[Wash Times] WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange blamed the CIA’s "devastating incompetence" Thursday for allowing his website to acquire a trove of information involving the agency’s vast hacking capabilities, drawing fire from the U.S. intelligence community following its release this week of the so-called "Year Zero" files.
Mr. Assange credited the agency’s own ineptitude with causing details about its hacking techniques to recently become compromised during his first press conference since WikiLeaks’ disclosure Tuesday of previously unpublished documents devoted to the CIA’s stockpiling of computer exploits and cyberweapons.
"This is a historic act of devastating incompetence, to have created such an arsenal and then stored it all in one place and not secured it," Mr. Assange said during an online press conference streamed live from his residence with the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
"It is impossible to keep effective control of cyberweapons," he said. "If you build them, eventually you will lose them."
Mr. Assange added that WikiLeaks has only published a portion of the documents it’s obtained from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, the likes of which has resulted in the release of thousands of files this week related to the agency’s ability to compromise and commandeer the world’s most widely-used electronic devices. |