The World, as I See It

A group going by the name McGillLeaks have today published a cache of secret documents created by McGill University’s ‘Development and Alumni Relations‘ department.

On their website, McGillLeaks state that their aims in this disclosure are:

1. to give a ‘clear account’ of the universities inner workings
2. to expose the University’s relationship with the private sector
3. and to create transparency within the University

The first release, of allegedly many, appears to be a number of lists of past and potential donors. A number of detailed donor profiles containing personal information, commercially sensitive information estimates of wealth have been released.

While the release of these documents is unfortunate for the University creating detailed profiles of key prospects is nothing but a standard operating procedure in the philanthropy ‘industry’.

As one commentator on Twitter wrote: 

Certainly, the most controversial think in #McGillLeaks is that the document "Active Alumni in England" also includes Wales. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

March 6, 2012 3:34 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@t_and_sympathy

Tea & Sympathy

The bottom line is that the actions from McGillLeaks are, to date, entirely incompatible with McGill’s policy of Safe Disclosure. In fact I would be hard-pressed to say the disclosure is anything other than malicious in intent.

McGill are yet to issue a statement on McGillLeaks.

Update 1: In addition to today’s release the McGillLeaks website has also posted an ‘insurance’ file. Insurance files are typical an encrypted copy of *everything* the leaking organisation has. By distributing this file from the onset, McGillLeaks have some protection from the suspension of their web-hosting.

If their site is forced offline, McGillLeaks can use other channels to release decryption keys and publish the remainder of their information.

An interesting point to note is that the insurance file is only 3 MB larger than the release that was made today. Either McGillLeaks have only 3 MB of additional documents or a total of 120 MB of documents. In all McGillLeaks could end up being a one hit wonder.

Update 2 at 01:00hrs, Tue 6 Mar: The McGill Daily and others have been contacted by lawyers representing McGill asking that the sites remove links to the McGillLeaks website.

Update 3 at 17:00hrs, Tue 6 Mar: Tuesday morning, the files linked to from the McGillLeaks website have been removed by their respective file-hosts. 

Looks the the storm in a teacup that was #McGillLeaks is over for now as McGill lawyers act to remove files.

March 6, 2012 10:43 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@rosscbrown

Ross C Brown