By now, you’ve probably heard that Wikileaks managed to have over 250K classified US diplomatic dispatches released out into the digital wilds, complete with the names of what used to be informants and intelligence assets in a large number of unpleasant countries.  I say ‘used to be’ because, thanks to Wikileaks, a lot of those people are going to be arrested, fined, turned, beaten, coerced, raped, tortured, imprisoned, and/or killed.  Spiegel has the details of how it happened; the details can be summed up as A variety of adult children stole and disseminated information that the US State Department had officially deemed too dangerous to distribute free; and these children did so in a manner that demonstrated that the State Department was right.

Seriously, the whole thing – what with the theatrical, too-complicated security arrangements; the lackadaisical treatment of the original information; the pointless grudge matches; and of course the lack of self-control – reads like a demented high school clique fight.  Except that those usually don’t end with SAVAK goons raping and murdering dissidents in underground interrogation rooms.

Just to remind potential financial supporters of Wikileaks about what their money is likely to be funding.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I believe that Julian Assange needs to be escorted over to this country now, please.  “In irons” will be fine.

PPS: This was not a breakdown of the Wikileaks system, by the way.  This is the Wikileaks system.  Wikileaks is about people deciding that they are better-suited than the authorities are at handling and defining sensitive material.  I believe that we now have empirical evidence about how well they’re able to handle such things.