Actually, the hype preceding the actual release of the documents seemed to be greater than the sum of the several hundred of 250,000 or so documents that Wikileaks plans on eventually releasing. The first batch was released on its special “Cablegate” website on November 28th. It’s called Cablegate, of course, because the leaked documents are largely cables that were sent from U.S. embassies, consulates, and diplomats around the world to the State Department, via SIPRNet, the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, a special under-the-radar internet run by the U.S. Defense Department. Not under-the-radar enough, apparently – according to the guy who allegedly handed the documents over to Wikileaks, a U.S. soldier, it was “childishly easy” to get access to the cables (the whole leak story is documented here.

Based on the press reports so far, the Cablegate documents don’t contain any real bombshells; most of them contain information we already kind of knew (of course Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, along with Israel, want to eliminate Iran as a threat, and the U.S. had to bribe countries into taking Guantanamo detainees – why else would they take them?). But of course, things are different when you see them in print or online. On the other hand, we’re only at the beginning of the process – a mere few hundred of the promised 250,000 plus documents have been released so far. It’s possible the Wikileaks people are saving the “juicy” stuff for later.

Whether the initial fears pan out – that the Cablegate documents will cause all manner of international mischief and even endanger the lives of those named (and those suspected of being the ones not named) as sources, the cat is out of the bag, and there’s no chance of stuffing it back in. What does it all mean? Well, the news media (especially the “Chosen” outlets, like the Guardian and the New York Times) will tell you what they think you ought to know. But Cablegate is all about power to the people – and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making your own decisions on what content is important and what isn’t.

There are several sites on the internet that have begun to try and organize the information that has been released so far, like the Guardian’s blog page, which has an index of which embassy the cables were sent from and when, the subject matter, graphics of where the data relates to, and other interesting information. But not the contents of the cables themselves. The Guardian is one of the papers chosen to disseminate the information, and in what seems to me to be a restriction completely at odds with the spirit – and fact – of Wikileaks’ releasing the data to the public, the Guardian won’t let you download the cables from their site, just information on who sent what to whom, when, and on what subject.

I would suggest downloading your own copy of the archive itself; Wikileaks offers a torrent of the full archive released so far, which you can download using an application that supports Bittorrent downloads. Remember, Wikileaks has only released a few hundred of the promised documents so far, so the archive isn’t all that big – just a few megabytes or so. You can also find alternative copies of this archive on various torrent download sites around the internet, as well as a torrent of a download of the full Wikileaks site itself, which several enterprising folk pulled when Wikileaks reported that its site was getting attacked (just do a search for “Cablegate torrent” and you’ll find plenty of hosts to download the archive from).

I’d suggest going with the latter; the unzipped torrent downloaded directly from the Wikileaks site was pretty bare-bones, and although it is in HTML format, for use with a web browser, my copy was missing an index, or home page file – meaning that I got annoying boxes instead of graphics, and not very pleasant looking pages. The archive of the full site itself I got from a third-party site was much nicer looking. With either version, you can use your operating system’s search engine to narrow down the data you want – Israel, Iran, sex (don’t bother, because it looks like they cut out all the good parts). You can also get updates on the latest releases and other useful information at the Cablegate Facebook page (the comments are quite interesting; not everyone, it appears, believes that Wikileaks is really on the peoples’ side).

Regardless, you will now have the same information the folks at the Guardian and the Times have, and you will be able to read for yourself what the brouhaha is all about. Or will you? It’s possible that the reason the documents are having a much more mellow impact than expected is because they are much more mellow than they are supposed to be. Many of the cables as published by the site contain a disclaimer: “This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.” Huh? I thought this was about no-holds-barred, out in the open, give the people what they want journalism? Did someone “get” to Wikileaks’ publisher Julian Assange? How is it that this guy is actually still walking around after revealing this sensitive data – much less the scandalous (for the U.S. government) information he released earlier this year about Iraq? This sounds like a story that needs to be investigated by a dynamic, gimme the truth no matter how bad it hurts kind of website – like Wikileaks?

Actually, it’s not that big of a secret – millions of people know about it already. But it is the most frequently asked question in my e-mail box; the question of how to download movies and such. I try not to answer such questions in print, because there are legal issues involved – as in it’s illegal to download commercial movies using the Internet (in this case, the Bittorrent network, which I will describe to those not yet in the know forthwith).

Opinions – legal and personal – on file sharing run the gamut, with some condemning it outright and suing the pants off anybody caught doing it (http://www.riaa.com/), to groups that seek a more creative solution to a technological advance that many believe cannot be sued out of existence, just like all the advances that came before and interfered with the “traditional” ways of doing things (http://www.eff.org). Today, the most popular method for P2P file distribution is with the Bittorrent system (http://www.bittorrent.com), where users upload or download a small segment of a much larger file as part of a peer-sharing network. When all the pieces (hashes) get to the recipient’s computer, the file is assembled into a whole.

Although Bittorrent as a protocol, along with its aligned software and Web sites, has a reputation as a being a den of of mass copyright thievery, there are plenty of legal ways to use Bittorrent; many open source or Gnu license programs, like Open Office, offer Bittorrent downloads (http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/) because they make downloading of large files easier – for both the user (who can easily pause the process in the middle) and the central server (which can rely a wide network of supporting PCs sharing portions of the file, lessening the load on the server). There are plenty of files legally available for Bittorrent protocol users; you can find a nice list of sources for such files at http://tinyurl.com/26dmvu.

And, as it turns out, torrent downloading has turned out to be a boon for democracy, freedom, and independence – because torrent download sites are, as of right now (Sunday), just about the only way you will be able to get to see the now-banned Internet movie called Fitna (http://tinyurl.com/3bzwjs).

Fitna is a 16 and a half minute film produced by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, head of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Dutch parliament. The very chilling film shows footage of terrorist attacks by Islamist fanatics in Israel, New York, London, and of course Holland, interspersed with calls by Muslim clerics to kill Jews, Westerners, and a whole raft of other people. The scenes are graphic, and the combination of the bloody scenes with verses from the Koran and footage of Islamist preachers is not for the weak of heart.

Fitna was originally hosted at http://www.liveleak.com – but was removed sometime over the weekend due to threats by extremists against the staff of the site, which is located in the UK, and which has its own share of radical Muslims. Instead of the page where the film was hosted after it was released last Thursday displaying the video (http://tinyurl.com/3chhug), there is a message saying, among other things, that the site’s staff had been threatened, and that the fear of harm to LiveLeak workers was very real indeed.

While LiveLeak pulled down the video, there are a couple of sites on the Web that uploaded it as well, and haven’t removed it – yet. For example, as of Sunday night, the film was still up at http://tinyurl.com/2knwku, a Google Video site. That might not last too long, though, according to http://tinyurl.com/2zn6lp. Interestingly, the official site of the movie (http://www.fitnathemovie.com/) is down as well, with the message that “ Network Solutions is investigating whether the site’s content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy,” because it had received complaints about the site. Of course, we can imagine what Network Solutions means by “complaints,” given the situation on other Web sites that hosted the film.

Whether or not, as Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said (http://tinyurl.com/2lld6x), Fitna “is an obvious attempt to generate discord between faith communities,” these same sites host hundreds of anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic films (http://tinyurl.com/2nbup4) and have not removed them despite protests (not threats, notice) by Jewish groups. And just like LiveLeak, Youtube, and all the rest would defend their hosting of neo-Nazi clips as “freedom of expression,” they have an obligation to allow opinions that others disagree with to be expressed as well.

But they also have an obligation to self-preservation, I guess – which is why the rules that apply to Jews, American soldiers in Iraq, and even Barack Obama’s preacher, do not apply to Muslims. In other words, I wouldn’t count on Web sites as long term hosts for this film; if you want to see it, the best way is to download it yourself. And that brings us back to Bittorrent; as things stand now, it’s the most reliable way for you to stand up for your rights to see the film that major Web sites are afraid to touch with a 10 foot pole.

Here’s how to do it: First, you need a torrent download program. The best one around is unquestionably Vuze (http://www.vuze.com/app), formerly known as Azureus. Vuze takes care of much of the “bookkeeping” that goes with torrent downloading (you’re expected to share as well as download). Installation is simple, and you can download files with one click.

Once installed, you need to find a torrent download site that host the film. For this, a Google search – something along the lines of “fitna +torrent” – will do the job. You can find it here (http://www.mininova.org/tor/1283065) if you’d prefer not to search, though. Once on the page, search out the small button that reads “Azureus magnet link” and click on it; the file will begin automatically downloading to your computer, informing you when the download begins and ends. The file is in .flv format and is only 39.6 MB, so the download should be done in several minutes. To view the film, download and install the free VLC media player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/), a cross-platform media player that can handle just about any file you throw at it. Once downloaded, sit back and watch – and be happy that there are still some people sticking up for your right to watch a film that needs to be seen, and that you have a right to see.