Two months after the data leak at Sony Pictures Entertainment, co-chairwoman Amy Pascal stepped down from her leadership position, with Michael Lynton, the chief executive at Sony Pictures, taking over her duties and assuming control of the company. Even with its best efforts, Sony wasn't able to contain the leak, and portions of it spilled out to the public. Today, however, you can view the contents of the entire leak via WikiLeaks.
The amount of data is immense. It consists of 30,287 documents, 173,132 emails and 2,200 email addresses. It would take one person days to sift through all the data, but the website highlighted a few documents showing Sony executives involved in political and militaristic matters, as well as research on rival film productions. One document discussed raising $50,000 for current New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Several Sony execs were asked to donate to the campaign, including Pascal.
WikiLeaks also believes that Lynton is on the board of trustees of RAND Corporation, which is "an organization specializing in research and development for the United States military and intelligence sector," and the site said the archives provide evidence of constant contact between RAND Corporation and Sony.
The two groups also worked together during production of The Interview, the movie believed to be the catalyst for the entire leak, and for which the RAND Corporation provided an analyst specializing in North Korea. The same group also told Sony to reach out to the NSA and the State Department regarding North Korea's complaints about the movie.
In terms of the entertainment industry, the press release highlighted a report showing Sony employees discussing the detailed budget of a rival project: Oliver Stone's upcoming film Snowden. The report highlighted the amount paid for the movie rights to Snowden based on Luke Harding's The Snowden Files and Anatoly Kucherena's Time of the Octopus. Harding, a reporter for The Guardian, was paid $700,000, while Kucherena, Edward Snowden's lawyer, was paid $1 million.
There is much more information contained within the thousands of files and emails published by WikiLeaks. As was the case when the leak was first reported, most, if not all, of the content is sensitive and wasn't meant to be seen by the public, putting many of Sony's employees and executives at risk. It's impossible to reverse the effects, so Sony has no choice but to stay on the defensive and weather the storm until it passes.
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