Dictionary

leaktivist en · NOUN

Etymology

Blend of leak + activist.

Meanings

1. (neologism) Someone who advocates for a political cause by leaking secret information to the public; a person who practices leaktivism.
   • Some comes from anonymous ‘leaktivists’, like the mole who released the Panama Papers in 2016, raising questions about the financial dealings of all sorts of people, from Putin’s friends and Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law to Mark Thatcher and several members of the Spanish royal family. 2022, Ian Shircore, Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Cover-Ups and Unsolved Mysteries, London: John Blake Publishing, →ISBN, pages 5–6:
   • According to the leaktivist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) roughly 70 gigabytes of posts, private messages, profiles and plaintext passwords were obtained in the hack. 2021 March 1, Chris Mills Rodrigo, “Fringe social media platform Gab hacked”, in The Hill, Washington, D.C.: Nexstar Media Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2023:
   • Threat actors today include not only the old standbys—Russia and China—but also North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and almost certainly the Saudis, Israelis, Turkey, and many others hungry for an edge in dealing with the United States; non-state actors, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda hoping to exploit American security weaknesses; transnational criminal organizations and ideologically driven entities, such as hacktivists, leaktivists, and public-disclosure organizations (think WikiLeaks); not to mention freelance secrets-brokers harvesting sensitive data and intellectual property to sell on the black market. 2022, Lis Wiehl, A Spy in Plain Sight: The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen―America's Most Damaging Russian Spy, New York, N.Y.; London: Pegasus Books, →ISBN, page 275:

Forms

Relateds

hacktivism · hacktivist · leaktivism