The History of Leaks

The talk traces leaked information from the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s to the end of WikiLeaks' publishing era. The speakers define a leak as any unauthorized disclosure, whether by an insider talking to the press, a published document, or a hacker releasing stolen data. They group leak sources into federal government, private companies, financial institutions and local government, and separate spontaneous leaks from strategic hack-and-leak operations run by states. A counterintelligence model of money, ideology, coercion and ego is offered to explain why people take the risk.

The middle of the talk divides the history into eras. Watergate and the Pentagon Papers are shown as cases where journalists and officials shaped the story, including a famous anonymous source that was in fact a fabrication. Congressional intelligence inquiries show how official investigations and leaks combined to change oversight. The quieter 1980s and 1990s brought small leaks to reporters and a cluster of espionage cases. The millennial era saw clearinghouses such as Cryptome and WikiLeaks, insider disclosures from Snowden and Schulte, and hacktivist groups, with WikiLeaks moving from open uploads to editorial curation.

The final section covers the modern era, including hack-and-leak campaigns against Latin American militaries and the large volume of breached personal data now circulating. The speakers argue that the core problem is that newsrooms and the public have not yet worked out how to process enormous leaks, and they close by asking whether a new era of leaks has begun.