The Wikileaks security gaffe earlier this week that resulted in the distribution of a quarter million unredacted cables, like any sufficiently-sized SNAFU, will progress in phases. Today, it entered the second phase–finger pointing.
More WikiLeaks: US Worried Australia’s NBN Could Boost Piracy
It’s believed that the Twitter user that posted a link to the server on which the unredacted files were being stored gleaned the password and location of the server from numerous published media sources as well as from the WikiLeaks Twitter feed itself.
The Guardian was among five news organisations (also New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais) that first had access to the cables when they were first revealed in December of 2010. According to a statement by Wikileaks,
A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation of 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.
The Guardian immediately fired back,
It’s nonsense to suggest the Guardian’s WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way. Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.
Information on the sources named in the offending cables is not currently known, though Wikileaks did notify the State Department on August 25th to warn of the release. This situation is expected to continue progressing through its natural phases–anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, ???, and profit. [The Guardian]