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This is a topic from the Current Politics and Religious Topics forum on inthe00s.
Subject: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 08/02/10 at 8:36 pm
Around 10 years ago, I played a game centered around "high tech computer crime and industrial espionage on the Internet of 2010."
User: Is this a game, or is it real?
Computer: What's the difference?
- War Games
It's now 2010, and somewhere out there in the real world is a .torrent for 1.4 gigabytes of insurance. Could be a billion digits of pi, for all anyone knows. But someone wants it out there, and the real-life version of Sneakers just got interesting.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/02/10 at 8:54 pm
I don't understand everything that happened yet in this case, but it sounds like they might REALLY have the Goods on Afghanistan!
:-X
Who the hell would have guessed a Wikileaks could ever threaten our national security? Wikileaks? Sounds like a weed or a vegetable, I dunno!
;)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: danootaandme on 08/03/10 at 5:06 am
I don't think, from what I have heard, we won't learn anything that we didn't know or suspect. This isn't the Pentagon Papers, the country(the part that strives to be informed) isn't that naive any more.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: JamieMcBain on 08/03/10 at 4:16 pm
Actually, it's really a real life version of Burn After Reading.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Macphisto on 08/04/10 at 7:16 pm
Julian Assange is likely going to have a short lifespan.
I support the idea of leaking information to the public that reveals dirt on corporations and such, but to jeopardize the lives of our allies in Afghanistan is extremely irresponsible and prosecutable in many respects.
In short, Assange and his ilk are currently serving as allies of the Taliban.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 08/04/10 at 10:34 pm
I don't think, from what I have heard, we won't learn anything that we didn't know or suspect. This isn't the Pentagon Papers, the country(the part that strives to be informed) isn't that naive any more.
Suppose (although Wikileaks has denied receiving them) it's not just a bunch of fluff about Afghanistan. Suppose it's the mysterious pile of diplomatic cables that was also reputed to have been leaked by the guy who forwarded the Afghanistan stuff to Assange? There could be information there that affects something important - not merely human lives, but things that affect our negotiating positions in the sorts of treaty negotiations that define the terms of contracts and which are ultimately worth billions to campaign donors and lobbyists.
Since you don't know what's in the file (and what if what's in the file is a "Here's Part 1... (something moderately incriminating) ...now please return our disappeared friends or Part 2 comes out tomorrow"), you have to play game of calculated risk. What's it possible for Wikileaks to have?
If you're the government, you've gotta devote a lot of resources to surveiling Assange and all of his acquaintances. Because you don't know who has the key(s) to the file(s) encrypted in the archive, and if they're using a shared secret agreement, how many of them are required to simultaneously "turn the key" (release their components of the key) in order to let anyone on the planet decrypt the file that has now been mirrored on millions of hard drives around the world.)
You can't even disappear them all at once - not until you're sure that you've identified and disabled every Dead Man's Switch they've set up, and you have to do that without any of the Wikileaks people know about it.
Wikileaks personnel have a similar problem. How certain are they of whatever's in that file is actually embarassing enough to the government that the government won't call its bluff? If what's in that file is government disinformation, somehow snuck in because Wikileaks doesn't have the capacity to determine information from disinformation, Wikileaks just signed their own death warrant. Maybe the government's willing to take the gamble that Wikileaks took the bait, and/or that it really is just a billion digits of pi.
What if any or all of these things are true? Wikileaks thinks it has the crown jewels, but it's just disinfo. The government thinks Wikileaks has the crown jewels and some disinfo, but has no idea which is in the file?
That's a Strange Loop. The government simultaneously has the upper hand and the lower hand. And so does Wikileaks.
At the moment, the safest move for both sides is to accept the standoff and to do nothing: nothing particularly serious has been leaked. But in the way that 9/11 was a scenario out of a Tom Clancy technothriller, this a scenario straight out of a cyberpunk/cypherpunk novel.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/04/10 at 11:04 pm
Suppose (although Wikileaks has denied receiving them) it's not just a bunch of fluff about Afghanistan. Suppose it's the mysterious pile of diplomatic cables that was also reputed to have been leaked by the guy who forwarded the Afghanistan stuff to Assange? There could be information there that affects something important - not merely human lives, but things that affect our negotiating positions in the sorts of treaty negotiations that define the terms of contracts and which are ultimately worth billions to campaign donors and lobbyists.
Since you don't know what's in the file (and what if what's in the file is a "Here's Part 1... (something moderately incriminating) ...now please return our disappeared friends or Part 2 comes out tomorrow"), you have to play game of calculated risk. What's it possible for Wikileaks to have?
If you're the government, you've gotta devote a lot of resources to surveiling Assange and all of his acquaintances. Because you don't know who has the key(s) to the file(s) encrypted in the archive, and if they're using a shared secret agreement, how many of them are required to simultaneously "turn the key" (release their components of the key) in order to let anyone on the planet decrypt the file that has now been mirrored on millions of hard drives around the world.)
You can't even disappear them all at once - not until you're sure that you've identified and disabled every Dead Man's Switch they've set up, and you have to do that without any of the Wikileaks people know about it.
Wikileaks personnel have a similar problem. How certain are they of whatever's in that file is actually embarassing enough to the government that the government won't call its bluff? If what's in that file is government disinformation, somehow snuck in because Wikileaks doesn't have the capacity to determine information from disinformation, Wikileaks just signed their own death warrant. Maybe the government's willing to take the gamble that Wikileaks took the bait, and/or that it really is just a billion digits of pi.
What if any or all of these things are true? Wikileaks thinks it has the crown jewels, but it's just disinfo. The government thinks Wikileaks has the crown jewels and some disinfo, but has no idea which is in the file?
That's a Strange Loop. The government simultaneously has the upper hand and the lower hand. And so does Wikileaks.
At the moment, the safest move for both sides is to accept the standoff and to do nothing: nothing particularly serious has been leaked. But in the way that 9/11 was a scenario out of a Tom Clancy technothriller, this a scenario straight out of a cyberpunk/cypherpunk novel.
Jesus, no wonder I'm so profoundly neurotic! Who the hell even KNOWS what the truth is anymore? Greg Palast told the truth about the 2001 election and the only consequence was the loss of Palast's career in American media. He now works for the BBC. The point is sometimes the truth is right in front of our face and we do nothing!
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 08/04/10 at 11:31 pm
Jesus, no wonder I'm so profoundly neurotic! Who the hell even KNOWS what the truth is anymore?
To start with some Babylon 5, there are three sides to every story: your side, their side, and the truth.
Do I go retro?
"Now you're standing there tongue tied
You better learn your lesson well
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell"
- Depeche Mode, Policy of Truth
...or nerdcore rap?
"You can’t hide secrets from the future with math.
You can try, but I bet that in the future they laugh
at the half-assed schemes and algorithms amassed
to enforce cryptographs in the past."
- MC Frontalot, Secrets from the Future (MP3)
Meanwhile, last week someone holding a stick tipped its hand... but the carrot was also out at Def Con 18.
There are three hats every nerd has to deal with: black hats, white hats, and their own hat, and to that end, I'll borrow another line from Babylon 5: What do you want? Who are you? Why are you?
In view of that, I'm going with the nerdcore: nobody knows the future now; gonna find out - be patient.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/04/10 at 11:51 pm
To start with some Babylon 5, there are three sides to every story: your side, their side, and the truth.
Do I go retro?
"Now you're standing there tongue tied
You better learn your lesson well
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell"
- Depeche Mode, Policy of Truth
...or nerdcore rap?
"You can’t hide secrets from the future with math.
You can try, but I bet that in the future they laugh
at the half-assed schemes and algorithms amassed
to enforce cryptographs in the past."
- MC Frontalot, Secrets from the Future (MP3)
Meanwhile, last week someone holding a stick tipped its hand... but the carrot was also out at Def Con 18.
There are three hats every nerd has to deal with: black hats, white hats, and their own hat, and to that end, I'll borrow another line from Babylon 5: What do you want? Who are you? Why are you?
In view of that, I'm going with the nerdcore: nobody knows the future now; gonna find out - be patient.
Karma for DM. I don't know Babylon 5, my friend, but I d recall a third hat in hacker culture -- a gray hat. A gray could go either way. My friend was a hacker. She referred to herself as a "gray hat."
I said, well, what do you know about that!
:-\\
I don't do it myself but I recommend hacking for good use. Don't use it to get rich or hurt people. Go after the stuff our governments and the giant corporations don't want us to know! I tell you what, a government that has to keep secrets from its people is a sign the government is wrong for the country. Don't whine to me about "national security." Call me an idealist, but if you conduct yourself benignly and charitably in the world, you will have to spend far less on "national security."
If we got together the brainpower going into all those Spanish Princess emails we get, we could, um, generate one wing-beat of an unladen African swallow!
:D
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 08/21/10 at 8:26 pm
Aug 7: Plan A: that Assange guy might not have filled out the Swedish paperwork for full protection of anonymous speech.
Aug 11: Plan B: US Administration asks allies to find something, (anything!) to charge him with.
Aug 15: Assange officially becomes a journalist, gaining stronger protections under Swedish law. Scratch Plan A.
(Meanwhile, somewhere in Virginia...)
Agent Smith: ...so, Plan B. What should we charge him with?
Agent Jones: What are his accusations?
Agent Smith: Rape, embarassing the government, trafficking in classified documents, and rape.
Agent Jones: You said rape twice.
Agent Smith: I like rape.
(one week later)
Aug 21: So this morning, two Swedish women, in different cities, simultaneously have him charged with rape. Eat your heart out, Glenn Beck, this guy had a warrant issued for it!
Aug 21: 4 hours later, same day: Swedish prosecutor says never mind, charges dropped, warrant rescinded. Scratch plan B?
Take your pick: Either...
1) Assange is now the Johnny Appleseed of Rape,
2) The people doing the frame-up were just firing a shot across his bow,
3) It was intended as more than a shot across his bow, but instead of the world's awesomest manhunt...
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2673/3885758628_fcf9695141.jpg
...someone at Wikileaks or TPB discreetly sent the key to the first layer of the "Insurance" policy to the people behind the frame-up, and the framer-uppers changed their mind.
I'm going with #2. (With a side order of "It doesn't matter if the charges were dropped, as long as the allegations got made." The only reason I came up with #3 is because if you were just firing a shot across his bow, you'd let the news media sit on it for a full weekend news cycle, and only have the charges dropped on Monday, when everyone had forgotten about it.)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/23/10 at 1:51 am
The Coup of the Jokers!
:o
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: JamieMcBain on 08/23/10 at 5:04 pm
Around 10 years ago, I played a game centered around "high tech computer crime and industrial espionage on the Internet of 2010."
User: Is this a game, or is it real?
Computer: What's the difference?
- War Games
It's now 2010, and somewhere out there in the real world is a .torrent for 1.4 gigabytes of insurance. Could be a billion digits of pi, for all anyone knows. But someone wants it out there, and the real-life version of Sneakers just got interesting.
Kudos for the War Games quote!
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/24/10 at 1:06 am
I had to give a while before I gave him a Karma for the "Blazing Saddles" reference:
Agent Jones: You said rape twice.
Agent Smith: I like rape.
;D
(Rape in real life is not a laughing matter.)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 08/25/10 at 12:29 am
(Rape in real life is not a laughing matter.)
Neither are bogus accusations of it.
But that's what makes this story so awesome. If Wikileaks had been leaking Russian secrets, Assange would be glowing in the dark, insurance file or not, as would everyone who so much as thought about downloading their content, let alone hosting it.
Because US foreign policy is based on at least appearance of trying to maintain the moral high ground (and I'm actually charitable enough to say that it's based on holding the moral high ground, at least where practical), the Catch-22 for the US intelligence community is how to keep a lid on things without losing the moral high ground. That's an interesting problem when you may not be sure what's in the insurance policy.
A rape accusation's not a bad move on the "deny, discredit, destroy" scale, but the timing and quick withdrawal was so sloppy that it may have backfired. (It backfired with me, but as a geek, I may not be the type of person to whom the move was actually targeted. Maybe it played just fine in Peoria.)
What do you do if you don't know what the other guy has, but everything you do know suggests that it's (probably!) not worth going full Putin on him? That goes double when the official policy is still a variant of "...you never go full Putin."
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: philbo on 08/25/10 at 7:44 am
Because US foreign policy is based on at least appearance of trying to maintain the moral high ground
That phrase is kind of hilarious.. not least because it's possibly right, at least in how it is viewed from within the corridors of power over there. But actual practise is so firmly based in a completely amoral pragmatism.
...US intelligence community is how to keep a lid on things without losing the moral high ground.
Since when did the US intelligence community actually have any moral high ground to lose?
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/25/10 at 3:03 pm
That phrase is kind of hilarious.. not least because it's possibly right, at least in how it is viewed from within the corridors of power over there. But actual practise is so firmly based in a completely amoral pragmatism.
Since when did the US intelligence community actually have any moral high ground to lose?
The U.S. Intelligence community will tell you morality is impractical. They will do whatever the legislature let's them get away with.
::)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: philbo on 08/26/10 at 3:50 am
The U.S. Intelligence community will tell you morality is impractical. They will do whatever the legislature lets them get away with.
::)
..which is why the "moral high ground" posturings are rather amusing
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 08/28/10 at 9:54 pm
..which is why the "moral high ground" posturings are rather amusing
The posturings for the moral high ground aren't addressed to the people who run our opposing countries, they're addressed to the domestic audience, and to the extent practical, to sympathizers in opposing nations.
Doesn't matter which side you happen to be on, the moral high ground isn't important, but the appearance of having the moral high ground is vital. (Sincerity is everything. Once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.)
The problem with the current meatspace war (read: US vs. Fundie Muslims) is that the two opposing sides have competely orthogonal (unrelated, alien, etc) concepts of what constitutes the moral high ground.
The only good thing about the cyberwar between Assange and the Powers That Be is that at least they have the same general idea of what the moral high ground looks like. Kinda surprised Assange didn't release a layer or two of the insurance policy as a return salvo over the bow, but then, I have no idea what's in it. Move, countermove, and on to the next move...
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 08/28/10 at 11:34 pm
A move towards Islam is a move towards socialism!
The Koran is filled with page after page of requirements for the orphans, widows, the have-nots, the elderly, the handicapped, etc. They will remind you to do as your grandfathers did...
Oh, who wants to hear all that crap? I just wanna get rich!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/11/cwm10.gif
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 09/23/10 at 12:59 am
In July, this happened.
What would really make Wikileaks interesting would be if Assange were talking about secrets like the ones behind this story.
I mean, we all knew about this, but as people dug deeper, we ended up with this thread and this thread.
If it worked, it was a hack on a par with the 1982 hack that may (or may not) have resulted in the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever observed, and as a bonus, nobody got hurt. If we're lucky, we'll know sometime in the 2030s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45vhjZ5rpP4
- Clock DVA, The Hacker, 1989. (Safe for work, not safe for epileptics, especially in fullscreen :)
As they said 20 years ago, learn now or be cut down.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 09/23/10 at 1:22 am
Thanks for posting my old friends Clock DVA. Not the band themselves, but their music. When I first got involved with college radio I discovered Clock DVA. "Impressions of African Winter" was on my show demo cassette all those years ago. I liked it then, I like it now. I never dump any music out of music I like unless it totally sucks. Men Without Hats and Go West come to mind (apologies to fans of either or both bands in advance).
:)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: philbo on 09/23/10 at 4:26 am
If it worked, it was a hack on a par with the 1982 hack that may (or may not) have resulted in the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever observed, and as a bonus, nobody got hurt. If we're lucky, we'll know sometime in the 2030s.
The biggest man-made non-nuclear explosion, presumably.. Krakatoa was a bit of a biggie, too :)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 10/23/10 at 12:20 am
Someone's back! Guess who?
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/10/cryptokids760_679c-660x409.jpg
This time it's Gulf War II: 400,000 documents about Electric Boogaloo!
Here we go again!
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Macphisto on 10/23/10 at 10:54 am
Someone's back! Guess who?
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/10/cryptokids760_679c-660x409.jpg
This time it's Gulf War II: 400,000 documents about Electric Boogaloo!
Here we go again!
I think, at this point, people should understand that every war involves torture. This is why it should be avoided.
That being said, I have little to no sympathy for Iraqis, Afghanis, or Pakistanis.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 11/27/10 at 9:23 pm
Been a while.
First up, that net that got all Stux'd up. Yup, it was about the spinny things. Not about making them fail, but about making the refined product less-than-refined, and probably about making them wear out a little too quickly for comfort. Probably set the bad guys back a good 2-3 years. Sweet.
Next up. That guy with the funny hair has gotten one rape accusation too many, and the diplomatic cables (which may or may not have anything to do with the insurance file) are coming out. German newspaper Der Spiegel is expected to go live with it tomorrow night (22:30) German time.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 11/28/10 at 10:08 pm
Seen on Twitter:
Dear government: as you keep telling us, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear.
(There aren't too many surprises hereyet, but I will neither confirm nor deny LOL'ing at the one likening Medvedev as playing the role of Robin against Putin, who may or may not have been described as the Russian goddamn Batman.)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 11/29/10 at 12:39 am
By gum, you wouldn't be laughing if J. Edgar Hoover was still running the show, I sh*t you not!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/09/smhair1.gif
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/01/10 at 2:34 am
By gum, you wouldn't be laughing if J. Edgar Hoover was still running the show, I sh*t you not! http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/09/smhair1.gif
Hoover, schmoover. Surveillance is already so far beyond anything Hoover imagined in his wildest fantasies. Never mind Hoover's wet dreams, East Germany's STASI would have *REDACTED* at the merest hint at what we've got.
This thread got started last August and I mentioned the timing of the rape allegations - a week or two after Wikileaks admitted getting its hands on the diplomatic cables that are today's scandal. And how odd it was that the Swedish prosecutor dropped the charges within hours.
So what do you suppose happened today, less than 48 hours after the cables finally get leaked to the press? Surprise, surprise, Interpol issues a red notice for you-know-who, and for you-know-what!
Now mind you, we still don't know what's in that insurance file. On one hand, maybe some clever folks in the government got enough pieces of the dead man's switch together to crack it - and discovered it was something that's already leaked, or something new, but ultimately less embarassing than what he's suspected to have on BofA - and decided to up the ante.
But on the other hand, if he releases the key to the whole thing, he's shot his bolt (assuming he hasn't packed multiple layers of encrypted files inside it like an onion) and the government has no reason to hold back. So he can't exactly return fire by releasing the insurance file to the public... yet.
On the gripping hand, maybe the government is still bone-stark terrified of whatever might be in the file... but they know that if they capture him alive and don't torture him too much, he might still be persuaded not to release the key. After all, when you've pissed off every other government in the world, a dead man's switch that only embarasses the US isn't much of a deterrent to "everyone else". If what we'll do to him is a picnic compared to what those other governments might do to him, maybe he'll rethink his position. (And on the... umm... fifth hand, if what he keeps leaking embarasses us more than it does those other governments, however, those other governments might just grin and bear it, at least for a few more years...)
The addition of an international manhunt has just taken the Wikileaks story from the sublime to the ridiculous - it's pure glorious chaos, like something straight out of Sneakers, Hackers, or other bits of 90s cyberpunk fiction
|-|4C|< +|-|3 P|_@|\|3+!!!1!!!1!1one!1!!!eleventy1!!!11!
So even though somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some SAN, is a little study in ones and zeroes of my sense of humor (this post included), I'm still laughing my ass off.
But for now, we're playing a new game: The first country that catches him gets to decide if the insurance key goes out, or stays secret. On your mark, get set, go!
If he's still playing in a month, it looks like, Bank of America is next.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/01/10 at 5:05 pm
And if Lavrentiy Beria was in charge, Julian Assange would have been found four years ago with an icepick through his neck and everybody would be asking, "Wiki who?"
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/05/grim.gif
You know what I call a thumb drive full of proof that Bank of America is evil and corrupt?
A waste of a thumb drive.
Anybody who's had so much as savings account with Bank of America knows BoA is venal!
::)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/03/10 at 11:01 pm
And if Lavrentiy Beria was in charge, Julian Assange would have been found four years ago with an icepick through his neck and everybody would be asking, "Wiki who?"
The bit about Medvedev being Robin to Putin's Batman is actually ego-stroking for Putin. The stuff about the Georgian invasion probably qualifies as "scare the satellite states into submission", and will be permitted to slide. But who knows what else he's got? Not all of the oligarchs played ball, and if he's got some of that sort of stuff, he could well find himself in line for an icepick, umbrella, or a nice hot cup of tea.
Problem is - depending on what's in that insurance file - if you strike him down, he could become more powerful than his enemies could possibly imagine.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Ryan112390 on 12/04/10 at 7:32 am
Why does he go after stupid Foreign Policy stuff? He should go after interesting stuff, like if there is really aliens.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: JamieMcBain on 12/04/10 at 10:50 am
Apparently, someone in the U.S., watches The Border and Little Mosque On The Prairie.
;D :D
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/us-warned-of-insidious-stereotypes-on-canadian-tv-wikileaks-shows/article1820643/
Do you really want to know what is really a "kind of insidious negative popular stereotyping?"
Dudley Do Right.
;D
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Mushroom on 12/04/10 at 4:45 pm
When this first broke, 2 movies immediately came to mind. Let's see if anybody can guess what they are?
Movie 1:
Pollution. Crime. Drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair - we throw GOBS of money at them and problems only get worse. Why is that? Because money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it.
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.
Okay, boss, this LTX-71 concealable mike is part of the same system that NASA used when they faked the Apollo Moon landings. They had the astronauts broadcast around the world from a sound stage at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernadino, California. So it worked for them, shouldn't give us too many problems.
Now what are you saying, the NSA killed Kennedy?
No, they shot him but they didn't kill him. He's still alive.
Did you know the Deputy Director of Planning was down in Managua, Nicaragua the day before the earthquake?
Now what are you saying, the C.I.A. caused the Managua earthquake?
Well, I can't prove it, but...
Movie 2:
It's a three-step... it's a three-step systematic attack on the entire national infrastructure. Okay, step one: take out all the transportation. Step two: the financial base and telecoms. Step three: You get rid of all the utilities. Gas, water, electric, nuclear. Pretty much anything that's run by computers which... which today is almost everything. So that's why they call it a fire sale, because everything must go.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/04/10 at 7:11 pm
When this first broke, 2 movies immediately came to mind. Let's see if anybody can guess what they are?
Movie 1:
Pollution. Crime. Drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair - we throw GOBS of money at them and problems only get worse. Why is that? Because money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it.
Yes, that's why I'm against extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires.
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.
It has always been just electrons. The Buddhists understood this three thousand years ago. In the end it still comes down to a Hobbesian struggle of physical force. Throughout most of human history society was not democratic and the average person was illiterate. Combine the new democracy and the new mass literacy with the Internet -- your ones and zeroes -- and you risk exposing what those who could initiate physical force upon us intend. The rich and powerful don't like this any more than they would have in the time of Thomas Jefferson...or the time of Moses, for that matter.
They can go one of two ways:
1. Restrict Internet content with massive government intrusion, as the Chinese do.
2. Curtail the ability of the proletariat to think.
I would advise the latter. We are already headed in this direction. Keep the proles dumbed down in analytical thought and hopped-up on bloodsport and porn. That's how the Inner Party controlled the proles in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith had a telescreen in his flat because he was in the Outer Party. He was in the small bureaucratic class. Big Brother didn't have to watch everybody. The proles were the vast majority and they were kept drunk and steeped in pornography and sports. Sound familiar? There's a passage in which Winston suggests the proles could rise up and shake off Big Brother. Parson's says knee-jerk, "The proles don't count. They're animals." The proles were not only uneducated, they were deprived of the ability to think.
Thirty years ago, the commentators who spoke in favor of bourgeoisie entitlement -- George Will, William F. Buckley, Ayn Rand, etc. -- made comprehensive arguments for their positions. One could read them and agree or disagree. The contemporary spokesman for the bourgeoisie employ spectacle and nonsense. I don't mean just lies and disinformation. I mean pure emotional caterwauling mixed with gaudy imagery designed to stir up fear and hate sans reason. We see this most prominently with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin.
If they kill Assange, they will just make him a martyr and spawn a hundred more Julian Assanges. The trick is to disempower the Julian Assanges of the world by making ideas meaningless to people. Keep dumbing down the curricula of schools and universities. Keep people's minds focused on "Survivor" and "Dancing with the Stars." It will only take another generation before the proletariat abandons critical thinking altogether, then it won't matter what Julian Assange says about Afghanistan or Bank of America. The only ones who would know how to listen belong to the power elite!
BIG BROTHER IS UNGOD!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/14/sad11.gif
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/05/10 at 9:14 pm
When this first broke, 2 movies immediately came to mind. Let's see if anybody can guess what they are?
Movie 1:
Well, I could tell you that one, but you already know that. Anyone for a game of Scrabble?
Movie 2:
Aha! Assange is hiding in New Hampshire!
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/06/10 at 12:36 am
Well, I could tell you that one, but you already know that. Anyone for a game of Scrabble?
Aha! Assange is hiding in New Hampshire!
Hey, I still have family in New Hampshire, they have all the telecom systems and gadgets you've got anywhere else and even better public utilities than New Jersey or Arizona. AND the roads are all paved now (most of them anyway). I mean, it's not like it's Labrador or something!
:D
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Ryan112390 on 12/06/10 at 5:52 am
Yes, that's why I'm against extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires.
It has always been just electrons. The Buddhists understood this three thousand years ago. In the end it still comes down to a Hobbesian struggle of physical force. Throughout most of human history society was not democratic and the average person was illiterate. Combine the new democracy and the new mass literacy with the Internet -- your ones and zeroes -- and you risk exposing what those who could initiate physical force upon us intend. The rich and powerful don't like this any more than they would have in the time of Thomas Jefferson...or the time of Moses, for that matter.
They can go one of two ways:
1. Restrict Internet content with massive government intrusion, as the Chinese do.
2. Curtail the ability of the proletariat to think.
I would advise the latter. We are already headed in this direction. Keep the proles dumbed down in analytical thought and hopped-up on bloodsport and porn. That's how the Inner Party controlled the proles in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith had a telescreen in his flat because he was in the Outer Party. He was in the small bureaucratic class. Big Brother didn't have to watch everybody. The proles were the vast majority and they were kept drunk and steeped in pornography and sports. Sound familiar? There's a passage in which Winston suggests the proles could rise up and shake off Big Brother. Parson's says knee-jerk, "The proles don't count. They're animals." The proles were not only uneducated, they were deprived of the ability to think.
Thirty years ago, the commentators who spoke in favor of bourgeoisie entitlement -- George Will, William F. Buckley, Ayn Rand, etc. -- made comprehensive arguments for their positions. One could read them and agree or disagree. The contemporary spokesman for the bourgeoisie employ spectacle and nonsense. I don't mean just lies and disinformation. I mean pure emotional caterwauling mixed with gaudy imagery designed to stir up fear and hate sans reason. We see this most prominently with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin.
If they kill Assange, they will just make him a martyr and spawn a hundred more Julian Assanges. The trick is to disempower the Julian Assanges of the world by making ideas meaningless to people. Keep dumbing down the curricula of schools and universities. Keep people's minds focused on "Survivor" and "Dancing with the Stars." It will only take another generation before the proletariat abandons critical thinking altogether, then it won't matter what Julian Assange says about Afghanistan or Bank of America. The only ones who would know how to listen belong to the power elite!
BIG BROTHER IS UNGOD!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/14/sad11.gif
We don't have to destroy our culture, or the next generation's education, to destroy this one man. Someone in DC has to have the balls to go at this man with J. Edgar Hoover-like ruthlessness and zeal. If Hoover were alive, Mr. Assange would not need to be killed; His credibility with the public would be destroyed.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/06/10 at 1:52 pm
We don't have to destroy our culture, or the next generation's education, to destroy this one man. Someone in DC has to have the balls to go at this man with J. Edgar Hoover-like ruthlessness and zeal. If Hoover were alive, Mr. Assange would not need to be killed; His credibility with the public would be destroyed.
Hoover would have found whoever was making files leak-able to WikiLeaks and destroyed THEM! Of course, we didn't have the Internet in Hoover's time, but if we did, Hoover would have sealed FBI files up as tight as a drum!
On the other hand, who is more respected today: Daniel Ellsberg or J. Edgar Hoover? Everybody thinks Hoover was a homosexual and a cross-dresser who would have been the first to destroy somebody else for being a homosexual or a cross-dresser. The only people who defend Hoover nowadays are guys like G. Gordon Liddy who will be loyal to J. Edgar into the grave!
::)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Ryan112390 on 12/06/10 at 4:39 pm
Hoover would have found whoever was making files leak-able to WikiLeaks and destroyed THEM! Of course, we didn't have the Internet in Hoover's time, but if we did, Hoover would have sealed FBI files up as tight as a drum!
On the other hand, who is more respected today: Daniel Ellsberg or J. Edgar Hoover? Everybody thinks Hoover was a homosexual and a cross-dresser who would have been the first to destroy somebody else for being a homosexual or a cross-dresser. The only people who defend Hoover nowadays are guys like G. Gordon Liddy who will be loyal to J. Edgar into the grave!
::)
Personally I think Ellsberg was a traitor. Only reason he and people like Jane Fonda are free is because discontent was so high on all ends of the spectrum for the war that politicians weren't going to risk their careers or risk not being re-elected to make an example out of them. Hoover, though he had his dark side, was a dedicated lawman.
By the way, I've read a couple of books on Hoover and say that he wasn't gay, he was actually asexual if anything. His personality was such that he couldn't have a normal romantic relationship with anyone, plus, he would never engage in gay activity due to even a slight risk that someone would see him, a picture would be taken, etc, anything that might endanger his image, which to Hoover was all important.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: 80sTrivMeister on 12/06/10 at 6:05 pm
I've heard that Assange has already released his "Doomsday Earth" files to hundreds of individuals and the encryption codes will follow in the wake of anything happening to him... :o
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/06/10 at 10:18 pm
Personally I think Ellsberg was a traitor. Only reason he and people like Jane Fonda are free is because discontent was so high on all ends of the spectrum for the war that politicians weren't going to risk their careers or risk not being re-elected to make an example out of them. Hoover, though he had his dark side, was a dedicated lawman.
By the way, I've read a couple of books on Hoover and say that he wasn't gay, he was actually asexual if anything. His personality was such that he couldn't have a normal romantic relationship with anyone, plus, he would never engage in gay activity due to even a slight risk that someone would see him, a picture would be taken, etc, anything that might endanger his image, which to Hoover was all important.
U.S. citizens owe themselves a man like Ellsberg who will tell us when our government is lying to us. You cannot have democracy if the government gets to lie. Too bad it gets to lie all the time and we don't have a democracy.
Most of the Jane Fonda story is urban legend.
Hoover was bisexual at least. Mary Bancroft called him "The Virgin Mary in pants." However, Bancroft isn't exactly a reliable source, and that's quite an insult to the Virgin Mary. I doubt he was a virgin. He might have been a Mary, but he was no Virgin Mary.
Hoover and Tolson might have been lifelong millionaire bachelors who happened to be close friends. I just don't buy it. I mean, I really don't care whether somebody is straight, gay, or bi. However, very few people are "asexual," and Hoover doesn't strike me as one of them.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Hoover_%26_Tolson.jpg
Clyde and Edgar, 1939
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/06/10 at 11:01 pm
Someone in DC has to have the balls to go at this man with J. Edgar Hoover-like ruthlessness and zeal. If Hoover were alive, Mr. Assange would not need to be killed; His credibility with the public would be destroyed.
Like I said back in August:
Agent Smith: ...so, Plan B. What should we charge him with?
Agent Jones: What are his accusations?
Agent Smith: Rape, embarassing the government, trafficking in classified documents, and rape.
Agent Jones: You said rape twice.
Agent Smith: I like rape.
FWIW, I don't think Assange is guilty of anything other than douchebaggery on a grand scale (and I'm willing to forgive him that for the amusement this story has provided me :), but for the record, I think Manning - the actual leaker of the cables - should fry.
I've heard that Assange has already released his "Doomsday Earth" files to hundreds of individuals and the encryption codes will follow in the wake of anything happening to him... :o
Yep, that's what this whole thread is about: the "insurance policy". There's a .torrent floating around for insurance.aes256. A little googling will give you the correct checksum for it, so you can have your own copy.
Side discussion:
AES is strong. For all we like to gripe about their eavesdropping, NSA has two missions - compromise the bad guys' systems, but also secure the good guys' systems. Reading between the lines, AES is strong enough that the government trusts it to keep its secrets, even against itself. (For good reason - a cryptosystem weak enough to be cracked by NSA is weak enough to be cracked by other countries' cryptographers too, and NSA doesn't have a monopoly on mathematicians. If you want Boeing to build a better jet than Airbus, Boeing has to be able to keep things secret from the EU's industrial spies. If that means Boeing can keep secrets cryptographycaily secure from the government, that's a small price to pay.)
Back on topic:
So, barring a fault in the implementation of AES used to encrypt the file (a fault known only to intelligence agencies, but not the hundreds of mathematicians analyzing it in public), or access to a computer that is literally bigger than the entire universe (quantum computers, if they exist, could halve the length of the key, effectively turning AES-256 into AES-128, but brute-forcing AES-128 is still a billions-of-years kind of problem), the file is just a billion-or-so random numbers until someone releases the key.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: 80sTrivMeister on 12/07/10 at 4:42 am
Scuttlebutt is Assange plans on surrendering to authorities in the UK... so his Poison Pill must already be in circulation...
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/07/10 at 4:15 pm
Scuttlebutt is Assange plans on surrendering to authorities in the UK... so his Poison Pill must already be in circulation...
But not for intelligence leaks. It looks like Julian can't keep his hands to himself! Looks like WikiLeaks got leaked on.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/11/cwm10.gif
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/07/10 at 11:50 pm
Scuttlebutt is Assange plans on surrendering to authorities in the UK... so his Poison Pill must already be in circulation...
Not necessarily. "Release the Crackin'" right now, and the authorities have nothing to lose by having him commit suicide in his cell. (With a shotgun. Five times. In the back. Before firing one more round to blow out the 13th floor window so he could jump out. And handcuff himself on the way down to make sure he didn't change his mind.)
Back to allegations of rape. (This here's a thread about allegations of rape.) What a coincidence.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/11/10 at 10:55 pm
http://i.imgur.com/qQWHY.jpg
A belated "Happy World Press Freedom Day" to everyone (mad shout-out to Virginia!) reading this thread!
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/11/10 at 11:16 pm
J. Edgar would just stay:
Who are the dipsh*ts?
The commies and the press?
No, you the agents are the dipsh*ts and if I this information gets leaked, you'll be lucky to go home alive!
And Hoover really would ruin people's lives if they dared challenge him! For decades "Hoover" was syonymous with FBI. Hoover would put people in jail just because he didn't like them!
:o
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: philbo on 12/12/10 at 11:38 am
And Hoover really would ruin people's lives if they dared challenge him! For decades "Hoover" was syonymous with FBI. Hoover would put people in jail just because he didn't like them!
Hoover sucked
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: JamieMcBain on 12/12/10 at 12:01 pm
Apparently, Sarah Palin, Jeffery T. Kuhner, and Tom Flanagan, want Julian Assange, assassinated.
http://www.suite101.com/content/calling-for-the-death-of-julian-assange-a316915
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: JamieMcBain on 12/12/10 at 12:04 pm
Ditto Mike Huckabee.
http://tobefree.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/christians-mike-huckabee-and-sarah-palin-on-wikileaks-kill-the-messenger/
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: JamieMcBain on 12/12/10 at 12:11 pm
However Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, have his back?
:o
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2010/12/rep-ron-paul-defends-wikileaks-julian-assange-asks-some-important-questions.html
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/confused-about-the-sex-charges-against-julian-assange-let-beck-and-his-blackboard-explain/
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 12/19/10 at 1:21 am
Ongoing silliness: People who don't know any better launching ill-advised DDOS attacks on sites that are only following orders from the powers that be.
Last week's lulz:
Dec. 12: Gawker network completely pwn3d.
Dec. 15th: For every thread, there's at least one xckd:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wikileaks.png
Dec. 18th: Gawker turns xkcd's comic into reality.
PROTIP for the ladies: Just because he's embarassed every government around the world, doesn't mean he's a good lay :)
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Ryan112390 on 12/19/10 at 5:36 am
However Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, have his back?
:o
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2010/12/rep-ron-paul-defends-wikileaks-julian-assange-asks-some-important-questions.html
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/confused-about-the-sex-charges-against-julian-assange-let-beck-and-his-blackboard-explain/
Beck only has his back because as Beck explained, he feels Assange is doing the same job he is--Exposing "The truth." Except, according to Beck, Assange is doing for different reasons. Assange, according to Beck, is exposing "The Truth" to:
1) Create distrust in the government, leading to riots and other assorted mayhem, which will lead to number 3
2) To make the Bush Administration look bad (Beck has in essence claimed Assange is either a member of a conspiracy--or being used as a pawn in said conspiracy--by or with George Soros and President Obama
3) Create anarchy, fear, chaos.
Beck claims he himself is only exposing "The Truth" to return America to greatness and "to restore honor" and shed light on how the government lies to us, not to "spread fear", "create anarchy", or "incite distrust in the government." He has also, very delicately, defended Assange, saying on one hand, "I'm not defending him, BUUTT..." and then going on to explain how Assange's arrest is part of a left wing conspiracy, punishing Assange exposing "The Truth", even though these same Left Wing conspiractors WANT him to expose "The Truth" to create anarchy. He claims this is part of "The Structure" that Soros, Obama and the Democratic Party, and anyone to the left of himself, are building. He claims they want to induce global anarchy, so they can build a new, National-Global Socialist structure or system of government.
He has referred, I kid you not, to Obama's administration's policies as "National Socialism." He NEVER says the word "Nazi", but he uses that "National Socialism" card, and says, "you know, the system used in Germany in the 1930s."
But then Beck quickly claims yet again, "I'm not defending him (Assange)." Essentially, he's taking both sides--Defending him yet condemning him, and yet all the while somehow bringing those "Evil Progressives" (TM) into the mix to sow more distrust and hate for them. Very Machiavellian on his part, I must say.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 12/19/10 at 1:46 pm
PROTIP for the ladies: Just because he's embarrassed every government around the world, doesn't mean he's a good lay :)
Sure, like Ken Lay!
"Sex by surprise" sounds like something from Big Black!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/12/evil1.gif
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 02/03/11 at 11:11 pm
NYTimes: Jan 27 Cables Show Delicate U.S. Dealings With Egypt’s Leaders
Former dot-com analyst Henry Blodget's BusinessInsider: Jan 28 WikiLeaks Spurs On Protests By Releasing New Egypt Corruption Cables
Jerusalem Post: Jan 29 WikiLeaks: US supported Egypt pro-democracy activists
ABC: Jan 29 Wikileaks Cables Shed Light on Egypt's New VP
http://www.dweebist.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/shut-down.png
The Atlantic: Feb 3: Wait, who?
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 02/20/11 at 11:16 pm
Dec 7 2010: Some wild rumor about that dude in Libya who never goes anywhere without a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.
http://ariversideview.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/galyna-kolotnytska.jpg
OK, so the guy may have dressed like Michael Jackson, but he had better taste in sex partners.
Jan 16 2010: Same dude says publicly "You have a suffered a great loss. There is none better than Zine to govern Tunisia."
But better taste in sex partners doesn't make for better political judgement.
Feb 17 2010: Libya warns against use of Facebook
Feb 18 2010: Libya shuts down the Internet
And since that worked out so well for Mubarak (look up one post)...
Feb 20 2010: Unrest spreads to Libyan capital.
Latest chatter: The man with more ways to spell his last name than Baskin-Robbins has flavors of ice cream is on a plane out of Tripoli. There's a split in the military between those willing to mow down the protestors vs those who refuse to follow orders. Judging from the number of shoes raised at the speech given by the next-in-line dude, ain't nobody under 40 who gives a damn.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 04/30/11 at 7:22 pm
It's been a while. I hear there's an election going on the frozen wastes of Canuckistan.
Canadian DMCA? The Canadian Conservative government delayed introducing a Canadian DMCA in early 2008 due to public opposition motivated by anti-RIAA intellectual property lawyer Michael Geist.
And whaddya know, the tinfoil hatters weren't even... well, they still wear tinfoil, but they weren't 100% wrong on this one, either.
Obligatory pop culture reference:
"What the hell is Wikileaks?"
cMCGceNIBAI
(Mods: It's got a few naughty words, but despite what Uncle Sam suggests: "you can handle it.")
Yup, it's an official video. Just one of those Internetty coincidences that Chicken Soup vs. Boney M also sampled Boney M's "Gotta Go Home" and appeared on the same album that featured the track from Duck Sauce, as inspired by Barbra Streisand... with a little help from some Anonymous extras.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 07/02/11 at 12:04 am
20 secure phones to assist in staying anonymous: $5,000
Fighting legal cases across five countries: $1,000,000
Upkeep of servers in over 40 countries: $200,000
Donations lost due to blanking blockade: $15,000,000
Added cost due to house arrest: $500,000
Watching the world change as a result of your work: Priceless.
jzMN2c24Y1s
There are some people who don't like change. For everyone else, there's WikiLeaks.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 09/03/11 at 1:45 am
Cablegate goes public. Full unredacted archive of state department cables available to everybody on the planet, as of this morning.
So, the gloves are off. (Note: There is no sensitive/classified data in the Pastebin link, just a quick summary of the events of the past week, a quote from a book, and an explanation of how two pieces of the puzzle fit with the third to reconstruct the archive.)
To clarify what's happened today, the password leaked was for the cables, not for the insurance.aes256 file, so there may still be a round or two remaining in the game.
It seems that when Assange leaked the cables to The Guardian, they gave them a "temporary" password. It may be the case that this password was also used to protect other Wikileaks-related data, which is an inexcusably-epic fail. It's amateurish in the sense that it's the sort of low-hanging fruit that enabled #Lulzsec's epic 50-day run. It's the level of fail that you'd expect of MBAs and video game companies and Texas police departments, not grey-hat cypherpunks.
Compounding the fail, David Leigh of The Guardian published the password in a book last February. (Either because he wanted it leaked, or because he assumed - erroneously - that Assange and company had given the Guardian a copy of the file that was encrypted with a unique key, and/or that the copy shipped to the Guardian would not subsequently be leaked to the world by the likes of DDB.)
Compounding the confusion, there's also the matter of former Wikileaks member Daniel Domscheit-Berg, his nuking of Assange's data, his ejection from the CCC, and his competing Openleaks service.
With the cat out of the bag (to everybody who mattered as far back as February, and to everybody who was paying attention as of earlier this week), Assange was effectively forced to release the entire archive of cables in full unredacted form today, if for no other reason than to ensure that the resulting poopflood of news would alert anybody mentioned in the cables to go underground.
Net outcomes from this month's developments:
- Assange's credibility with the media is toast
- Assange can no longer be considered as capable of competently securing any data that gets leaked to him.
- Domscheit-Berg and his leak service must by definition be considered untrustworthy.
- Because Assange admitted the cat was out of the bag and published the whole thing, he's likely eligible for prosecution in Australia.
p7uy-zfrkf4
Well-played, VA!
It's a party in the CIA!
For anyone interested in playing the home game, finding the files is an exercise left for the student - but they're all over the 'net, and front page news on most tech blogs:
ACollectionOfHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay# And like the book said in February, don't forget to put the word Diplomatic between "Of" and "History".
The moral of the story is that a decent passphrase (I'd still have gone with a Setec Astronomy joke :), combined with piss-poor key management, is no more secure than setting "12345" as the combination to your luggage.
20 secure phones to assist in staying anonymous: $5,000
Fighting legal cases across five countries: $1,000,000
Upkeep of servers in over 40 countries: $200,000
Donations lost due to blanking blockade: $15,000,000
Added cost due to house arrest: $500,000
Watching the world change as a result of your work: Priceless.
To this, we can now add:
"Watching an organization implode as a result of incompetent security practices resulting in the compromise of its keys/passphrases, servers, data, and most importantly, its personnel: Sad, but still kinda lulzy."
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: Foo Bar on 09/05/11 at 1:20 am
Meanwhile, in Canada...
The Canadian government asked the US to place it on the Big Bad List of Naughty Copyright-Violating Countries.
So you Canucks who've enjoyed the past 20 years of legal P2P downloading, paid for by CRIA (Canuck version of RIAA)'s old "Make 'em pay a small levy on every CD, because every CD must have been purchased with the intent of pirating music" levy...
...get ready to join America, full-on DMCA-style, during this term of the Harper government. And when you call your MP and demand an explanation, don't take "No, we did no such thing" for an answer, because the diplomatic cables between the US and Canada say otherwise, even if your MP had no idea that this had gone on behind his or her back.
Subject: Re: Too Many Secrets: Wikileaks Insurance Policy
Written By: MaxwellSmart on 09/05/11 at 4:58 pm
Meanwhile, in Canada...
The Canadian government asked the US to place it on the Big Bad List of Naughty Copyright-Violating Countries.
So you Canucks who've enjoyed the past 20 years of legal P2P downloading, paid for by CRIA (Canuck version of RIAA)'s old "Make 'em pay a small levy on every CD, because every CD must have been purchased with the intent of pirating music" levy...
...get ready to join America, full-on DMCA-style, during this term of the Harper government. And when you call your MP and demand an explanation, don't take "No, we did no such thing" for an answer, because the diplomatic cables between the US and Canada say otherwise, even if your MP had no idea that this had gone on behind his or her back.
That's where your friend's Sigue Sigue Sputnik were visionary. Reserve space on every record for commercials. It's the compromise struck between Youtube and the record labels. You can watch the videos for free, but you have to watch an ad for deodorant or soda pop first!
8)