Encrypted material spread out to 100,000 people, says Assange

Bringing down the WikiLeaks website or getting rid of its founders or activists won't prevent further leakages of diplomatic cables as the material has been spread around to over 100,000 people in encrypted form, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a live chat on the website of UK newspaper, The Guardian. His startling revelation was made in response to a question from this correspondent about the alternative plans of action he had in case he or his website were incapacitated in any way.

"The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the U.S. and other countries, to over 100,000 people in encrypted form," Assange said. "If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically."

Due to answer questions from 1.00 pm GMT, the website opened the Q&A forum at 11.00am but was soon flooded with responses and queries. It stopped taking further admissions slightly beyond 1.00 pm. In all, it received 909 such queries for Julian Assange.

Assange selected about twenty odd questions for his responses, including that of your correspondent which became his closing statement for the Q&A session.

Your domain-b correspondent had four pointed queries for Assange.  How long could he sustain a game where the odds were so heavily stacked against him? If he were to be ''taken out'', either ''technically'' or ''physically'', what alternatives plans did he have for his cache of material? Was there a ''second line of activists'' in place? And, finally, had he ''dispersed'' his material – so that seizure of persons, or a cache, wouldn't bring the game to a stop forever?

Assange responded by saying, ''The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically.''