WIKILEAKS is conducting an online poll of its Twitter followers to decide whether the whistleblowing site should publish in full its cache of US diplomatic cables unredacted (unedited).
Last week, the site released more than 120,000 cables with almost no redactions, which, in the past, have protected, the identity of informants and others. The scale of the release, compared with 20,000 cables in the past nine months, has brought fierce criticism from the Australian government and former US state department spokesman PJ Crowley.
WikiLeaks appeared likely to use the Twitter responses, which it said favoured disclosure in a ratio of 100 to one, to pave the way for imminent disclosure of the remaining material from its archive.
Most of the cables published in the past week were unclassified but the site released the full archives, including confidential and secret cables, from Sweden and Australia. The Australian cables, which unlike previous releases had no redactions, included one identifying 23 Australians alleged to have links with al-Qaeda, prompting an angry response from Australia’s attorney general, Robert McClelland.
“On occasions in the past, WikiLeaks has decided to redact identifying features where security operations or safety could be put at risk. This has not occurred in this case.
“The publication of any information that could compromise Australia’s national security, or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats, is incredibly irresponsible,” he said.
In a lengthy statement posted online, WikiLeaks said publishing its cache of cables in full was necessary because an encrypted file containing the whole database was available online, and the password was in the public domain. It said the Guardian was responsible for this security breach, due to a password published in the Guardian’s book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, published in February 2011.
The Guardian urged WikiLeaks not to publish the unredacted documents or to release any further details pointing to where they might be found, and denied involvement in their publication.
"The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables. The Guardian's book about WikiLeaks was published last February. No concerns about security were expressed when the book was published or at any stage during the past seven months," it said. – ( Guardianservice)