WikiLeaks exposes private intelligence company Stratfor: “Private lives, private lies, private spies”

WikiLeaks (WL) today started publishing what it has dubbed The Global Intelligence Files (GIFiles), which is “more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered ‘global intelligence’ company Stratfor.”

“The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients,” said WikiLeaks in a statement on Monday 27 February.

WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and spokespeople from some of the international media partners that have been working for months on this release addressed media at a press conference held in London. The press conference was also live-streamed online to an audience of around 2700.

As far as the Australian perspective goes (so far), two items of note came up. First off, Peter Wilson from The Australian was present and put a question regarding possible involvement, or perceived involvement by WL, of Stratfor in Assange’s potential extradition. It is unclear whether other Australian media have had access to the GIFiles data or intend to cover this latest WL release. When I asked him earlier about involvement in this release, Philip Dorling from Fairfax responded to my inquiry saying “could be”, so wait and watch. So far it seems SMH has covered the story using Reuters copy, and The Australian used AFP.

Second Australian centric piece of information out of the press conference: Assange noted that Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull was, or is, subscribed to receive updates from Stratfor. It should be pointed out that anyone is able to sign up for Stratfor’s free weekly email updates. Assange mentioned Turnbull’s subscription as a way of demonstrating potential reach and influence of Stratfor’s analysis.

Here are my Twitter updates from the press conference:

For more information, see the full media release from WikiLeaks here, or look at Twitter #gifiles.