On Thursday, WikiLeaks republished thousands of internal Sony Pictures Entertainment documents that were stolen by hackers last year, saying they "belong in the public domain" because they provide a "rare insight into the inner workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation" with "ties to the White House," "an ability to impact laws and policies" and "with connections to the U.S. military-industrial complex."
The fully searchable database provides easy access to 30,287 documents and 173,132 emails, and includes almost 100 U.S. government e-mail addresses in the archive.
The data was initially published online by hackers last fall, but WikiLeaks decided to create "The Sony Archives" to better preserve the data since "the original archives, which were not searchable, were removed before the public and journalists were able to do more than scratch the surface."
"This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation," WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange said in a statement on the website. "It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there."
The Sony security breach was initially discovered in November 2014, and a group calling itself the "Guardians of Peace" claimed responsibility, leaking personal information, including social security numbers of more than 47,000 current and former Sony employees, celebrities and freelancers. The group leaked a number of embarrassing internal documents, including emails between Sony Picture executives, and threatened the company over the impending release of the comedy film "The Interview," which portrays a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korea's leader.
The FBI claims it traced the hackers to North Korea, but many security experts have disputed the accuracy of those allegations.
One particularly interesting connection detailed through the archives are the alignments between Sony and the Democratic Party, "including SPE's CEO [Michael] Lynton attending dinner with President Obama at Martha's Vineyard and Sony employees being part of fundraising dinners for the Democratic Party," WikiLeaks noted.
"There are emails setting up a collective within the corporation to get around the 5,000 USD limit on corporate campaign donations to give 50,000 USD to get the Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo elected as 'Thanks to Governor Cuomo, we have a great production incentive environment in NY and a strong piracy advocate that's actually done more than talk about our problems.'"
Following the news that WikiLeaks had created a public database of the stolen information, Sony accused the group of contributing to the damage already done.
"The attackers used the dissemination of stolen information to try to harm SPE and its employees, and now WikiLeaks regrettably is assisting them in that effort," a Sony spokesperson wrote in a statement, reported the Guardian. "We vehemently disagree with WikiLeaks' assertion that this material belongs in the public domain and will continue to fight for the safety, security, and privacy of our company and its more than 6,000 employees."
