times. Experts interviewed by the paper said that even powerful military computers can't crack the encryption without the key.

Contained inside that file -- named insurance.aes256 -- are believed to be all of the documents that WikiLeaks has received to date, including unpublished papers on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and papers belonging to BP and the Bank of America. Assange has previously suggested that the documents are unredacted, meaning they contain names that normally would be removed before publication to protect the lives of soldiers, spies and sources.

"We have over a long period of time distributed encrypted backups of material we have yet to release," he told the BBC in August. "All we have to do is release the password to that material, and it is instantly available."...."