

According to a report today in Norway's top business publication, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has managed to get a hold of the entire "Cablegate" database of some 250,000 diplomatic cables—Wikileaks has not granted any news organization this access, and has instead been providing access to relatively small batches, one at a time (what the Herald Sun calls "drip-feeding"). How did Aftenposten get access? They won't say, and Wikileaks won't either, but one guess could involve the database being stored on a server within Norway. Snip:

Aftenposten news editor Ole Erik Almlid told Dagens Naerings: "We're free to do what we want with these documents … We're free to publish the documents or not publish the documents, we can publish on the internet or on paper. We are handling these documents just like all other journalistic material to which we have gained access."

Around 20 Aftenposten journalists are sifting through the file dump. The news articles are written in Norwegian, which may restrict their immediate impact in the English-speaking media world .. for a time at least.