General Question

gunther's avatar

What are the documents released by WikiLeaks about?

Asked by gunther (169points) December 7th, 2010

I’ve read a number of articles either praising or condemning the recent release of documents by WikiLeaks, but none of the articles I’ve read said what the documents are actually about. If they compromise national security, how specifically do they do so?

If someone could summarize, I’d much appreciate it.

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4 Answers

Vincentt's avatar

If you read the papers (I suppose this goes for most papers), there are quite some articles analysing released facts. For example, today I read something about a list being made public that the US compiled of essential sites (such as energy plants crucial for energy supply in certain parts of the US, or places in Europe where communication lines such as internet cables reached the shore that enabled intercontinental communication). This could be considered sensitive for being able to function as a to do list for terrorists, but one could also argue that most items on the list can be thought of by yourself and that the locations of those sites are known to the public anyway.

To summarize all of the documents leaked up til now (which is a mere fraction of what is yet to be released) would be undoable, really, but it’s not hard to find articles highlighting crucial documents.

food's avatar

Private diplomatic information from all over the world, that was sent by diplomats of different embassies periodically in order to keep the U.S. informed and thus alert about any possible terrorist attack or hostility against the u.s. The people that condemn wikileaks do so because there is information not only about diplomats, but about a lot of people in foreign countries and their governments who will thus be in danger. In addition to that, wars have started with a lot less information than what has been released on that webpage.

Vincentt's avatar

Note that the embassies @food talks of were all US embassies though, and represent how the US ambassadors perceived the respective countries.

food's avatar

Haha, yes, I forgot to mention that the embassies are U.S. embassies

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