Terabyte-Sized 'Panama Papers' Leak Confirms The Continuing Rise Of The Super-Whistleblowers

Found on Techdirt on Monday, 04 April 2016
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The main Panama Papers site run by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists notes this bounty has provoked the "largest cross-border collaboration ever"; dozens of media sites are involved, although curiously few from the US.

The Guardian states that the the Panama Papers total 2.6 terabytes of data, which dwarfs earlier leaks of financial documents: the HSBC files are 3.3 gigabytes, the Luxembourg tax files 4.4 gigabytes, and the so-called "offshore secrets" files total 260 gigabytes, while Wikileaks is a mere 1.7 gigabytes.

In an evident attempt to stem the flow of embarrassing leaks, companies have been pushing for more laws to protect their "trade secrets."

Those Panama Papers are the data of only one company, and they cover 40 years. Maybe that leak will help to finally crack down on offshoring, and all the other tax evasion optimisation strategies. Just imagine how much taxes could be lowered if everybody paid them.