The fallout from the latest WikiLeaks release continues, with new details being released daily and new battles between hackers supporting WikiLeaks and those who are attempting to stifle the site financially.

The Guardian, one of the papers that received prior access to the material, has taken a thorough look at reactions in the countries where papers received direct access to the WikiLeaks cables:

• - Editor of El Pais Javier Moreno said that the impact within Spain and Latin America had been huge, and it was without any doubt "the biggest story I've had in my five years as editor of El Paí­s," probably "the biggest story this newspaper has ever been involved with." The paper did a four-part series on the national court, looking at high-profile cases in which the US embassy in Madrid has tried to influence cases involving US citizens.

• - Sylvie Kauffmann, editor of Le Monde said that at first, several well-known political figures and commentators were strongly against the publication of the cables. The industry minister, Eric Besson, called for a ban on French servers hosting WikiLeaks. But then, public opinion recognized that the newspapers working on the cables had behaved responsibly, and had selected material in an expert way.
• - Der Spiegel's joint editor-in-chief Georg Mascolo described the reactions of the German media to the cables. A journalist in the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote of the danger that the cables could bring, and another in Die Zeit accused Der Spiegel and the other publications which published the data of destroying trust.
• - Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, said that the US government had responded in a controlled manner and had "engaged us in an effort to minimise the damage by excising information that could get people killed." He also described how the huge reader response was split between those focused on the phenomenon of WikiLeaks and those interested in the content of the documents, the first group outnumbering the second.

Keller's point is an interesting one: which is the bigger story - the contents of the cables themselves, or the way that they came to light? All the papers which got the cables, and others, have published a string of stories based on information in the documents, each focusing on the issues that their target markets might find most interesting. And these stories have undoubtedly had their impact, but the one story that seems to have sparked most international debate is the story of Wikileaks itself and of its mysterious founder Julian Assange.

Reactions to the leak and WikiLeaks' role in the process have been largely divided in two, with anger and fear on one side and support and praise on the other. Nobody is indifferent. To some, the leaking of such documents is a crime that endangers national security, for others, it is an expression of a purer and more open democracy, allowing public scrutiny of the actions of a powerful elite.

As has been noted by many, the international reaction has been far greater than that regarding WikiLeaks' previous leaks, despite the fact that these revealed substantial new information about the consequences of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. These anecdotal documents, far easier for the average person to understand, have been greeted as far more dangerous, despite the fact that they supposedly came from the same source.

Casting WikiLeaks, and consequently Julian Assange, as either villain or hero has been an easy step for many to take, but it seems that the story is in fact more complex and the roles less defined. Yes, Wikileaks offered itself as a means to securely leak documents, and orchestrated media coverage of these. But the fundamental crux of the story is the fact that technology has made it possible to do this: to transfer digital information quickly and easily, and to publish it in an accessible way.

Locking up Julian Assange and crushing Wikileaks will not make this fact go away. Now that this can happen, leaks are far easier to orchestrate, and someone else will do it if WikiLeaks can't. Already, a rival site has been set up by former WikiLeaks staff, called OpenLeaks, which aims to be non-political and to release information in a low key way, according to V3.co.uk.
For governments, concern is understandable, but for news organisations, whose traditional role of watchdog has been threatened by a lack of resources, surely this is a positive development?

Source: Guardian