Opinion: Wikileaks classified documents leak out on Twitter
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Twitter users worldwide got a sneak peak at a trove of Wikileaks’ classified information early Sunday after copies of a German magazine containing the information were mistakenly sold early at a newsstand.
A German-speaking Twitter user early Sunday posted details of the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables hours before news magazines including Der Spiegel (Germany), the Guardian (UK), and the New York Times released their reports.
Wikileaks.org, a so-called “whistleblower” Web site that publishes leaked materials from the Department of Defense, the U.S. administration and foreign governments, was down much of Sunday and posted a message to its Twitter feed indicating that its Web site was under cyber attack.
The post read:
We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.
Wikileaks.org then posted a picture of the leaked German magazine, first reported by Gawker, adding:
Tomorrow’s Der Spiegel’s cover today
Wikileaks has urged Twitter users to follow the hashtag #cablegate rather than #wikileaks.
Follow the full Wikileaks story at the LA Times here.
-- Craig Howie
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Twitter users worldwide got a sneak peak at a trove of Wikileaks’ classified information early Sunday after copies of a German magazine containing the information were mistakenly sold early at a newsstand.
A German Twitter user early Sunday posted details of the more than 250,000 secret diplomatic cables hours before news magazines including Der Spiegel (Germany), The Guardian (UK), and The New York Times released their reports.
Wikileaks.org, a so-called “whistleblower” Web site that publishes leaked materials from the Department of Defense, the U.S. administration and foreign governments, was down much of Sunday and posted a message to its Twitter feed indicating that its Web site was under cyber attack.
The post read:
We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.
Wikileaks.org then posted a picture of the leaked German magazine, adding:
Tomorrow’s Der Spiegel’s cover today: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gawker/2010/11/spiegelgoodbig.jpg
Wikileaks has urged Twitter users to follow the hashtag #cablegate rather than #wikileaks.
Follow the full Wikileaks story at the LA Times here.
Craig Howie