On 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing what it called the Syria Files, a collection of more than two million emails from Syrian political figures and ministries and from companies including Finmeccanica[1][2] and Brown Lloyd James[3][4] dating from August 2006 to March 2012.
[11][12] According to Sarah Harrison, the goal of the release was to generate a series of in-depth stories about "the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy" and how the West and Western companies "say one thing and do another.
"[20] Some reporters saw the Syria Files as taking a more neutral approach, without the ideology or politics associated with previous releases, but Sarah Harrison rejected the suggestion that WikiLeaks was going "mainstream".
Foreign Policy wrote that it expected Western officials and companies to be affected by the release, but that the Syrian government was an "open book" and the emails would confirm what was already known.
[14][19][22] In the weeks following the Syria Files' release in July 2012, a hacktivist group of the Anonymous collective claimed credit for obtaining the emails and providing them to WikiLeaks.
Anonymous stated that it had "worked day and night" in order to access computer servers in Syria and that "the data available had been so massive that downloading it had taken several weeks."
[7][8] According to emails published by WikiLeaks on 5 July 2012,[24] the Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica increased its sale of mobile communications equipment to Syrian authorities during 2011, delivering 500 of these to the Damascus suburb Muadamia in May 2011,[1][25] after the Syrian Civil War had started, and sending engineers to Damascus in February 2012 to provide training in using the communications equipment in helicopter terminals,[26] while the conflict continued.
[4][28] Brown Lloyd James also recommended "countering ... the daily torrent of criticism and lies" by "[a] 24-hour media monitoring and response system [that] should be in place with assets in UK and US markets; [monitoring] social media sites and [challenging and removing] false sites; and a steady, constantly updated messaging document that contains talking points geared to latest developments.
Wikileaks stated that it published all of the Syria files that it had obtained and made an apparent threat against the reporters, saying that if they pursued the story, "you can be sure we will return the favor one day.".