WikiLeaks' Julian Assange in Custody

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WikiLeaks has recently earned the ire of several entities, including government offices, embassies, diplomats and now even banks. WikiLeaks chief editor Julian Assange has recently been taken into custody. What about his strongly-encrypted “insurance” file?

WikiLeaks has long been in existence, but it has been plunged into the limelight recently with a mass release of cables exchanged between the US and its embassies around the world. The whistleblowing site also threatened an upcoming release of incriminating information on various international bank activities.

London police taking WikiLeaks editor in chief, Julian Assange, into custody might be seen as a blow to WikiLeaks by freedom of speech advocates.

Still, there’s the “insurance” file called Insurance.aes256, which Assange says is his insurance policy against a disruption in his WikiLeaks work. Available for download via BitTorrent, the file is in 256-bit AES encryption, which has not been cracked even by the US Department of Defense. Just what’s in the file is unknown, but speculations say it might be the complete archive of what WikiLeaks is supposed to release these next few days. Or, it could simply be garbage data. Will Assange release the encryption codes so the file can be opened?

Whether you’re for, or against, WikiLeaks and Assange, this will be interesting news to watch for in the next few days, as the WikiLeaks affair tells just just how free freedom of speech is.

Image credit: flickr