spiegel jumps wikileaks embargo, retracts; wikileaks under DDoS attack

Wikileaks’ twitter feed is here if you want to keep up. OWNI are running some interesting previews of the leaks here. The UK govt has sent D notices to all press including the Guardian, but hopefully the material will appear on the Guardian website overnight nonetheless – RB

Alert: WikiLeaks under DDoS attack [Update 2]
http://wlcentral.org/node/369

16:30GMT: WikiLeaks reported on Twitter: “We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.”

The Guardian’s David Leigh noted that “The #guardian will publish US embassy #cables tonight, even if #wikileaks goes down”

16:48GMT: WikiLeaks update: “El Pais, Le Monde, Spiegel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down”

17:07GMT: El País on Twitter: @wikileaks: pese al ataque a su web. El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT publicarán los papeles que desnudan la diplomacia de EEUU

“The Embassy Files” ready for launch [Update 4]
http://wlcentral.org/node/358

Der Spiegel has posted a Q&A about the ‘Embassy Files’ release. Among the details:

• Included are 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives
• One cable dates back to 1966, but most are newer than 2004
• 9,005 documents date from the first two months of 2010
• Der Spiegel, NYT, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País have had access to the files and reviewed them.

None of the documents are classified ‘Top Secret’, but only ‘Secret’ at the highest classification rating. This was also confirmed by Politico’s White House correspondent Mike Allen on Twitter, quoting the US administration. According to Der Spiegel, just over half of the cables are not subject to classification, 40.5% are classified as “confidential” and only 6% or 15,652 dispatches as “secret.” 2.5 million US employees have access to SIPRNET material, where these cables originated. A graphical representation of the worldwide distribution of the cables appears on the Spiegel site. Der Spiegel is expected to go live with the full edition at 22:30 Sunday, local time, according to a front page announcement. Read more

Update: Spiegel article may have been posted too early. It appears to have been taken down at the moment.