On Feb. 27th, 2012, the Washington Post reported on WikiLeaks' latest document release: 5 million of Stratfor's company e-mails. For those that don't remember, the hacker group Anonymous broke into Stratfor and swiped those e-mails. Stratfor is a private intelligence firm that engages in "global geopolitical analysis."
Interestingly, WikiLeaks has been criticized for releasing this recent batch of e-mails. According to the WashPo article, the e-mails are rather innocuous and mostly deal with "off-color office banter." One e-mail exchange dealt with employees stealing each other's lunches; truly an egregious offense, but not one worth WikiLeaks time. A few commentators have questioned whether this isthe best that WikiLeaks can do.
However, Julian Assange (the head of WikiLeaks) has promised some juicier stuff in the coming weeks. Notably, the article mentioned e-mails about Stratfor's offshore tax havens, secret intelligence, and monitoring of activist groups for corporations. In fact, the New York Times reported that some of the material pertained to the U.S. government's investigation into WikiLeaks and its possible attempt to "subvert" WikiLeaks. We'll see.
Another interesting point is how WikiLeaks got the e-mails. Remember, Anonymous stole the e-mails in the first place; WikiLeaks didn't explicitly acknowledge that it got the e-mails from Anonymous. Nevertheless, it seems pretty certain that Anonymous handed them over. Anonymous and WikiLeaks . . . truly a match made in heaven.
You can find the Washington Post source article here.
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