Assange’s latest victim: WikiLeaks

Ah, that wacky Julian Assange. Like Waldo, you never know where the WikiLeaks founder will show up. Earlier today the Albino Aussie turned up in Berlin, speaking to a media gathering at IFA 2011, Europe’s answer to the Consumer Electronics Show.

Well that’s not technically accurate. Assange wasn’t in Berlin; he delivered his speech to the assembly of Euro journos via video. The Body Assange was hiding comfortably in a “mansion two hours north of London,” per the Associated Press. Want to see a Webcast of the speech or read a transcript? You and me both — none are available.

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Assange has good reason to be in hiding. Several government entities, most notably the U.S. State Department, would like to have a word with him in private. And he’s under house arrest for the alleged sexual assault of two women in Sweden. So travel to Berlin (a charming city, by the way) wasn’t an option in any case.

But the man never met a camera he didn’t like or has ever turned down an opportunity to blame other people for his own mistakes.

The IFA speaking gig was Assange’s first public appearance since the release of all 251,287 unredacted State Department cables last week. Though not technically “top secret,” these documents include many embarrassing revelations about the actions of various state governments, uncensored opinions about certain world leaders, and the names of dissidents under repressive regimes who were brave enough to come forward — whose lives may now be in danger.

How this data came to be in the public domain is a complicated story, starting of course with Army Private Bradley Manning handing the cache of files over to WikiLeaks in May 2010. Assange then began releasing the cables piecemeal, allowing full access to news organizations like the New York Times and the UK’s Guardian, so they could do actual reporting on the information contained within them.

In December 2010, Assange decided that his personal safety was at risk, so he posted what he called his “thermonuclear insurance file” on torrent sites across the Web. The exact contents of that file are unknown (the boys at eSarcasm took a few guesses), but it’s likely that the cables were among included.

Assange gave the password to the encrypted file containing all 251,000 cables to David Leigh, a reporter for the Guardian. Leigh later wrote an obscure book about Assange in which he published the password, thinking that because the file’s name and location were not public, it would not compromise the safety of the docs. (The Guardian also claims that Assange told them the password was only temporary and would be changed; Assange disputes this.)

According to Assange, a disgruntled former colleague (Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who founded a competing site called OpenLeaks after breaking from Assange) began spreading information about the name and the location of the file, which by this time had been mirrored all over the Web.

Assange, who had been releasing chunks of the cables to different groups like Amnesty International, finally decided to release all of the unredacted cables last week (but not before first asking the WikiLeaks Twitterati to vote on it).

Per Assange at IFA:

It was necessary to give the information in an authenticated way to the general public, to journalists and to those people who might be mentioned in those materials to show that they were mentioned and what might have been said about them …

We had a case where every intelligence agency has the material and the people who are mentioned do not have the material…. So you have a race between the bad guys and the good guys and it was necessary for us to stand on the side of the good guys.

Whether WikiLeaks is in fact one of the good guys is now a matter of debate.

Who’s at fault here? Everyone. It was, of course, highly dim-witted of Leigh and the Guardian to publish that password — though that password alone was fairly indicative of Assange’s raging ego: CollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay#

You’d think the diplomatic history of the world for the past 45 years is a little bit bigger than 250,000 cables — unless, of course, you’re Julian Assange. If he’d used a gibberish password like X98TY4DSZQ2L5, do you think anyone would have been tempted to publish it?

Leigh also confirmed that Bradley Manning was the source of the original leak, despite promising Assange he would not. Manning has been locked up tight since the feds arrested him in June 2010, but judging from reports by hacker/journalist Adrian Lamo — who first tipped off the U.S. government about Manning and the document leak — he seems like a deeply troubled young man. By releasing all the cables to WikiLeaks, Manning’s status changed from principled whistleblower to saboteur.

As for Domscheit-Berg, he’s also been whacked on the head with the stupid stick. If you want to tell the world what an irresponsible egomaniac Assange has been, that’s fine — but you don’t do it by being an equally irresponsible egomaniac. The marriage of the stupidly leaked password with the location of the file it applies to comes down to a spat between two ego-driven radicals. Gee, that’s one we all haven’t heard before.

But I’m reserving the lion’s share of the blame here for the white wonder from down under, who put the file on the Internet in the first place and then gave somebody he didn’t know very well the keys to the kingdom.

Assange had the files, and it was his responsibility to keep them safe and secure, turn them back over to the U.S. State Department, or destroy them. He could have redacted the cables himself and given only those files to news organizations. He could have split the files into pieces and distributed different ones to different media outlets, to minimize the exposure if a password leaked. He did none of those things.

Hey Jules: If you ever find yourself in possession of state secrets again — assuming you don’t spend the rest of your life in prison — here’s some advice.

Want to keep something a secret? Don’t tell anybody else.

Want to keep an encrypted file encrypted? Don’t give the password to a stranger. If you must give the password to a stranger, don’t make it something that’s easy to remember.

If you must put the file on the InterWebs, don’t leave it there for seven months or assume because you put it in an encrypted file in a “hidden” directory with a “secret” name (z.gpg), that nobody will find it and crack it. You hide it in plain sight with a name like “consolidated financial reports,” and bury the actual information deep inside a lot of dummy data.

Better yet: Don’t put the friggin’ thing on the InterWebs in any form. Ever heard of an encrypted flash drive and a safety deposit box? How about microfilm and a hidden compartment in the heel of your shoe? Assange may think himself as some kind of master spy, but he’s less James Bond and more Maxwell Smart.

At IFA, Assange said he decided to release the unredacted files so that diplomatic informants could search to see if their names were revealed — presumably before jackbooted thugs burst down their doors and shipped them off to their own private Gitmo.

How nice. What this release really is about is Assange trying desperately to remain at the center of the story. It’s ego. What a shock.

I used to be a supporter of WikiLeaks. I still support the principles behind it. As independent media withers up and blows away, we are increasingly at the mercy of megacorps for our information. Independent, untouchable, unimpeachable sources for secrets those in power don’t want you to know could fill the gap left by the death of investigative journalism. That was the idea, anyway. The reality turns out to be slightly different.

What’s your take? Is Assange an angel or an ass? Post your thoughts below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Assange’s latest victim: WikiLeaks,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.