So far Russia has had no official response. But on Wednesday, an official at the Center for Information Security of the FSB, Russia’s secret police, gave a warning to WikiLeaks that showed none of the tact of the U.S. reply to the Iraq revelations. “It’s essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, [WikiLeaks] can be made inaccessible forever,” the anonymous official told the independent Russian news website LifeNews. (…)

“If the FSB says it is capable [of taking out WikiLeaks], I believe them,” says Gadi Evron, an expert on cybersecurity and counterespionage. It would not be necessary to crash the WikiLeaks site, says Evron, because “behind every Internet project, there are people.” And people can be coerced — or worse.