With Assange Arrest, Will WikiLeaks Go 'Thermonuclear'?

(Dec. 7) -- Days before Julian Assange's arrest, the WikiLeaks founder's lawyer warned that supporters will unleash a "thermonuclear device" of government files containing the names of spies, sources and informants if he's killed or brought to trial.

Now, it remains to be seen whether his surrender in Britain today is enough for them to push the button.

The 1.5-gigabyte file, which has been distributed to tens of thousands of fellow hackers and open-government campaigners around the world, is encrypted with a 256-digit key, The Sunday Times reported. Experts interviewed by the paper said that even powerful military computers can't crack the encryption without the key.

Massive release of raw WikiLeaks files threatened

Keystone / AP

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says a cache of unfiltered government files containing the names of spies, sources and informants is his "insurance" policy, and his lawyer warns the documents will be released if he's killed or brought to trial.

Contained inside that file -- named insurance.aes256 -- are believed to be all of the documents that WikiLeaks has received to date, including unpublished papers on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and papers belonging to BP and the Bank of America. Assange has previously suggested that the documents are unredacted, meaning they contain names that normally would be removed before publication to protect the lives of soldiers, spies and sources.

"We have over a long period of time distributed encrypted backups of material we have yet to release," the 39-year-old Australian told the BBC in August. "All we have to do is release the password to that material, and it is instantly available."

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Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, told the BBC news program "The Andrew Marr Show" on Sunday that if the WikiLeaks website is taken down -- or if anything ill happens to his client -- the key to that damaging file will be released. "[WikiLeaks founders] need to protect themselves," Stephens said, "and this is I think what they believe to be a thermonuclear device, effectively, in the electronic age."

Stephens added that the insurance policy was vital because Assange had received numerous death threats from around the world, including one from Tom Flanagan, a former campaign manager to Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Flanagan told a TV interviewer last week that Assange "should be assassinated" and taken out "with a drone or something." He later apologized for the remark.

The head of the whistle-blowing website was arrested today by British police in connection with a Swedish sex crimes investigation. Assange has denied allegations by two women in Stockholm in August but has admitted to having consensual sex with the women. According to an AOL News story, the charges relate to disagreements over condom use.