WikiLeaks in spat with The Guardian over spread of US cables

Whistle blower website, WikiLeaks is in a spat with UK’s The Guardian newspaper over the spread of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables on the internet.

All of the 251,287 diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks are now available on the internet from various sources. The full release of unedited and uncensored cables will open more secrets about the ways in which the US government handles diplomatic ways what views it holds about matters around the world. The leak first surfaced in November when WikiLeaks and several news organizations started publishing some of the cables.

Wikileaks has accused a Guardian journalist of wrongly publishing the passphrase for a database of cables in a book. The encrypted database is available on BitTorrent. The book titled Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh has a paragraph about how the journalist convinced Assange to give him a PGP passphrase.

This passphrase, named ‘ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistory_Since_1966_ ToThe_ PresentDay#’, can be used by users with relevant encrypted database can easily access copies of the controversial documents.

When WikiLeaks released cables last November it carefully redacted and selected samples and removed the details about the identity of informants or agents. WikiLeaks said that it has "spoken to the State Department and commenced pre-litigation action" against The Guardian. It accused the paper of an "act of gross negligence or malice".