WikiLeaks released the personal information of hundreds of innocent people including sexual abuse and rape victims, according to the Associated Press.
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WikiLeaks has long committed itself to exposing government secrets through the publication of diplomatic cables and other classified information.
In one shocking case, the site published the name of a gay man in Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by death.
There were also two instances in which teenage rape victims were named, according to the AP. A trove of diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry, first published a year ago, includes at least 124 medical files, according to the AP, including those belonging to mentally ill patients, children, and refugees.
Ironically WikiLeaks’ claims to champion privacy but at the same time it is getting clear that the organisation is not vetting any of the material it is leaking.
“They published everything: my phone, address, name, details”, an unnamed Saudi man told the AP, whose paternity dispute with his former partner had been published by the website. If the family of my wife saw this.
An investigative report revealed that the personal details of thousands of people were released by WikiLeaks.
The Saudi diplomatic cables alone hold at least 124 medical files, with some describing patients with psychiatric conditions, seriously ill children or refugees.
One woman named in the files, a partially disabled Saudi who had secretly gone into debt to support a sick relative, said she was devastated. Transparency activist Paul Dietrich tells the AP that he uncovered more than 500 passports, employment files, and academic records after conducting a partial scan of the Saudi cables.
People can also search within recently published documents such as the Democratic National Committee’s 19,252 leaked emails, or Hillary Clinton’s archive of emails that were stored on her own private server. “What is the use of publishing my story?”
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“What if my brothers, neighbours, people I know or even don’t know have seen it?”
