As I write this I'm downloading tens of thousands of classified documents on the Afghanistan war. I don't know what else I may be downloading with them. These are the mysterious "insurance files" I just learned about from a Tweet dispatched by the controversial whistleblower website Wikileaks, founded by the enigmatic Julian Assange. The best way to stay up to date on Wikileaks is by following it on Twitter. A cryptic tweet just appeared: "Now is a good time to mirror this Wikileaks 'insurance' backup."

The "insurance backup" is a file, purportedly encrypted, and the encryption key will be made available if and when Wikileaks comes under attack by the Pentagon. Should I ever get the encryption key, I will have a mirrored copy of classified military memos, missives, and reports directly from the Afghan theater. The "insurance backup" has already been downloaded an estimated 100,000 times. I would say the cat's out of the bag; the genie can't be put back into the bottle.
Assange has been under fire from the Obama Administration for publishing a six year archive comprising 76,000 secret military reports. Many of these are thought to put the war in Afghanistan in doubt. The pending Iraq dump promises to be 10 times the volume of the July Afghanistan upload. The problem is that Wired Magazine announced the Iraq reports would be online October 18. As of this writing, however, Wikileaks is down for a "scheduled maintenance," and Assange claims there never was an official release date for the Iraq files.
Flash: Wikileaks just announced that a website called DiaryDig has been released. It is an independently produced, fully searchable web service that queries the Wikileak's Afghan War Diaries database.
Here's an example of a searched memo from DiaryDig. It is a translated propaganda message, distributed around Hajarjuft: "Islamic imarats of Afghanistan. For the brave warlords of Afghanistan, salam alaikoom. As you know that Afghanistan is the land of brave people and historical people who at the first time in the cradle his child/kid how to be brave."
Here is a memo pertaining to direct fire: "3-to-4 passengers , small arms fire, in the vicinity of 42 SWB 3910 1617, unknown , 4:15 GMT , AK-47 . E nemy elements broken contact. Quick response force prepositioned to orgun-e. 5:50 GMT update summit 09 B Commanding officer element has regained contact. Size-activity-location-unit-time-equipment report as follows: 3-4 passengers , small arms fire, in the vicinity of 42 SWB 3902 1627, unknown , 5:40 GMT , AK-47 . 6:20 GMT unit is no longer in contact. Reporting indicates possibly 3 suspected anti-coalition militia's were killed in action. "
And another: "Devil reports a patrol base receiving small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire from all directions and requests air quick relief forceDevil requests a med-evacPT1 suffers a gunshot wound to the shoulderPT2 has a gunshot wound to the thighPT3 has a gunshot wound to the elbow(etc). "
Most of the documents are written in abbreviations and code. Fortunately, the clever programmers at DiaryDig have a code conversion feature, which has allowed me to translate most of what would otherwise be gibberish.
What will I do with the files? I'm going to scour them, probably write a text reading script using my programming genius to search for key words and phrases. Will I reproduce some of it right here on SearchWarp? I don't know, it seems for the moment that merely having the information is sufficient. I have always been a collector of information. Information is best served edited and contextualized. It is important to gather the best data available, and make sense of it. That's what journalists do.
Tertiary bloggers such as me are sometimes accused of regurgitating news that is already regurgitated. Sometimes that is true, but to good effect. When you read the New York Times, it is single sourced. Bloggers have the additional advantage of gathering from multiple sources, and synthesizing new perspectives that otherwise go unnoticed by the single source news agencies.
I listen closely to the disparaging accusations against bloggers, and note that they tend to come from self-proclaimed "legitimate" news sources. But, here I am, with primary source information, so where does that leave the arrogant news snobs? My download is complete.