Given the complicated relationship at least between David Leigh and Julian Assange of which I have personal knowledge: If there are not tapes or video recordings, I would not trust the memory or perception of even a group of people around Assange.
Assange had his own reality distorion field. Like inflating the number of servers wikileaks had, the numbers of active members, etc. etc. I could sense he and Daniel Schmidt aka Domscheid-Berg were making up things on the go, but I and others didn't speak up because we believed we were wrong (How could we doubt wikileaks in 2010ish?).
I personally met David Leigh during the offshore leaks investigation. Dumb & innocent as I was, I asked him right away about the password incident. For those who don't know: At first, the cables were only released in part and redacted, but there was an archive zip encoded with aes encryption and a very long password "ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" that Leigh used as a headline in his book. Of course someone figured out it matched to that archive and so the cables became unredacted. Well, Leigh was really pissed about the question.
To his defense, Leigh said to me: he was under the impression that the password/archive were digital self destruct. I know, this does not make sense in any way and reality. But given how little Leigh knew about information security, encryption, tech in general - maybe he was told by Assange this as a prank, maybe he assumed it, who knows.
But boy, these people in that time - journos and hackers - back than, most of them were not thinking about any bad outcomes, it mostly about making a splash and spotlight.
And that was, is and will not be enough. I battled "on the hill" to protect a whistleblower and to block a release of information which may have resulted in people being prosecuted in countries with a death penalty. It cost me a lot, but if you're not willing to walk away from prestige and fame for other peoples lives, maybe you should find another job.
Assange had his own reality distorion field. Like inflating the number of servers wikileaks had, the numbers of active members, etc. etc. I could sense he and Daniel Schmidt aka Domscheid-Berg were making up things on the go, but I and others didn't speak up because we believed we were wrong (How could we doubt wikileaks in 2010ish?).
I personally met David Leigh during the offshore leaks investigation. Dumb & innocent as I was, I asked him right away about the password incident. For those who don't know: At first, the cables were only released in part and redacted, but there was an archive zip encoded with aes encryption and a very long password "ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#" that Leigh used as a headline in his book. Of course someone figured out it matched to that archive and so the cables became unredacted. Well, Leigh was really pissed about the question.
To his defense, Leigh said to me: he was under the impression that the password/archive were digital self destruct. I know, this does not make sense in any way and reality. But given how little Leigh knew about information security, encryption, tech in general - maybe he was told by Assange this as a prank, maybe he assumed it, who knows.
But boy, these people in that time - journos and hackers - back than, most of them were not thinking about any bad outcomes, it mostly about making a splash and spotlight.
And that was, is and will not be enough. I battled "on the hill" to protect a whistleblower and to block a release of information which may have resulted in people being prosecuted in countries with a death penalty. It cost me a lot, but if you're not willing to walk away from prestige and fame for other peoples lives, maybe you should find another job.