WikiLeaks Backup Plan Could Drop Diplomatic Bomb
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has a backup plan should anything happen to him or his notorious document-dumping website.
CBSNews.com Special Report: WikiLeaks
The legal net is tightening around Assange. On Thursday, Sweden's highest court turned down an appeal from his legal team, which means an international warrant for his arrest in a sexual assault case is valid, CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports.
(Scroll down to watch a video of this report)
Supporters of WikiLeaks around the world are downloading a file the site calls an insurance policy. The files are encrypted with a code so strong it's unbreakable, even by governments.
If anything happens to Assange or the website, a key will go out to unlock the files. There would then be no way to stop the information from spreading like wildfire because so many people already have copies.
"What most folks are speculating is that the insurance file contains unreleased information that would be especially embarrassing to the U.S. government if it were released," said Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET, a CBS company.
In other words, the Interpol arrest warrant may eventually stop Assange but not the spread of even more Wiki-secrets.
British police, who would carry out the arrests, said they haven't yet because the warrant wasn't correctly filed.
Assange is one of the most reviled or -- depending on a person's point of view -- revered men on Earth. He's in hiding somewhere in or around London and, CBS News has been told, working hard to keep his site up and running.
"He has obviously read, like everybody else, about the allegations that are in the media," said Assange lawyer Mark Stephens. "He's read about Interpol notices. He's read about warrants, but nobody's actually been in touch with him or any of his legal team."
WikiLeaks has come under multiple cyber-attacks from hackers in the past few days and on Wednesday was refused access to its U.S. computer servers run by Amazon.com.
"So it was left trying to deal with a really large and complex attack with not many servers," WikiLeaks employee James Ball said.
But Assange and his team stayed one step ahead, moving to European servers.
The website leaked even more sensitive documents Thursday. They include some eye-opening diplomatic cables in which U.S. officials complain of overwhelming corruption in Afghanistan. The diplomats claim nearly every Afghan government official is skimming money from American-funded projects.
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