BEING FRANK: Pulling off the biggest whistleblower leak
As published in Malay Mail today BEING FRANK By Frankie D'Cruz Anonymous whistleblower: Hello, this is John Doe. Interested in data? Newspaper: We’re very interested. That cryptic message from a source to Munich-based newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, led to a massive data leak implicating the world’s ultra rich who are playing by different rules. The murky offshore money and transactions linked to a cagey and highly influential Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, provided an insight into global corruption and secrets of the rich and powerful. So, how did reporters pull off the Panama Papers, the biggest leak in whistleblower history? Pause. When Daniel Ellsberg photocopied and leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, those 7,000 pages of top secret Vietnam War documents represented what was then the biggest whistleblower leak in history — a couple dozen megabytes if it were contained in a modern ...