The Guardian and the Wikileaks Encryption Key 196
rtfa-troll writes "Bruce Schneier has a good article explaining how the Guardian released the encryption key for the WikiLeaks cables and destroyed the main protection against the release of informers' personal information. The comments in Schneier's blog fill in details of how exactly WikiLeaks' secondary file security protections were also bypassed. Now the Guardian has an article that Assange risks arrest by Australia over the latest leaks, which include information about an Australian intelligence officer. They even say, 'We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk,' and go on to state that 'The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone,' something which seems clearly debunked in the analysis on Schneier's blog."
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:5, Insightful)
They accepted the risks when they engaged in the covert operations to begin with. People who uncover secrets are not responsible for deaths -- killers are.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:4, Insightful)
people will die as a result of these leaked cables.
Maybe. The question is, will more or less die as a result of Wikileaks making it public knowledge that they have leaked. As DarkOX already pointed out the secret services already have the files so they are looking for the sources already. Now it's possible for a source to simply type in their name and know if they are in there.
The other question is; who should take the blame. The US government which kept the names in plaintext in a database with millions of people having access; the Guardian which when trusted with secret data seems to have failed to put their IT security people on the case (how the hell else could they expect the password to an encrypted archive to change) or Wikileaks.
P.S. If you are a source and want to check if you are in there, do this on a local copy of the archives or at least do it over https. Remember that searching the archives for your name may be enough to trigger someone coming knocking.
RIP journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Among other revealations during this ordeal, one thing stands out - I now know how morally bankrupt main stream media have become, irrespective of how right or wrong assange is.
Guardian won awards for all the work done by wikileaks/manning, and now they just backstabbed them, and still have guts to defend their own actions.
NYT is even worse.
Whisleblowing investigative journalism is dead, sold out to big governments and corporations.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing (Score:4, Insightful)
The redacting that was done by The Guardian and others was just a reasonable thing to do, but it had one disadvantage: They published only selected and redacted cables and such you couldn't look for certain things by yourself. There's been more interesting stuff in the past centuries than The Guadian or Der Spiegel would recognize.
What's now possible is others sieving through these cables and I'm pretty sure that people will find interesting things. While it's not really a good thing for names of informants being published all this centralized knowledge and decisionmaking about what is good for the public to know is really getting on my nerves lately.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:5, Insightful)
Information wants to be free, and I do appreciate your eagerness to propagate this information, but people will die as a result of these leaked cables.
You've said that twice now. How do you know it to be true? These cables weren't internal CIA reports, most of them were not even classified and those few that were had only the lowest level of classification.
Furthermore, the information was "leaked" by the Guardian's careless publication of a password. Wikileaks officially publishing them now in an easily searchable form means anyone at risk has the ability to check for themselves if their names are mentioned - the bad guys have had the cables since at least last week, if not for the last few months following the publication of the password in February.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:5, Insightful)
They accepted the risks when they engaged in the covert operations to begin with. People who uncover secrets are not responsible for deaths -- killers are.
If your ex will kill you if he/she knows where you live, and I know your ex will do that, and I tell your ex where you live, I am *not* blameless
If the country you're in will kill you if it knows what you do, and I know the country will do that, and I tell them what you do, I am not blameless.
Saying someone accepted the risk of a bad result does not mean that other people who cause that result are inherently blameless. You may accept the risk of an accident when you drive to work in the morning, but if I hit you with my car, it may still be my fault.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:4, Insightful)
They accepted the risks when they engaged in the covert operations to begin with.
OK, here's a new plan.
Firstly, we must stop using human intelligence sources to anticipate and try to prevent criminal acts, because the sources are often inherently at risk and you don't want to protect them.
Because the public will not stand for the damaging acts that are likely to result, we need a new source of information to help prevent them. Let's make disclosure of all communications to the state mandatory, declare any use of encryption in communications or storage reasonable grounds to suspect criminal intent, and treat anyone who does it as a suspected terrorist until proven otherwise. If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear, so obviously this won't have any chilling effects.
Also, we should stop conducting quiet diplomacy behind closed doors, because not everyone knows what their government is doing under those circumstances, and that is just wrong. Everyone needs to know everything that goes on in government immediately or the very fabric of society is at risk.
Instead of making deals with the devil, we must ensure that we fight any opposing philosophy to the bitter end, no matter the cost and no matter how long it takes. We have, after all, been highly successful in places like the Middle East using that strategy. Meanwhile, it's not as if developments like the Northern Irish peace process started with a few brave individuals on both sides meeting secretly to see if decades of bloodshed could be brought to an end or anything. That probably didn't save anyone's life or improve the quality of life across a whole country anyway.
While we're at it, we should probably also ban witness protection programmes. Courts must be open and impartial, and there is no risk to their effectiveness in cases relating to gang violence, sexual assaults, and corruption if everything is always heard with the press present.
Finally, we should definitely televise all official government meetings in real time. Politics can be kept at bay, and we are bound to wind up with more sensible policies if decisions are made based on which sound-bite will sound best on the evening news rather than the considered opinions of experts who are familiar with more subtle arguments than "Five minutes ago you agreed with part of something I almost said in another discussion, so if you don't back me up now that's a U-turn!!!!111!eleven!"
OK, here's another plan.
First, we could use just the tiniest bit of common sense. Some things are secret for good reasons, and whatever the conspiracy theorists like to say, I'm betting that most people in government, in the police, in the security services, and in the armed forces in my country are basically decent people doing their best to protect the rest of us from not-so-decent people. Those who abuse authority should be dealt with appropriately, but we could consider a less black-and-white view and not throw out the whole fridge because a bit of cheese got mouldy.
Transparency is important, and checks and balances are important, and oversight is important, and respect for democratic roots is important, and secrets should only be kept from the general public for legitimate reasons and for as long as absolutely necessary. However, I don't think we would like to live in a world where only the bad guys kept secrets at all, and I don't think we would like to live in a world where no-one was brave enough to stand up for what is right for fear of the repercussions when they were inevitably compromised.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:5, Insightful)
Just an aside here, I don't know how relevant it is.
I love how all the small-government types - the ones who think that the notions of commonwealth are somehow equivalent to boogieman socialism - get all righteously pro-State, when it comes to WikiLeaks. It is a curious kind of cognitive dissonance.
I propose that this psychological maladaptation is the expected outcome of an authoritarian personality forming in the context of what is, nominally, a republic.
George Orwell was impossibly subtle and perceptive in his fictional exposition of this as "DoubleThink". He demonstrates it as obvious, oxymoronic contradiction - a caricature of the actual mental state of those who enable and support totalitarian positions.
"Freedom isn't Free" Christ! That's the knee-jerk truism for "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery" and "Ignorance is Strength" in one, compact portmanteau!
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been a year, and so far, nobody has died as a result of the leaked cables. Not saying it won't happen, but it hasn't happened so far.
On the other hand, the cables contain information about people who have been murdered. These crimes would not be known, nor their murderers known, were it not for the release of the cables. So you seem to be advocating the cover-up an actual crime to potentially stop a future, theoretical crime. That'd be a great one for an undergraduate philosophy class to work through.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:4, Insightful)
When dealing with a trusted keeper of secrets, there is a very fine line between "common sense, let them keep secrets" and simply being a dupe to a predatory and potentially crimial entity. Wikileaks wouldn't exist if the various governments of the world gave us even the slightest reason to trust them.
In the US, our elected officials are one step shy of openly taking bribes, and in the last few months, two of the three branches have been mired in what boils down to little more than a dick waving contest. We have spent a decade occupying two countries we invaded without the slightest bit of reliable intel that would give us reason to do so. Our economy was raped by Wall Street parasites that subsequently got written a big check and left without so much as a slap on the wrist.
I have absolutely zero faith that our government has the best interests of its people in mind. While I would not personally go as far as actively work to release classified documents, I find it particularly difficult to chastise anyone who believes they need to do so for the good of the public.
Re:Links & hints to the data (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a long drawn out reply to this that got eaten. You'll have to live with the short form, sorry.
Your 1300 quoted is only half the text, you should read and consider the rest in the context it was said. People are trying to claim that the cables reveal names of possible informants who's lives subsequently become in danger. Can you please point to where the Kenya cables listed these 1300 people ? or was it possibly that the data highlighted corruption in the government that subsequently lead to an uprising in which 1300 people were killed ? Hopefully I really don't need to point out the difference to you in finer detail.
Added to this, I am puzzled by the focus on Assange as a figure to hate. In all the releases up until recently (and there is a reason that changed - Thanks Guardian, not Assange) the media were handling the releases, not Assange, if there were names not redacted, then the Media outlets that posted the cables are responsible for any harmful outcome, not Assange. If you want to hold Assange responsible then you could also equally hold the original leaker responsible, as well as the people that improperly secured the data, and while you are at it, the embassy for not obsficating things a little better, or maybe the original government that perpetrated these crimes (or individuals in many cases).
Why the hate on Assange ? it almost seems irrational.