WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents and emails from the Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) hack, in order to, it said, gain “a rare insight into the inner workings of a large, secretive multinational corporation.”
The company has collated the purloined data into an analysis and search system, dubbed the Sony Archives. The goods, all now searchable by keyword, include 30,287 documents and 173,132 emails, to and from more than 2,200 SPE email addresses.
According to the White House, North Korea's intelligence services had obtained and distributed a version of the archive in revenge for SPE's pending release of The Interview, a satirical film that pokes fun at the country and its leader, Kim Jong-un.
“Whilst some stories came out at the time, the original archives, which were not searchable, were removed before the public and journalists were able to do more than scratch the surface,” WikiLeaks said in an announcement. “The work publicly known from Sony is to produce entertainment; however, The Sony Archives show that behind the scenes this is an influential corporation, with ties to the White House (there are almost 100 US government email addresses in the archive), with an ability to impact laws and policies, and with connections to the US military-industrial complex.”
WikiLeaks said that in perusing the archive, it found back and forth communication on lobbying and political efforts, on issues around internet policy, piracy, trade agreements and copyright issues. This includes a “secret draft” of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) IP Chapter, which is a proposed trade treaty, and SPE's internal reactions, including discussing the impact with Michael Froman, the US Trade Representative. It also references the case against Megaupload and the extradition of its founder Kim DotCom from New Zealand as part of SPE's war on piracy, WikiLeaks said.
The connections and alignments between SPE and the US Democratic Party are also detailed, it said, including attendance at fundraisers and setting up a collective within the corporation to “get around the $5,000 limit on corporate campaign donations” to give $50,000 to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a longtime piracy fighter.
It also pointed out that SPE CEO Michael Lynton is on the board of trustees of defense contractor RAND Corporation, and that ties between the two are close. “Sony reached out to RAND for advice regarding its North Korea film The Interview,” WikiLeaks said. “RAND provided an analyst specialized in North Korea and suggested Sony reach out to the State Department and the NSA regarding North Korea's complaints about the upcoming film. The Sony documents also show Sony being in possession of a brochure for an NSA-evaluated online cloud security set-up called INTEGRITY.”
While the points may dovetail with WikiLeaks’ own political agenda, it argued that it’s publishing the documents to preserve them as an historical archive, it said, and that the information is newsworthy because it’s at the center of a geo-political conflict.
“This means ensuring archives that have made it to the public domain remain there regardless of legal or political pressure, and in a way that is accessible and useable to the public,” it noted. “WikiLeaks' publication of The Sony Archives will ensure this database remains accessible to the public for years to come.”