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Syria Files
On 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing what it called the Syria Files, a collection of more than two million emails from Syrian political figures and ministries and from companies including Finmeccanica and Brown Lloyd James dating from August 2006 to March 2012. The emails were hacked by Anonymous before being given to WikiLeaks for release.
The Syria Files mainly embarrassed the U.S. and Assad and highlighted the ties between the two, which WikiLeaks saw as proof of Western hypocrisy. WikiLeaks was criticised in 2016 for allegedly excluding an email about a money transfer to Russia.
The release of the files began on 5 July 2012. The database comprises 2,434,899 emails from 680 domains. At least 400,000 files are in Arabic and 68,000 files in Russian and 42,000 emails were infected with malware. According to Sarah Harrison, the goal of the release was to generate a series of in-depth stories about "the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy" and how the West and Western companies "say one thing and do another."
Media organisations working with WikiLeaks on the release include the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, the Italian weekly L'espresso, the German public radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) of the ARD consortium, the French information website OWNI and the Spanish website Público. The Associated Press (AP) news agency was initially announced by WikiLeaks to be helping with the release. The claim was withdrawn by WikiLeaks and an AP spokesperson stated that AP was "reviewing the emails for possible coverage [and] did not have any advance agreement on how [it] might handle the material." WikiLeaks was criticised for sharing the emails with Al Akhbar, because Al Akhbar had been accused of bias towards Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Others said the choice would act as a balance against coverage by Western media outlets that were expected to play up Syrian crimes.
WikiLeaks released a statement saying that "In such a large collection of information, it is not possible to verify every single email at once; however, WikiLeaks and its co-publishers have done so for all initial stories to be published. We are statistically confident that the vast majority of the data are what they purport to be". Al Akhbar wrote that it was confident that "the emails are authentic, that the senders and receivers are mainly who they say they are".
WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange said that the Syria Files "helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it." Some reporters saw the Syria Files as taking a more neutral approach, without the ideology or politics associated with previous releases, but Sarah Harrison rejected the suggestion that WikiLeaks was going "mainstream". After the first 25 emails out of an expected 2.4 million were released, Foreign Policy wrote that it believed Syrian's on the fence would be the most affected by the release, and any instances of Syrian officials opening channels with rebels could get someone killed. Foreign Policy wrote that it expected Western officials and companies to be affected by the release, but that the Syrian government was an "open book" and the emails would confirm what was already known.
Before the Syria Files release, in February 2012, the Haaretz published excerpts of what it said were emails hacked from Syrian servers by Anonymous. The next month, The Guardian published emails it sourced to Syrian opposition activists.
In the weeks following the Syria Files' release in July 2012, a hacktivist group of the Anonymous collective claimed credit for obtaining the emails and providing them to WikiLeaks. Anonymous stated that it had "worked day and night" in order to access computer servers in Syria and that "the data available had been so massive that downloading it had taken several weeks." Anonymous gave the data to WikiLeaks because it judged WikiLeaks to be "supremely well equipped to handle a disclosure of this magnitude". Anonymous stated that as long as Bashar al-Assad remains in power, it will continue "to assist the courageous freedom fighters and activists in Syria".
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Syria Files
On 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing what it called the Syria Files, a collection of more than two million emails from Syrian political figures and ministries and from companies including Finmeccanica and Brown Lloyd James dating from August 2006 to March 2012. The emails were hacked by Anonymous before being given to WikiLeaks for release.
The Syria Files mainly embarrassed the U.S. and Assad and highlighted the ties between the two, which WikiLeaks saw as proof of Western hypocrisy. WikiLeaks was criticised in 2016 for allegedly excluding an email about a money transfer to Russia.
The release of the files began on 5 July 2012. The database comprises 2,434,899 emails from 680 domains. At least 400,000 files are in Arabic and 68,000 files in Russian and 42,000 emails were infected with malware. According to Sarah Harrison, the goal of the release was to generate a series of in-depth stories about "the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy" and how the West and Western companies "say one thing and do another."
Media organisations working with WikiLeaks on the release include the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, the Italian weekly L'espresso, the German public radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) of the ARD consortium, the French information website OWNI and the Spanish website Público. The Associated Press (AP) news agency was initially announced by WikiLeaks to be helping with the release. The claim was withdrawn by WikiLeaks and an AP spokesperson stated that AP was "reviewing the emails for possible coverage [and] did not have any advance agreement on how [it] might handle the material." WikiLeaks was criticised for sharing the emails with Al Akhbar, because Al Akhbar had been accused of bias towards Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Others said the choice would act as a balance against coverage by Western media outlets that were expected to play up Syrian crimes.
WikiLeaks released a statement saying that "In such a large collection of information, it is not possible to verify every single email at once; however, WikiLeaks and its co-publishers have done so for all initial stories to be published. We are statistically confident that the vast majority of the data are what they purport to be". Al Akhbar wrote that it was confident that "the emails are authentic, that the senders and receivers are mainly who they say they are".
WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange said that the Syria Files "helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it." Some reporters saw the Syria Files as taking a more neutral approach, without the ideology or politics associated with previous releases, but Sarah Harrison rejected the suggestion that WikiLeaks was going "mainstream". After the first 25 emails out of an expected 2.4 million were released, Foreign Policy wrote that it believed Syrian's on the fence would be the most affected by the release, and any instances of Syrian officials opening channels with rebels could get someone killed. Foreign Policy wrote that it expected Western officials and companies to be affected by the release, but that the Syrian government was an "open book" and the emails would confirm what was already known.
Before the Syria Files release, in February 2012, the Haaretz published excerpts of what it said were emails hacked from Syrian servers by Anonymous. The next month, The Guardian published emails it sourced to Syrian opposition activists.
In the weeks following the Syria Files' release in July 2012, a hacktivist group of the Anonymous collective claimed credit for obtaining the emails and providing them to WikiLeaks. Anonymous stated that it had "worked day and night" in order to access computer servers in Syria and that "the data available had been so massive that downloading it had taken several weeks." Anonymous gave the data to WikiLeaks because it judged WikiLeaks to be "supremely well equipped to handle a disclosure of this magnitude". Anonymous stated that as long as Bashar al-Assad remains in power, it will continue "to assist the courageous freedom fighters and activists in Syria".