James Ball of The Guardian reports:
A Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables. The user is believed to have found the information after acting on hints published in several media outlets and on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, all of which cited a member of rival whistleblowing website OpenLeaks as the original source of the tipoffs.
[…]
WikiLeaks published a statement blaming the documents’ release on the Guardian’s book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, by investigations editor David Leigh and Luke Harding, published in February 2011.
The statement, released on WikiLeaks’s official Twitter feed, alleged: “A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation of a signed security agreement with the Guardian’s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive. We have already spoken to the state department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course.” The Guardian denies WikiLeaks’s allegations.
[…]
The embassy cables were shared with the Guardian through a secure server for a period of hours, after which the server was taken offline and all files removed, as was previously agreed by both parties. This is considered a basic security precaution when handling sensitive files. But unknown to anyone at the Guardian, the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music. This file’s contents were never publicised, nor was it linked online to WikiLeaks in any way.
Read more on The Guardian. WikiLeaks’ editorial on the breach can be found here.