Media organizations condemn Wikis' disclosure

LONDON (AP) — Four of the high-profile media organizations that have collaborated with Wikis on its relse of secret documents on Friday condemned the group's disclosure of its entire archive of uncensored U.S. State Department cables. Wikis announced that it had posted the last of its collection of 251,287 U.S. Embassy cables, a trove of diplomatic material whose exposure has embarrassed officials and laid bare examples of corruption and double-dling around the globe. But unlike previous relses, many if not all the newly-posted documents appred to have been left uncensored — mning that names and other details of people quoted in the often-sensitive cables are now freely available to all. A joint statement published on the Guardian's website Friday said that the British publiion and its international colues — The New York Times, Spanish daily El Pais and German newspaper Der Spiegel — "deplore the decision of Wikis to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk." Le Monde, the French daily which also published some of Wikis' documents, will join other media partners in signing the statement, according to executive editor Sylvie Kauffmann.FILE - In this July 14, 2011 photo, Wikis founder Julian Assange talks to members of the media during a news conference in central London. Anti-secrecy group Wikis said Thursday that its massive archive of unredacted U.S. State Department cables had been exposed in a security brch which it blamed on its one-time partner, Britain's Guardian newspaper. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)Wikis members of staff have not returned repted requests for comment sent in the past two days. But in a series of messages posted to Twitter, the group seemed to suggest that it had no choice but to post the archive to its website because copies of the document were alrdy circulating freely online following a security brch at the site. Wikis has blamed the Guardian for the brch, pointing out that a sensitive used to decrypt the files was published in a book put out by David Leigh, one of the paper's investigative reporters and a collaborator-turned-critic of Wikis founder Julian Assange. But the Guardian, Leigh and others have rejected the claim, suggesting that the rl problem was that Wikis posted the encrypted file to the Web by accident and that Assange made the elementary mistake of reusing an old . The U.S. State Department has also condemned the latest relse.


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