20 October, 2010 — Mathaba.net
In a tweet ‘Now is a good time to mirror this WikiLeaks ‘insurance’ backup’, the whistle-blower organisation Wikileaks — which is currently the target of threats from the U.S. Pentagon after having leaked close to 100,000 ‘Afghanistan Diaries’ files — has within the last hour called on Internet, human rights and transparency activists to download and mirror an ‘Insurance File‘.
This file, which is encrypted, is widely believed to be an insurance for the organisation in the event that it comes under attack from the Pentagon, and is believed to contain material damaging to government secrecy and/or the entire Wikileaks site and archives.
The key to unlock the encrypted file would likely be published in the event that the organisation comes under attack, and the spread of the information it contains would not be censorable given that already the file has been downloaded — in one estimate over 100,000 times — around the world.