Zahlen, bitte! 2,325,961 Cablegate files from Wikileaks

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange reached an agreement with the USA at the end of June 2024: He pleaded guilty before a US federal court to being involved in a "conspiracy to obtain information for national defense" and was convicted and immediately deported.

He made a commitment to the court to delete all unpublished files that could weaken the national defense of the USA. Now the big guessing game has begun: how many files are there and can they even be removed from the network world?

Zahlen, bitte!

In this section, we present amazing, impressive, informative and funny figures ("Zahlen") from the fields of IT, science, art, business, politics and, of course, mathematics every Tuesday. The wordplay "Zahlen, bitte!" for a section about numbers is based on the ambiguity of the German word "Zahlen." On one hand, "Zahlen" can be understood as a noun in the sense of digits and numerical values, which fits the theme of the section. On the other hand, the phrase "Zahlen, bitte!" is reminiscent of a waiter's request in a restaurant or bar when they are asked to bring the bill. Through this association, the section acquires a playful and slightly humorous undertone that catches the readers' attention and makes them curious about the presented numbers and facts.

• Alle Artikel zu "Zahlen, bitte!"

The transcript of the memorable court hearing (ENG, PDF) is clear: "Before pleading guilty in court, the defendant will take all measures in his power to cause the return to the United States or the destruction of all unpublished information in his possession, custody or that of Wikileaks or a subsidiary organization of Wikileaks."

Not much notice of deletions

This means that a major deletion operation must have taken place before the actual trial, but the global public noticed little of it. Both the Wikileaks file list and the list from an alternative server – accessed a week after the verdict – name a whole series of US documents that are still available.

The first question that needs to be clarified is which or how much previously unpublished US data is actually eligible for deletion. In his article "Wikileaks and the Empire" (ENG, PDF), published in 2015 in the anthology "The Wikileaks Files: The World according to US Empire", Assange states that Wikileaks has collected 2,325,961 Cablegate files on the activities of the empire, i.e., the US State Department, the military and the various services concerned with US security. A deletion operation of this magnitude is likely to be a massive task for the volunteers who are now managing the Wikileaks material.

There are now other interpretations of the agreement between Assange's lawyers and the US judiciary. One observer of the proceedings assumes that the agreement only concerns the files that soldier Bradley Manning sent to Wikileaks. These were the war diaries with 391,831 files on the second US war in Iraq and 76,910 files on the time in Afghanistan, including the collateral murder video with a size of 630 megabytes.

Gaining notoriety with a documented war crime

This video catapulted Wikileaks into the global public eye in 2010. The deletion action should be feasible on this scale, and many of the war diary files have already been published and therefore do not need to be deleted. This was pointed out by Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson, who has been defending Assange for many years.

Speaking of lawyers: a whole host of lawyers around the world have been campaigning for Assange's release since he was placed under house arrest in the UK at the end of May 2011. According to the Wau Holland Foundation, which supports Assange financially, a total of 16 million euros has been spent on lawyers and campaigns for Assange's release.

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The costs could also include the 256,000 US dollars that whistleblower Chelsea Manning was ordered to pay after she refused to testify before a secret jury against Wikileaks and Assange. Until her release, she attempted suicide twice due to a lack of medical care in prison. The sum was collected by a crowdfunding campaign within 48 hours, and a further 50,000 dollars were raised for Manning's start to freedom. Several fundraising campaigns were also launched in the case of Julian Assange.

In addition, the costs of 520,000 US dollars for the charter flight that brought Assange to Australia with a detour to US territory need to be covered. Allegedly, an anonymous donor has already transferred 500,000 dollars in bitcoins.

A judgment that was hard-won and has some consequences.

Note: In Germany, you can find help and support for problems of all kinds, including questions about suicide, at telefonseelsorge.de and by calling 0800/1110111 or 0800/1110222. There are also free help services in Austria.

(anw)