BIGGEST TARGET IN THE WORLD

Daniel Domscheit-Berg

IN the middle of 2010, we were sitting on a huge pile of documents concerning the war in Afghanistan: 91,000 of them, to be precise, from the US Central Command.

We decided to get the media involved right from the start. We had agreed not to reveal to the journalists that even more revelations were waiting in the wings.

Amid the debate engendered by the leaks, criticism was growing ever louder that WL's only enemy was the US. There were many corners of the globe, critics argued, that equally deserved to have the spotlight turned on them.

There were many reasons for this. First, Julian Assange's frustration with American foreign policy was fed by the simple fact that the US played a leading role in most of the world's major conflicts.

Another, more banal, reason why we focused on the US was the language barrier. It wasn't easy to gauge the significance of a document even when it was written in English. Julian speaks no foreign languages at all.

The third and most significant reason for our focus, though, was that by homing in on the US, we were seeking out the biggest possible adversary.

It would have been a far less attractive prospect for Julian to end up in some jail in Africa, or wearing concrete boots at the bottom of some Russian river, than to inform the world that he was being pursued by the CIA.

At the same time we had to defend ourselves against growing external pressure. On July 30, 2010, WL posted a 1.4 gigabyte encrypted file on the domain of the Afghanistan documents, including those withheld from publication as well as on several internet exchange platforms. The file is named "insurance.aes256".

I don't know what it contains. The file has been encoded using the symmetrical encryption system AES256, which makes it relatively well protected against attempts to decode it.

This security file was created to prevent anyone from destroying WL or trying to attack or take one of us out of commission in an attempt to hinder the publication of further documents.

I had arduously copied the file on to USB sticks that could be read later using publicly distributed decryption keys, and sent or given them to dozens of people I trusted. Among them were German Green Party politicians, journalists and figures I knew I could rely on.

Our technicians came up with a solution for how the passwords could be made public in case anything should happen. The method is called the "dead-man switch". At the time, I was unaware there was also a plan to publish the file on the internet and distribute it on random download platforms. I would have been against that if I had known. Even if it would take a huge amount of time and effort to decode the file, the possibility that it could happen can never be ruled out entirely.

I have no idea whether anyone was ultimately interested in our security mechanism or whether it prevented the powers that be from arresting us. We all, in any case, believed it did.

Later in 2010, when Julian was sitting in protective custody after the Swedish accusations made against him, he purportedly told his lawyer that we would consider using the "thermonuclear device"-- that is, publicising the key to the insurance file -- if he were extradited to Sweden.

That was not what the insurance file was intended for. It was supposed to protect WL collaborators and our documents, not to ensure Julian avoided investigation in a democratic country, where the investigations concern a private matter.

Our need for such a protective mechanism was confirmed, at the latest, when our colleague Jacob Appelbaum was detained and interrogated while trying to re-enter the US.

By comparison, Julian's tales of being pursued appear harmless. In May, when Julian's passport was confiscated as he tried to enter Australia, the alleged scandal was passed on by news agencies around the world. Julian gave a number of interviews on Australian TV claiming there was no longer anywhere he was safe. But I've seen that passport. It was totally mangled. The most likely story is some border-control official simply wanted to convince himself it was indeed a form of identification and not a bit of paper fished from the trash. And the officials involved returned the passport after a few minutes.

Edited extract.