维基解密（WikiLeaks）开始发布据自称来自全球情报分析网站Stratfor的500万份电子邮件短短几小时后，人们就意识到，这次泄密造成的影响可能要远远超过上次维基解密发布的几千份外交电文。上次泄密的电文大部分只是关于流言、繁琐俗事和低层面的闲聊而已。然而，这此Stratfor的邮件泄密可能对全球范围内的公司、政府和一些个人产生爆炸性的影响，尤其是对Stratfor本身。当然，也可能不会有那么严重的影响。但至少，这批邮件看上去要有意思得多。

    短期内很多公司的公关部看来都要加班加点了。长期影响如何，很大程度上将取决于未来几周陆续披露的内容。这些邮件显示了Stratfor员工与客户公司（包括一些全球最大的跨国公司）高管的一些商谈内容。迄今为止，还只发布了几百封电子邮件。即便没有定时炸弹，这些信息至少也是很有意思的。目前，所有电子邮件的真实性都没有得到验证，但根据迄今为止的一些信息可以知道：

    • 2011年5月，Stratfor的一些员工谈到，美联银行（Wachovia）在墨西哥毒品集团洗钱案中的参与程度和涉及金额可能都超过已知水平，针对该行的调查仍在继续。根据一封据称是Stratford员工发给几位同事的电子邮件称，这位员工的一位“美国中央情报局（CIA）密友”告诉他，美联银行是“一场正在进行的调查”的对象。富国银行（Wells Fargo）下属的美联银行已经就此案达成和解，但并不承认存在过错。2010年，美联银行被没收1.10亿美元 ，另外还被罚款5,000万美元。

    • 另一份电子邮件讨论显示，2009年可口可乐（Coca-Cola）曾请Stratfor搜集动物保护组织“善待动物组织”（People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals，简称PETA）的情报。可口可乐担心，次年的温哥华冬季奥运会期间可能会出现抗议活动。

    • 根据维基解密，Stratfor员工和陶氏化学（Dow Chemical）员工及其他人之间的邮件往来显示，Stratfor曾代表陶氏化学搜集反企业宣传鼓动组织The Yes Men的情报。陶氏化学担心1984年印度博帕尔灾难（1984 Bhopal disaster）二十五周年可能会出现激进活动。（1984年，美国一家公司在印度博帕尔的工厂发生了严重的毒气泄漏事件，造成2万多人死亡，几十万人身受其害，这家公司后来被陶氏化学收购。——译注）

    • 可能最令人震惊的消息，至少对于Statfor而言，是有邮件显示该公司正在计划设立一只名为StratCap的基金，根据公司搜集的情报信息进行投资交易。一份据称由Stratfor创始人兼董事长乔治•弗莱德曼撰写的邮件称，该基金“将使我们有一个全新但相关的渠道，也就是一只投资基金，来利用我们在全球搜集的情报。我们曾为其他对冲基金提供咨询，如今我们有了自己的基金……”参与此次讨论的还有当时在高盛（Goldman Sachs）任职的谢伊•莫伦兹。据维基解密称，弗莱德曼在邮件中写道：“StratCap要做的是利用我们的情报和分析，通过一系列地缘政治工具进行交易，特别是政府债券和货币等等。”邮件称，莫伦兹“大举”投资了逾400万美元。

    Just hours after WikiLeaks started publishing the 5 million emails it says come from the global-intelligence publisher Stratfor, it's becoming clear that this data dump could have a much larger impact than WikiLeaks' earlier publication of thousands of diplomatic cables. Those cables revealed, for the most part, mere gossip and mundane, low-level chatter. But the Stratfor emails could be explosive for companies, governments and individuals around the world, not least for Stratfor itself. Or they might not. At the very least, this batch of data seems far more interesting.

    In the short term, it appears that the public-relations departments of many companies are going to be clocking a lot of overtime hours. In the longer term, much depends on what is revealed in the coming couple of weeks. The emails show Stratfor employees in discussions with executives at client firms, which include some of the biggest multinational corporations on the planet. So far, only a few hundred emails have been posted. If there are no ticking bombs, the forthcoming information at the very least promises to be interesting. The authenticity of the emails hasn't been verified in all cases, but according to some of the messages thus far:

    • Stratfor employees in May 2011 discussed the possibility that Wachovia's involvement in laundering the money of Mexican drug cartels could run deeper and involve more money than was already known, and that an investigation of the bank was continuing. According to the purported email of a Stratford employee to some of his colleagues, one of his "CIA cronies" had told him that Wachovia was the subject of an "ongoing investigation." Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo (WFC) as it was when this discussion took place, settled the case against it without admitting wrongdoing. Wachovia in 2010 forfeited $110 million and was fined another $50 million.

    • Coca-Cola (KO) in 2009 asked Stratfor to gather information on the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, according to another purported email discussion. The company was worried about possible protest activity during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver the following year.

    • Stratfor gathered intelligence on the anti-corporate agitprop group The Yes Men on behalf of Dow Chemical (DOW), as shown by several discussions among Stratfor and Dow employees and others, according to WikiLeaks. The company was worried about activism on the 25th anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

    • Perhaps most striking, at least for Statfor itself, is the revelation that the company was planning to create a fund, called StratCap, through which it would trade on intelligence information it gathered. An email purportedly written by George Friedman, Stratfor's founder and chairman, said the fund "would allow us to utilize the intelligence we were gathering about the world in a new but related venue -- an investment fund. Where we had previously advised other hedge funds, we would now have our own…" Involved in that discussion was Shea Morenz, then with Goldman Sachs (GS). Friedman wrote, according to WikiLeaks, "What StratCap will do is use our intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like." Morenz invested, according to the email, "substantially" more than $4 million.

    撇开这些邮件的真实性仍待考证不谈，发布这些多的邮件本身就带来了各种各样的潜在问题。这些邮件就那样发布在网上，没有点评，没有来龙去脉，也没有任何解释。比如，可口可乐和PETA的邮件，如果只看维基解密的标题《可口可乐雇Stratfor调查PETA的底细》（Coca Cola Contracting Stratfor to Spy on Peta.），听起来似乎有些不可告人。但作为企业，搜集一些可能给它们带来公关问题的组织和团体的信息是普遍的做法，而且此案中可口可乐希望了解的信息似乎也无关紧要：PETA在加拿大有多大影响力？美国PETA活跃分子会不会前往温哥华？不清楚Stratfor究竟有何发现，或者对搜集到的信息做了什么处理。最让人吃惊的是，一位据称是Stratfor员工的人在讨论的最后写道：“美国联邦调查局（FBI）对PETA的行动进行了秘密调查。我看看挖出什么消息。”

    目前不清楚这些行为是否违反了某些法律。陶氏化学已就Yes Men事宜发表了声明：

    “包括陶氏化学在内的大公司常常有义务采取适当的措施来保护员工和全球范围内的设施安全，避免公司及员工受到某些组织和个人的威胁、干扰和歪曲宣传。陶氏化学非常重视在法律允许的范围内确保员工和设施安全的职责，并将继续依法履行这一职责。我们坚决支持言论自由，鼓励公众对重大事宜展开讨论。虽然我们还没有看到具体所涉文件，但我们绝不容忍窃取私密文件，。”

    维基解密宣称已与25家媒体公司达成合作来发布这些电子邮件，包括美国两家合作伙伴：麦克莱齐报业（McClatchy Newspapers）和《滚石》杂志（Rolling Stone）。迄今为止，这两个合作伙伴都未刊登任何与邮件有关的内容，因此记者们和其他人只能从海量的原始信息中慢慢揣摩。

    去年年底，Stratfor的电脑显然曾遭到黑客组织Anonymous（具体来说，是其旗下的AntiSec）的入侵，数千位Stratfor用户的信用卡数据、电子邮件地址等个人信息泄露。虽然维基解密没有披露获取这些邮件的渠道，但维基解密这次发布的电子邮件看来很可能就是从那次入侵中获得的。

    Stratfor发布声明称，散布这些电子邮件“严重侵犯隐私，是应该遭到谴责的非法行为。”

    “其中有些电子邮件可能是捏造的，或者遭到了篡改，含有不准确的信息；有些可能是真的，”这项声明称。“我们不会对此进行确认。我们也不会解释当初的考虑。我们的文件已经被盗，我们不会回答关于这些文件的问题，那无异于二次伤害。”

    Beyond the fact that the authenticity of the emails has not yet been confirmed, the mere fact of such a data dump poses all kinds of potential problems. The emails are just sitting there, uncommented upon, with no context or interpretation given. The emails about Coke and PETA, for example, sound somewhat sinister judging by the WikiLeaks headline, "Coca Cola Contracting Stratfor to Spy on Peta." But it's common practice for companies to gather information on groups that might cause them PR problems, and the information Coke sought in this case seems fairly mundane: How strong is Peta in Canada? Might U.S. Peta activists travel to Vancouver? It's not clear what if anything Stratfor found out or what, if anything, was done about any information that it gathered. What's most striking is that a Stratfor employee purportedly wrote toward the end of the discussions: "The FBI has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I'll see what I can uncover."

    It's not at all clear that any laws were broken by these activities. Dow Chemical has issued a statement on the Yes Men matter:

    "Major companies, including Dow, are often required to take appropriate action to protect their people and safeguard their facilities around the world from those who would threaten, disrupt and misrepresent the company and its employees. Dow takes the obligations to ensure the safety of its people and facilities seriously and will continue to do so within the bounds of the law. We are strong proponents of free speech and encourage public debate on important issues. However, while we have not yet seen the specific documents in question, the theft of any private documents cannot be condoned."

    WikiLeaks says it has partnerships with 25 media companies to disseminate the emails. That includes two partners in the United States: McClatchy Newspapers and Rolling Stone magazine. So far, neither partner has published anything about the emails, leaving journalists and others to scramble to make sense out of the enormous amount of raw information.

    Stratfor's computers were invaded late last year apparently by the hacker/vandal group Anonymous (specifically, by its AntiSec wing), which revealed personal information such as credit-card data and email addresses of thousands of Stratfor customers. It seems likely that the emails posted by WikiLeaks came from that intrusion, though WikiLeaks isn't saying where it got them.

    Stratfor issued a statement calling the publication of the emails "a deplorable, unfortunate -- and illegal-- breach of privacy."

    "Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic," the statement continued. "We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them."