Data you don't want out gets out anyway

16 Nov 2007 // A "military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the Web," Wired News reported. Although marked as unclassified, the Pentagon has thus far failed to provide the manual through a Freedom of Information Request filed in 2003, according to the online news site.

The manual was hosted by Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a platform created by activist as a clearinghouse for posting government documents. The submitters are anonymized through various encryption and security technologies. Thus far about 1.2 million documents have been posted, according to the site. Since contributors can not be identified, it is left to the visitors of the site to decide if the document they are viewing is authentic.

Along similar lines, though not quite as confrontational, is the newly open-for-business Governmentdocs.org, run by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Although not a leaked documents site, it posts documents freed by FOIAs and state sunshine laws in order to offer citizens "unprecedented level of access to government documents."

Both of these sites are the grandchildren of Cryptome, John Young's long-running Web site of sensitive documents, government or otherwise.