The whistleblower site WikiLeaks has announced the release of practically 2.5 million emails derived from 680 Syria-related entities and domain names. They are stated to be “embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents.”

­“It helps us not merely to criticize one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it,” the announcement quotes Julian Assange, who is currently in the Ecuador embassy in London, where he is awaiting a decision on his appeal for political asylum.

The internet site says the files “shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy, but they also reveal how the West and Western firms say one factor and do another.“

Italy ‘secretly supplied’ Syria regardless of official censure

­The first revelation exposes ties in between Italian industrial giant Finmeccanica, which is 30-per cent owned by the government, and Damascus.

Despite the fact that Italy has repeatedly condemned Assad, one of Finmeccanica’s subsidiaries supplied Syria with TETRA, an costly interception-proof communications network utilised by the military and police.

Though the contract was signed in 2008, the most recent email particulars Italian engineers arriving to teach Syrians how to use the system in February this year, as the civil war raged on. Radios equipped with the system were then installed on military autos and helicopters.

The details about the contract had not been posted on Finmeccanica’s site alongside their other agreements.

In the finish the supposedly secure system did not appear to match its job description – as the leaks report that the US National Security Agency hacked the encryption code and freely intercepted Syrian communications.
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Cablegate x 100

There are 2,434,899 documents in the leak involving 678,752 various senders and 1,082,447 various recipients, WikiLeaks says. That’s about eight times the size of “Cablegate” in terms of a quantity of documents and 100 times the size in terms of data. Cablegate was the release by WikiLeaks of US State Department confidential cable exchanges among American embassies and Washington, which angered the US administration.

The entities exposed incorporate the Syrian Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Details, Transport and Culture, among other individuals.

The texts are in several languages, such as about 400,000 emails in Arabic and 68,000 emails in Russian. About 42,000 emails had been infected with viruses or trojans.

Just like prior releases of confidential information, the Syria files will be released in chunks over a period of time. Many news outlets have already received access to the database.

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Sources and more information:

• WikiLeaks: Julian Assange not leaving embassy

• Support for Assange Surges

• Julian Assange rejects police request to surrender for breaking bail terms

• Syriagate: WikiLeaks to release almost 2.5 mln emails