Anger as WikiLeaks reveals all - TODAYonline

LONDON - WikiLeaks has published its full archive of 251,000 secret United States diplomatic cables online, most of it uncensored, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention or putting their lives in danger.

The move has been strongly condemned by four previous media partners - Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais and Der Spiegel - who have worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents.

"We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk," the organisations said in a joint statement. "The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone."

Diplomats, governments, human rights charities and media organisations had urged WikiLeaks founder Assange not to release the full cache of cables without careful source protection.

The newly-published archive contains more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists; several thousand labelled with a tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistle-blowers.

The cables also contain references to people persecuted by their governments, victims of sex offences and locations of sensitive government installations and infrastructure.

At last count, there were 704 cables purportedly sent from the American Embassy in Singapore.

The cables touched on a wide variety of topics including developments in the political scene, views of Singapore's leaders and senior diplomats on other countries, as well as media freedom.

The full archive has been published in a searchable format, the first time the content has been made widely available to those without sophisticated technical skills.

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group which had been maintaining a backup version of the WikiLeaks site, revoked its support for the whistle-blowing group in the wake of the decision.

In a series of messages on Twitter, WikiLeaks seemed to suggest that it had no choice but to publish the archive because copies of the documents were already circulating online following a security breach.

WikiLeaks has blamed the Guardian for the blunder, pointing out that a sensitive password used to decrypt the files was published in a book put out by Mr David Leigh, one of the paper's investigative reporters and a collaborator-turned-critic of Assange. The Guardian, Mr Leigh and others have rejected the claim. Agencies