WikiLeaks reveals Saudi intrigue and unpaid limo bills

[Little Tich]

Source: Yahoo! News / AP

ISTANBUL (AP) — At the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, diplomats talked about airing the grievances of disenchanted local youth using Facebook and Twitter. At the embassy in Khartoum, they reported anxiously on Iran's military aid to Sudan.

Meanwhile, the Saudi mission in Geneva got stuck dealing with a multi-million dollar limo bill racked up by a Saudi princess and her entourage.

The incidents are mentioned in diplomatic documents published Friday by WikiLeaks, only the first batch of what the transparency group says will be a much larger release. But they've already provided an unusual level of insight into day-to-day Saudi diplomacy — giving a snapshot of the lavish spending habits of senior royals and the political intrigue percolating across the Middle East.

WikiLeaks so far has published roughly 60,000 documents, of which The Associated Press only has been able to authenticate a handful. But the organization has a long track record of hosting large leaks of government material and in a statement released late Saturday the Saudi government acknowledged its diplomatic servers had been penetrated ahead of the mass disclosure.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/wikileaks-reveals-saudi-intrigue-unpaid-limo-bills-091230472.html

[Blue_Tires]

1. That's it? Social media discussion and limo bills??

[polly7]

2. Wikileaks to Publish 500,000 Leaked Documents the Saudi Government Doesn't Want its Citizens to See

Posted 20 June 2015 14:38 GMT

Wikileaks has started publishing more than half a million leaked documents from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A total of 61,000 documents, in Arabic, are already online, creating a rich fodder of information on the secret correspondence behind the scenes in the Saudi corridors of power.

Saudis are however being warned from going anywhere near the leaked documents, sharing them or believing their contents.

The information dump, dubbed The Saudi Cables, reveal secret communications from Saudi Embassies, as well as “Top Secret” reports from other Saudi state institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom's General Intelligence Services, according to a Press release made by the whistle blowing site.

“The massive cache of data also contains a large number of email communications between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and foreign entities. The Saudi Cables are being published in tranches of tens of thousands of documents at a time over the coming weeks. Today WikiLeaks is releasing around 70,000 documents from the trove as the first tranche.”

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/06/20/wikileaks-to-publish-500000-leaked-documents-the-saudi-government-doesnt-want-its-citizens-to-see/

Published on
Friday, June 19, 2015
byCommon Dreams

'Secretive Dictatorship' Exposed as Wikileaks Publishes Massive Trove of Saudi Cables

Famed publisher of government and corporate secrets says half-a-million documents will be leaked in coming weeks, with first batch out Friday

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer

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"The Saudi Cables lift the lid on a increasingly erratic and secretive dictatorship that has not only celebrated its 100th beheading this year, but which has also become a menace to its neighbors and itself," said Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. (Image: Matt E/flickr/cc)

WikiLeaks on Friday began publishing more than half a million top-secret documents from Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry, including communications from Saudi embassies across the globe, information from other state institutions, and correspondence with foreign entities.

While analysts have not yet pored through the documents, the files are poised to expose the Saudi government, whose atrocious human rights record is being put on display with its ongoing bombing and blockade of Yemen. They could also shed light on the relationships between Saudi Arabia and its close allies throughout the region and world, including the United States.

WikiLeaks said that the massive trove of cables will be published in bunches of tens of thousands over the next few weeks. As of Friday, at least 61,205 documents had been published, with more troves expected in coming days. The cables are being hosted on an online database and can be searched here.

As for where the files came from, the famed publisher of government and corporate secrets said:

Since late March 2015 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been involved in a war in neighboring Yemen. The Saudi Foreign Ministry in May 2015 admitted to a breach of its computer networks. Responsibility for the breach was attributed to a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army. The group subsequently released a number of valuable "sample" document sets from the breach on file-sharing sites, which then fell under censorship attacks. The full WikiLeaks trove comprises thousands of times the number of documents and includes hundreds of thousands of pages of scanned images of Arabic text. In a major journalistic research effort, WikiLeaks has extracted the text from these images and placed them into our searchable database. The trove also includes tens of thousands of text files and spreadsheets as well as email messages, which have been made searchable through the WikiLeaks search engine.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/19/secretive-dictatorship-exposed-wikileaks-publishes-massive-trove-saudi-cables

[hedda_foil]

3. Wow! AP is calling Wikileaks a "transparency group"

And "and famed publisher of government and corporate secrets "!That's a huge leap from the disdainful smearing they've gotten before.

[erronis]

4. Bravo for AP for making that leap!

[TexasBushwhacker]

5. Yeah, leaking other countries' documents is great

Leaking American documents, not so much.