When the stories related to Ed Snowden were/are pushed out, they make worldwide news. They were processed, filtered, streamlined for a clearer narrative from a mountain of data.

Result? PRISM, XKeyScore, a whole host of other compartmentalized programs from the Five Eyes are now publicly known. Hearings have been held in national legislative assemblies worldwide against the wholesale data storage and analysis of NSA, CSIS, GCHQ, et al.

When Cablegate was released, everyone had a go at it. The torrent of data may have caused panic, and occasionally there are references to the Cablegate trove, but the net result has been that Julian Assange is a virtual prisoner in London and Chelsea Manning is an actual prisoner in Leavenworth.

Let’s start by comprehending the magnitude of the data store: 2.6 terabytes is larger than most laptop computers’ hard drives. Even if distributed via the most efficient online means, BitTorrent, this archive would literally break the Internet in countries which need it most and which have the most problematic connectivity, like the Dar al-Islam, subsaharan Africa, and Australia.

Sneakerneting the archive is a risky endeavour. You’re not going to be travelling with just one $100 drive that has a risk of failure. I can’t imagine what Assad, Putin, and Salman are thinking now that at least some of their “secure” and, at least in the former two cases, “sanction-proof” wealth camouflage mechanisms are being exposed — and I can’t imagine what kinds of penalties those states would impose on a journalist or a member of the public talking about or sharing these sovereign wealth siphons.