WikiLeaks, and the media have sure picked up on it. Essentially, WikiLeaks was incompetent in their handling of the situation. If WikiLeaks had done their job properly, it wouldn't have mattered whether or not the password was published. Except that because I understand the cryptography, I don't need the Guardian to tell me what WikiLeaks "should" have done. I can piece together the blame just from reading the story of what went down that night when Assange gave the cables to Leigh. The only interesting claim from Guardian's statement is this: "we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours." That is the only fact that is in dispute here -- not whether or not the password was temporary (it is an indisputable fact that it wasn't), but whether or not WikiLeaks told the Guardian that it was temporary. If they did, then some of the blame can be put on them. But just some. WikiLeaks vehemently denies that they told Guardian that the password was temporary, tweeting today : "It is strictly false that the Guardian was told the password or file were temporary, hence the elaborate password handover method." We will never know whether WikiLeaks did or did not tell Guardian that the password was temporary. But we can deduce from the facts that the password was not temporary, and anyone with a basic knowledge of security (certainly anyone entrusted with the most politically explosive documents in history)