WikiLeaks Publishes Cable Archive In Full 296
We recently discussed news that WikiLeaks had complained of a password leak which threatened the encryption of unredacted documents contained in the Cablegate archive. Now, reader solanum writes with this update:
"According to the Guardian, 'WikiLeaks has published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables, without redactions, potentially exposing thousands of individuals named in the documents to detention, harm or putting their lives in danger. The move has been strongly condemned by the five previous media partners – the Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde – who have worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents.' In the same article The Guardian gives further explanation of the controversy reported earlier, suggesting that Assange went against standard protocol in providing the master password to the newspaper."
Buckle up folks... (Score:2)
Buckle Up? (Score:2)
You know, where I come from we grab a beer and a bag of chips and get comfortable. Buckling up isn't comfortable. Looks silly too.
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And it shows, of course, that wikileaks can't be trusted to protect lives. It further shows that extreme measures are justified to protect potentially damaging secrets.
Besides, It unfortunately shows US politicians, sadly, are not that bad, compared to others [guardian.co.uk] ...
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We're not trading lives for oil. we're trading lives for power, and this President is no different than GWB, Clinton, GHWB, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, Johnson ... in this regard.
The only thing people like you do, is bury your head in the sand, because the ends justify the means in your world.
The Constitution hasn't mattered in a very long time. When people are looking at INTERNATIONAL law as superseding it, or when they view it as a "living changing document".
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The Constitution was always intended to be, and IS, a living changing document. That's why it can be amended!
Well, thank you very much for the history lesson there.
Now, how about I introduce you to this place we call the real world. You know the one slammed full of appointed czars that bypass this "living document" all the damn time(hence the reason we have so damn many of them, less chance for those pesky "Rights" to get in the way). Perhaps I should ask you to step back into your historical library and review just when the last time a real Amendment(the 27th is laughable) to our "living document" was actually
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The Constitution was always intended to be, and IS, a living changing document. That's why it can be bug fixed!
FTFY.
And to reply the fixed version: 0-day exploit appear in ceonet every day.
Checks and Balances (Score:3)
Excepting in recent years its been changed via active judiciaries, bypassing the amendment process. There's a reason it's HARD to pass an amendment. Meanwhile we've allowed men in black robes to effectively alter our founding documents based on how they feel.
This is the way the system was designed. Those "men in black robes" have the power and the mandate to interpret the law, including the Constitution.
I won't sit here and act like they don't ever screw up. Indeed, a lot of times they do. Sometimes the system needs correction. Plessy v. Ferguson, anyone? But when such is the case, the solution isn't to sit around whining about "active judiciaries," that's just stupid. If judiciaries weren't active, they wouldn't be upholding their Constitutional duty. T
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People like me? What kind of person do you think I am based on my post?
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It would be utterly unthinkable for the USA to move their informants to a safe place after the leaks, right?
They risked their lives to help the USA ... will the USA be there for them?
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I would not count on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army [wikipedia.org]
Re:Buckle up folks... (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's an AC, but I'm replying anyway because this is a widely held belief in certain circles.
When media asked Assange about the risks to human lives because of their first releases, Assange stated that he didn't care and that their deaths served his purposes well. Assange is a sociopath and repeatedly on recorded saying people deserve to die for his cause and that its a just death.
Complete bullshit. I know exactly what story you're talking about: http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/07/which_is_it_mr_assange [foreignpolicy.com] The deaths occurred because the Kenyan people decided to riot and face death of their own accord, a decision they based on information leaked on Wikileaks. These people actively chose to fight a tyrant. They weren't executed based on information in the leak.
In short, just the fuck up. You don't have a clue.
Re:Buckle up folks... (Score:4, Insightful)
You should look into some anger management. All that bad temper is just going to give you a heart attack.
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I can definitely agree to this. I can go further and point to an existing example: Cryptome [cryptome.org], which has been around since 1997 or so.
all it would take is for it to be expanded a little bit.
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What are they thinking? (Score:3, Interesting)
The guardian password thing was a mistake. A big mistake.
The solution however is NOT to go all in and betray the trust of the sources. This sort of thing is just what you'd need to kill Wikileaks forever.
If it was due to a mistake, an accident or hacking, we might move on, but this is big stuff.
Re:What are they thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
even more damning is the guardian (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the link, is from the Guardian, from the same guy who deliberately published the document in the first place.
Guardian is after wikileaks, bigtime. It's incredibly damning of them.
Re:What are they thinking? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's only one cow. It was already out.
The fact that you weren't aware that it was already out is the reason why Wikileaks had to do this - make sure *everybody* knows.
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Assuming I accept your premiss.
Why would he then do something like this? If his top secret plan was to get all the info out by secret, why would he PUBLICLY RELEASE THEM? He could have just waited, or stoked the fire by using the Streisland effect.
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The Gardian was used as the patsy to start this little mess. They start by giving the Gardian a "Temporary" password which just happened to be the Root/Master password for the server. I mean really. Who gives out the Root password to the server to anyone other than the SysAdmin. When the password was published back in February did they do the sensible thing and change all the passwords? No, instead
WikiLeaks then published a series of increasingly detailed tweets giving clues about where the password might be found as part of its attempts to deny security failings on its own part. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/wikileaks-publishes-cache-unredacted-cables [guardian.co.uk]
This was planed to go down this way.
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I'm getting very confused as to what the password is reused for. According to the /. story posted last:
"The embassy cables were shared with the Guardian through a secure server for a period of hours, after which the server was taken offline and all files removed, as was previously agreed by both parties. [...]the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music."
So it wasn't root password was it?
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However, former WikiLeaks staff member Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who parted acrimoniously with WikiLeaks, said instead of following standard security precautions and creating a temporary folder, Assange instead re-used WikiLeaks's "master password". This password was then unwittingly placed in the Guardian's book on the embassy cables, which was published in February 2011.
Master Password == Root or The Password we put on EVERYTHING
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No. It means that hey want to cover up the fuckup which JA and *only* JA is responsible for to the media.
He gave the password without specific instructions. He put the files somewhere where they don't belong (i think not mixing redacted and unredacted material would be a good principle) and did not inform the administrator that these are there. He lacked responsiveness in communicating with the responsible admistrator. He lacked openness to address the issue and take control of it of give the responsibility
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You are so wrong over here.
He gave the password to the Insurance file. That part was wrong. True. Not sure why he gave him that password, but that's his mistake.
The files were ENCRYPTED and public. The idea was that if wikileaks was pulled down by the government, or shut down by the ISP or whatever - which was VERY probable, lots of people would have the files. Think of it as a guarantee. Its useless pulling down the site, because the data will still be there. Two factor authentication would be useless for
Re:There is a deeper meaning here (Score:5, Insightful)
No i am not. follow the full story and you get a different picture.
a) Torrenting is just a very spectacular way to insure the existence of a document. Among all possible ways it is the least preferable. The preferred on involves copying the data on 50 DVDs and sending or giving these to the partner newspapers. The decision to use torrent in this way was the wrong one, no matter if you agree with it or not, since it only left one barrier (obtaining a not-so-high entropy password) for any interested party.
b) the standard way to handle encrypted material is *not* to give pwds directly. The standard way is to hand over the key, which is protected by a passphrase, and give this passphrase separately. This was the standard procedure in the last company where i worked for something as mundane as .pk12 certificates for wlan clients, or ssh certificates.
c) mixing the functions of being secured by the torrent and transmitting it to the journalist in a cool way was completely irresponsible. It was JAs decision to transmit key material for a secret document to this person. It was his decision alone. He did *not* communicate it to others, he did not ask for permission, and as far as i understood this was one of the points which made the conflict with DDB more severe. AFAIU JA always resisted rules inside WL to which he could be bound. But believe me, rules, even informal ones are a god thing. Rules like 'who can take money' 'who has access the servers' 'which persons share the key material in a way that only a majority of them can reconstruct the key'. But this would have pushed JA from a throne of a king to the chair of a leader.
d) AFAIU the persons torrenting in a wave of unqualified paranoia were not aware that these documents are contained within the file they are torrenting since JA did not inform anybody on this. I take this point with a grain of salt, since it is DDBs interpretation, but the German Lawyer of WL only complained to DDB about htese severe claims and did not ask him for a "unterlassungserklaerung" (a legal binding document which you can use to stop somebody for making flase statements which harm you). This fact tells me DDBs story is essentially right.
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The release of the whole batch means that any negotiation to avoid the worst criminal penalties for Assange and others has failed. These people know they are going to be seeing little but the cinderblock walls of a detention facility for many years. They're giving up.
You may be right. But I would like to suggest another hypothesis.
The release may instead mean that Assange and others believe even more strongly than they did before that they cannot be touched and see no reason to be reasonable any more. I think Assange is and has been crazy. I don't think he's rational. Given how the response to him has been fairly weak (he's not in jail and while I think he is due for a court date, he has a chance to beat the rap), I can understand how he might conclude that's he
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Do you even know what "the rap" is? Or anything about the situation at all. It sounds like you have a half assed opinion that someone should be killed. That is evil.
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Re:There is a deeper meaning here (Score:4, Insightful)
Executing anyone is always an assassination, regardless of how you try to justify it.
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Fantastic, stunning deceit by The Guardian (Score:5, Insightful)
The Guardian essentially pretends now that Wikileaks have taken this decision and by doing so have placed a lot of people at risk.
This deceit is evident several places in the article. That is the deceitful picture they are trying to paint.
The truth is that all of the cables were already accessible to anyone who wanted that access worldwide, including intelligence agencies.
You can argue about "blame": was the blame on Assange who apparently reused a password, on the Wikileaks people who spread that file around as a form of "insurance", or on the person from The Guardian who wrote what the password was in his book?
But you can't argue that Wikileaks now has sole responsibility for placing people at risk. That responsibility is down to all the aforementioned participants.
The exact division of blame can be argued about, but a picture that Wikileaks now places someone at risk that wasn't placed at risk earlier through joint efforts is monumentally deceitful.
It's called spin (Score:2)
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But WL is at fault for not following standard security practices like:
a) dont use the same pwd twice
b) dont mix the functions of systems in an uncontrolled way
c) generate a key, secure it by a phrase (or by many), hand over the key and tell the phrase separately
d) if you give sbd access, be explicit on what he should do and not do. I was often laughed at as a sysadmin for explaining where which things are stored and explaining explicitly if a pwd is critical, but that sby would not explain a non-technical p
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I think that someone may have put a mole in the Guardian.
It would be a perfect opportunity to make wikileaks look like a pack of pricks.
And getting them shut down might just be important enough to risk a leak.
I think wikileaks got screwed and is now just doing damage control.
They were finished the minute the Guardian "accidentally" leaked the master password.
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but a picture that Wikileaks now places someone at risk that wasn't placed at risk earlier through joint efforts is monumentally deceitful
Nonsense. Before Assange and crew offered to help the original criminal move copies of all of that stolen data, the people named in those documents were less at risk. Assange acted to handle that data and make a big show of picking and choosing how and to whom he would dribble it out (to maximize his ego-boosting press coverage), but it was his group's actions that took one bumbling, screwed-up idiot's lame data-dump-theft and turned it into widely reachable collection that, of course, inevitably would be
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This. Back when Wikileaks was actually redacting the documents, people praised them to high heaven and criticized anyone claiming that the documents could potentially cause harm. Now, we see that Wikileaks having those documents was in fact dangerous all along, and that there is damn good reason the government doesn't like them being handed to random people on the Internet, and prosecutes people who do. You might even say that this problem was one good reason the US government wanted Wikileaks shut down in
Re:Fantastic, stunning deceit by The Guardian (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, this is not a topic which brings out the best thinking skills.
There was a time in a galaxy near you when homosexuals were regarded as inherently criminal, due to the prominence of newspaper headlines that read "Homosexual man slays ..." compared to the shocking dearth of headlines reading "Straight man slays ..."
Some of the headlines read "Hell's Angel slays ..." but somehow our bucket brains don't make the daring inference to file this headline also under the bucket "straight man slays ..." leading to the conclusion that there are a lot of gay killers prowling the neighbourhood.
But wait, just in, the human bucket brain sometimes makes errors of judgement:
Murder charges may unfairly tarnish military's reputation [theglobeandmail.com]
We all know about the Streisand effect, I suppose because it's the simplest effect to understand, and takes the least effort to invoke: the fact of its mention in loud conversation makes it true--can't get any less risky than that.
How about the Turing effect? Now pay attention, this one is more difficult. Take a society that is so hung up on mother nature connecting positive to negative (and not any other way) that it conducts criminal proceedings against a war hero for what I would describe as a victimless crime (as compared to drinking and driving, or failing to abide by food safety regulations). Where was Winston Tippler Churchill when Turing needed a strong character reference? There's a crime for you, in my opinion. As a result of the criminal proceeding--in which no one mentions that Turing contributed more to the war effect than any ace fighter pilot--Turing is forced to undergo therapy which causes him to grow breasts (not cruel, not unusual) and then he kills himself. Why does no one who knows anything come to his defense? Well, we've got these secrets, you see, and it's better if no one knows anything. In fact, it's policy. Makes the world a better place.
I would venture to guess this did not bring out the best side of human nature in the homosexual population who skulked around feeling paranoid, ostracized, and excluded lest they become the unwitting center of attention in a pagan ritual of social uptightness. And furthermore, the morally uptight consist entirely of law-abiding do-gooders who would never threaten pagan outcomes in acts of social extortion.
If you're inside the intelligence establishment, this is all pretty cool. By applying the right kind of pressure, your target might just self-destruct in a puddle of stress and paranoia and improbable denials. Even by that standard, I'm coming around to the opinion that Assange is an asshole. He was assisted in arriving at this place by other assholes, who will forever remain dark shadows where the secrets lurk.
Turing took the honorable way out. He was persecuted by the state, none of his friends showed up to defend him, he grew breasts, then killed himself. He never passed a single secret to Julian Assange. Just like the witch tossed into the river who drowns in a way that proves she wasn't a witch in the first place.
But what if some future Alan Turing takes the growing of breasts the wrong way and slips an embarrassing state secret or two to the likes of Julian Assange?
Two options for the intelligence establishment:
A) Admit that persecuting a war hero for a victimless deviancy was pretty fucking stupid.
B) Double down on the need for secrecy and the portrayal of anyone who favours a system of checks and balances as suffering from moral turpitude (coming right up, on the silver platter of the bell hop of dirty tricks).
These geniuses of deceit have trouble with option A. Funny that. But think about it from their side: the Soviets might try to extort Turing into cooperation by threatening to spill his deviant acts to a socie
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Maybe I'm missing something - but if Wikileaks didn't exist in the 1st place, then we wouldn't have this problem. So ultimately they blame goes back to them because they took the 1st step in even compiling and distributing the documents.
Sure, someone else may or may not have done same eventually... but we're talking about the current problem here, the way it actually happened.
It's all on Wilkileaks for doing what they did in the 1st place.
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Well put.
The only fully verifiable fact is that the Guardian is attempting to deceive. That is the number one lesson I took away from the whole story.
On a side note. Someone mentioned that journalists may not understand passwords, GPG, bittorent etc. Well, today's journalists need to understand these concepts to perform their jobs. They also need to have at least an above average understanding of smartphones, the related privacy issues, firewalls, proxies, twitter etc.
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He might have done it on purpose.
Already out there? (Score:2)
I guess to anyone who's directly interested in endangering the sources and/or identified parties put two and two together back then, so this may be of little impact from that aspect. Perhaps WikiLeaks was trying to give the impression that they're still in control before ev
When dealing with the devil... (Score:2)
Questionable headline (Score:2)
Wikileaks made the encrypted archive available long ago so shouldn't the headline here point out the newer and more interesting bit - that the Guardian released the key after signing an agreement not to?
Guardian covering their ass (Score:5, Insightful)
First the Guardian published the master password for the cables.csv file, which made all those names of informants and what not publicly available. Now that Wikileaks is also making the same information available that the Guardian first made public to everyone, the Guardian is trying to paint this disclosure of information as an irresponsible move by Wikileaks.
The only thing you can blame Wikileaks for, afaik, is to make that same information available via a search interface (besides the fact that they gave the real password to the Guardian). But it's not like people who had really bad intentions for uses of that information couldn't set something like that up themselves (and probably already did), which I assume is what motivated them to do this.
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Well, no, not exactly. The Guardian published the password. Wikileaks failed to secure the encrypted payload. They both had to fail for the security breach to have happened. Irresponsibility is shared there, and as best I can tell, Julian is embarrassed and attempting to salvage ego with a dumb "I meant to do that" sort of maneuver.
The Guardian is being a bit silly in complaining now, after the data is already out there - anyone with an interest has already found a torrent.
But really, the whole thing is si
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given that the cables were available very widely to (as I understand it) millions of US folks already. I simply don't believe that documents shared with 7 figures of people, security cleared or no, don't find their way to people who have an interest in such things.
You can't actually get access to those documents solely by virtue of having Secret or Top Secret clearance.
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You're forgetting to blame Assange's:
Negligent stupidity in releasing the data dump to the guardian with a "cute" & supposedly time limited password & then to torrent with the same password.
Outrageous hypocrisy in exposing the secrets of others while expecting his own to remain secret.
He cannot escape guilt by saying "I was just following orders" -- he gave the orders.
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You're forgetting to blame Assange's:
Negligent stupidity in releasing the data dump to the guardian with a "cute" & supposedly time limited password & then to torrent with the same password.
Well, yes, that's what I mean with "besides the fact that they gave the real password to the Guardian".
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You can also blame Wikileaks for trusting the Guardian with that information in the first place.
You don't give away the key to the henhouse, period.
How could wikileaks have been sure that the Guardian didn't have a mole in it?
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>The only thing you can blame Wikileaks
How about that they know fuck-all of propery using crypto? It blows my mind that such an incompetent organization is in charge of such valuable information.
Anyone who knows shit about dealing with information knows that journalists are extremely tech unsavy and not giving them their own archive and hand holding when it comes to passwords, crypto, etc.
Assange saved 5 minutes and fucked this up. Sorry, but you need to learn the basics of how to deal with people, non-
PGP/GPG (Score:2)
Anyone who knows shit about dealing with information knows that journalists are extremely tech unsavy and not giving them their own archive and hand holding when it comes to passwords, crypto, etc.
GPG/PGP aren't hard to use. If that was going to stymie a journalist from participating, then good, they weren't smart enough to be in this particular club. After all, if they're that dumb they might just go and publish their own password... oh, wait.
P.S. - 'time limited password' on a static file? Either Assan
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This post will self-destruct 30 seconds after you read it.
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How about changing the password on the file, from "THESAMEONEIUSEDEVERYWHERE" to "UniquePasswordforAGuardianJournalistWhoIThinkIsABumblingBoob-111222333444555666###!!!&&&$$$"?
Wouldn't stop people from getting the data if they got ahold of the Guardian's copy of the file, and the Guardian's password... but the GUARDIAN would be to blame for the leak in its entirety, as they would have to allow others to get their copy of the data, AND the password - not just "somebody let a password slip, and the
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It was only the password on the Guardian's file. Unfortunately that file got distributed. See the Der Speigel article.
The odds on Assange (Score:2, Funny)
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You can't stop the signal, Mal. (Score:3)
Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.
There is no news. There is only the truth of the signal. What I see. And, there's the puppet theater the Parliament jesters foist on the somnambulant public.
Information wants to be Free (Score:2)
As is oft stated here, information wants to be free.
If you are a leaker, you have to assume that ANYTHING you send to someone electronically will be published to the entire population of the planet. That is, after all, why you want to leak something - to make it public.
What this episode has shown is that potential leakers CANNOT trust any organization to do redacting, they must do that before hand if the feel it is needed. It's not like you could trust them anyway, as you never know who really backs any o
As expected: (Score:2)
Did anyone seriously think that the complete unredacted cables wouldn't end up getting loose once this dance started way back in November 2010?
(If so, maybe you think all the campaign promises you'll hear in the 2012 election are highly reliable.)
You can blame or hail anyone you like for this. But when something like this gets this much coverage and publicity, it's an excellent bet that full info will be leaked by someone.
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How fascist of you.
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So by your example I shouldn't have protection of anonymity for informing the police of a local drug dealer... even though I'd have reasonable fear of reprisals for doing so....
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In big boy politics NEITHER side cares about a few dead guys. Anyone not getting this needs to grow up.
Jihadists kill their enemies, anti-Jihadists kill their enemies, and anti-anti-Jihadists HELP Jihadists kill anti-Jihadists.
There is no "neutral way to participate".
Re:What on earth were they thinking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah... a few folks will have a good reason to be worried, but otherwise the world at large won't see the effects for a long time, if ever.
Now Wikileaks OTOH, is about to be labeled a terrorist organization and removed from the face of the Earth by any means necessary - legal or not legal. They had a shot at being left to remain in existence when they had some sort of underdog nobility to play on, but now? I suspect someone at the CIA, Interpol, and various other places around the globe are quietly whispering the same thing 'Oh, it's *on* now, bitches...'
(rightly or wrongly, I suspect that's how it's going to be played out).
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Well, the intelligence world was already trying to spank Wikileaks...effectively without a real quality excuse.
Now they have the excuse, and lives really are on the line. Bye Wikileaks!
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If anybody dies now it will be the fault of the US for not moving their informants to a safe place.
Think they'll do it? Or will they prefer to use them as human sacrifices for their witch hunt.
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We don't know when the password and the file were put together by any potential black hats. We know the password was published some time ago, it just became news recently. It isn't like now that the release was official, only at that moment did it fall into the wrong hands.
In any case, this is a tremendous loss. There's no way to guess how many valuable intelligence sources were compromised, and Wikileaks continues to be primarily focused around embarrassing and damaging the Unites States' national security
Re:What on earth were they thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck with that... we're talking (potentially) thousands of informants globally, many of whom are not in a position (for various but legitimate reasons) to simply pack their families up and go.
If you've ever tried any sort of large logistics operation on short notice, you'd discover pretty quickly just how tough it is to get anything done on a large scale. It would take a month or so at best, and multiple months at worst. Now, try moving a global-wide network of different people, most of whom you may or may not have contact with on a regular (let alone frequent) basis. A huge percentage of these informants have no access to the Internet in order to even check on their own (see also North Korea, Pakistan, etc) Long story short, it would be frickin' impossible on short notice.
Sorry, but the fault lies with the leaker for treason, The Guardian for incompetence, with Wikileaks for being narcissistic idiots and broadcasting the potential hit list in plain daylight, and with all the idealistic useful idiots [wikipedia.org] who, without thinking it through, wholeheartedly and unreservedly supported them.
Re:What on earth were they thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what happened is that the Guardian stabbed them in the back and gave all the governments in the world the excuse they needed to go after Wikileaks.
So now Wikileaks is deciding to go out with a bang before someone slits their throat and denies them even a whimper.
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They deserve to be shot.
Wow, brilliant response. Certainly nothing wrong with labeling an organization as "terrorist" just so you can kill them because you don't like their politics. WikiLeaks are not terrorists nor are they under oath to protect anybody's secrets. The people who violated their security clearance and leaked the info initially are who should be punished. If anything, this will make governments less casual about their security clearances, which is a Good Thing(tm).
Re:What on earth were they thinking? (Score:4, Informative)
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Treason relies on the person having a duty loyal to the USA by being a citizen. Assange is citizen of Australia and cannot thus be charged with treason to the USA.
Or perhaps we should start executing most Americans as traitors to the republic of North Korea and/or Iran and/or China?
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They were thinking ... that The Guardian had already published the password to the "insurance" file in a book so they might as well let everybody have access, not just the bad guys.
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I'd be interested in knowing how the Guardian even got the password in the first place.
Not password to insurance file ... (Score:2)
They were thinking ... that The Guardian had already published the password to the "insurance" file in a book so they might as well let everybody have access, not just the bad guys.
My understanding is that the Guardian did not publish the password to the insurance file, that it published the password to a temporary file that Assange said would only exist for a few hours. The password was interesting in that it provides some insight into Assange's thinking. Assange giving the password to the Guardian was also insightful, demonstrating great contempt for journalists (can you remember this missing word). What the Guardian did not know, and what Assange is greatly negligent and responsib
Re:What on earth were they thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Oh. My. God."
There is no God, and the intent of Manning leaking the cables was their exposure. This was inevitable, so no one should be surprised.
When a secret ceases to be secret it's no longer secret.
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That's equivalent to saying "I followed the rules. I robbed the bank without shooting anyone. In fact, I let all the hostages go at the end."
Killing the hostages makes it worse, but in the end, robbing the bank is already not following the rules.
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You can always trust those already in positions of authority...
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it is also ironic that you people are ok with people like us working in private sector to be responsible for all their choices of their employment, for the better or for the worse, and go talking about the 'free market' and the 'realities of life' when something shitty happens to any particular segment of the workforce, but, SOMEHOW, start to see things in a different way when someone working for a torture organization gets into danger because of who they work for.
Sure they knew the risks, just as a truck
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When they say the cables identify those at risk, the people they're talking about include (possibly peaceful) political activists within repressive regimes who may now be in severe danger. They're also talking about whistleblowers who are also now in danger, and will now be less forthcoming about reporting abuses going on within their perview.
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There are a great number of regimes that unjustly persecute people, and I think a little unbiased research would do you good.
I can't tell how serious you're being, and it takes trivial googleing to see you're incorrect, so I'm starting to feel a little like I'm feeding a troll here - hopefully I'm wrong, and we're just miscommunicating.
Wikidrown. (Score:2)
and taking anyone near it down the abyss with it.
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You have the attitude of every tyrant's lackey and every
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We're going to be hated either way. Our crime is being powerful, the excuse is that we're dicks about it.
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If their results end up hurting people in the US then they should get angry.
"Should"? I think the individual "should" decide that for themselves. I'm not really angry either way.
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insurance.aes256 IIRC.
And it was supposed to contain at least this information, but possibly more.
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Even the most open society and government needs secrets. No secrets means no back channels and informal communications; lack of those means that violence over disputes will only become MORE likely, not less. You know the saying, "you don't want to see how they make the sausage?" Well, you don't want to see how they keep peace, either: it involves a lot of backchannel communications, informal chats, and politicking. When those means fail, we end up with war. If we remove those means, you've simply mad