



Julian Assange's internet link has been intentionally severed by a state party. We have activated the appropriate contingency plans. — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 17, 2016

pre-commitment 1: John Kerry 4bb96075acadc3d80b5ac872874c3037a386f4f595fe99e687439aabd0219809 — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 16, 2016

pre-commitment 2: Ecuador

eae5c9b064ed649ba468f0800abf8b56ae5cfe355b93b1ce90a1b92a48a9ab72 — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 16, 2016 pre-commitment 3: UK FCO f33a6de5c627e3270ed3e02f62cd0c857467a780cf6123d2172d80d02a072f74 — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 16, 2016

If you follow WikiLeaks on Twitter , you may have noticed a series of cryptic tweets consisting of strings of numbers and letters. These are hashes or keys of sorts, some of which are calling "dead man's keys." Regardless, they appear to be related to another WikiLeak post on Twitter claiming its co-founder, Julian Assange, is without Internet access after his connection was "intentionally severed by a state party." That action has reportedly activated WikiLeaks' "appropriate contingency plans" in response.The announcement surfaced several hours after the site posted the aforementioned cryptic hash posts, three in all with references to Ecuador, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the UK FCO (United Kingdom Foreign Commonwealth Office). Each tweet contained a 64-character hash, which led to rumors that Assange was dead and that the strings of characters were "dead man's keys" or a "dead man's switch," codes to reveal classified secrets in the event of his death.That doesn't appear to be the case. Instead, those hashes, which are preceded by "pre-commitment" labels, are unique codes that can prove the legitimacy of documents leaked in the future that contain the same hashes. You can think of them as fingerprints. Any changes to the documents would alter the 64-character code assigned to them.Previously WikiLeaks published thousands of hacked emails supposedly from John Podesta, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton . Now it appears as though John Kerry is about to have a bad day as well. Kerry's name was mentioned in the first crytpic tweet, which seems to suggest that WikiLeaks will release a bunch of emails or other documents belonging to the Secretary of State, possibly in connection with Hillary Clinton.As to the other pair of hashes, those are more difficult to speculate on. Assange has been facing extradition to Sweden since 2010 where he is wanted for questioning over an allegation of rape. He has denied the allegation but refuses to return to Sweden, which he suspects is a pretense to being extradited to the U.S. for publishing classified documents. After running out of legal options, Assange in 2012 sought and received asylum by Ecuador and now resides in the Embassy of Ecuador in London.In any event, we'll be keeping our eye on this as it develops further.