Slashdot Mirror
Copy-and-Paste Reveals Classified U.S. Documents
cyclop writes "In March, U.S. troops in Iraq shot to death Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence agent that rescued the kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena. U.S. commission on the incident produced a report which public version was censored for more than one third. Now Italian press is reporting that all confidential information in the report is available to the public, just by copying "hidden" text from the PDF and pasting it in a word processor (Italian). The uncensored report can now be directly downloaded (evil .DOC format, sorry)"
So would I, considering that the people distributing it are in Italy and therefore not subject to US law. Considering how annoyed the Italian government was about the incident and subsequent cover-up, I doubt that they'll agree to an extradition.
The government did the initial distribution. It just did it unintentionally. Showing how the government did, in-fact, distribute the material itself is certainly not completely free of legal implications, but it is not the same as leaking the classified information. The main questions are: 1) Is it legal to show how to decipher a public transmission of the government to gain more data than intended (no matter how stupid the cypher is). I believe the answer to that question is an emphatic, "no it is illegal", despite what most of us, as technologically literate human beings see as a ton of fun. 2) Should this specific instance of hidden text be considered an encrypted message. Is a message written in Pig Latin considered encrypted? On the other hand, where do we draw the line on how hard an encryption scheme must be to crack before it's considered breaking governmental encryption. (Fellow geeks, please hold off on the comments saying "This is not truly an encrypted message" as for all intents and purposes, this message was unable to be viewed in its intended distribution format.) Tell me what you think! I'm not sure myself.
He probably still believes Iraq had WMD. As a former Republican who left because of Bush's lies to war I'm not surprised at this reaction. You either 1) realize you've been had or 2) become violently reactive whenever something challenges your worldview. I chose the adult behavior, realized I was had, and stopped believer those who lied to me.
...are scary. This, and numerous other pdf-related security breaches which happened (remember the blacked-out pdf that was modified to reveal its contents?) are all the more reason for MS pushing its software everywhere by declaring competing software are not as secure as theirs. Doesn't matter if the security breach originated from the user's lack of understanding of the most basic security concepts.
My fear is that knee-jerk reactions to incident like this someday could be as extreme as invoking the DMCA against copy and paste. That, and further control from MS for information in the government due to the inherent "security" of MS stuff. It's unimaginable that a corporation can be more powerful than the government, but more incidents like this and this will happen.
n March, U.S. troops in Iraq shot to death Nicola Calipari, the Italian intelligence agent whose country paid a random (and thereby funding the insurgency further and encouraging more kidnappings) for the kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena.
From scanning through the report I can only conclude that it was an accident. The US soldiers where poorly trained for the mission, and the driver of the car wasn't paying enough attention to his surroundings.
Tragic yes, but nothing more (assuming the italians agree with the description of the events of course, people can always lie)
The US Military uses VOIP? And it failed during this incident? Why would they use technology that is hardly the most reliable to confer on the battlefield. Isn't that a little dangerous? I wouldn't trust my life to VOIP, no matter how secure/reliable a military network was.
Secret data must be stored only on computers cleared for secret processing. Secret documents can only be downgraded to unclassified by deletion of the text followed by exporting it to plain ASCII text only.
Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, PDFs, etc cannot ever be transfered from a secret computer to an unclassified computer even if the original file is unclassified. The only allowable format is human readable text. Basically, if you can't read it in notepad, you cannot copy it from a classified computer to an unclassified computer.
These are the rules, unfortunately not everyone follows them (convenience) or is properly trained.
Since I submitted this story to /., I bite the flamebait.
Personally I have no clear opinions on the Calipari case, because in this cases all information that slips to civilians is of course filtered and in the best case only a pale approximation of the truth. There is too much truly classified information about this, like about anything relating to a war. Truth will perhaps eventually arise, but it's matter of years.
About illegality/irresponsability, well, you have to question not me nor CmdrTaco integrity, but the journalistic integrity of all major Italian media. All sites of prominent Italian newspapers and even Italian national television broadcast service are highlighting this scoop with great fanfare. The link to the unclassified document comes from and is hosted by the Corriere della Sera website, the major Italian newspaper.
So it's plain silly to think /. should have silenced this. If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else to post this.
Moreover someone already pointed out in comments that is better for people that may risk something by this disclosure to know they risk something. The vulnerability was there. It should have been an advantage for someone if it was secret. Being that much publicized, such info it is not an advantage for any enemy more.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
The communist reporter was not rescued she was bought with money that will go to buy arms that will be used to kill 80% Iraqi civilians and 20% foreign soldiers.
Woah! Slow down and don't drink all the kool-aid at once! The incident was likely an accident, but you do nothing to help your argument by calling people 'communists'. On Limbaugh, you may win brownie points for what you said, but in a reasonable (or even Slashdot) argument, you unlikely to convince anyone with stupid retoric.
These assertions are denied by two of the witnesses, namely the two surviving occupants of the car.
OK.
Calipari claimed that her car was shot hundreds of times. If you look at photos of the car, there are not hundreds of bullet holes.
I watched an interview with Calipari. She claimed that her car was shot from behind. Unless the car was travelling in reverse the whole time, something is fishy.
There is hard evidence that confirms the US assertion that the car was travelling at a high rate of speed.
Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, Calipari hates the US and the war. If you read some of her writings, she has some ridiculous conspiracy theories.
Calipari is not a reliable witness. She has made many statements about this incident that are refuted by facts. Does that mean the US soldiers were acting correctly? No, but you should be skeptical of what Calipari says.
She reports for a communist paper dude, she's a communist.
Does anybody have a clue what software they used to generate those PDFs? I am curious how various software treats such stuff in PDFs... I mean f.e. it is obvious that simple printout to PDF converter will erease any such hidden data, but what with f.e. OpenOffice.org export function or various other utilities?
Well, according to Sgrena, the car was fired upon by a tank. Or possibly several hundred rounds of machine-gun fire. She's made both claims.
Calipari was, apparently, experienced in this sort of thing, making it strange that this happened. It's clear that the U.S. forces weren't properly informed of the Italian actions, but even so, he should have known how to deal with a roadblock.
Sgrena doesn't help matters by changing her story every ten minutes.
When you do a word search for some of the redacted material on the original PDF it highlights the blacked out portion where the redacted word resides.
This is just silly.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Sure, it looks like they are classifying stuff just to classify it. But if you knew anything about how intelligence gathering works, you would know why they are doing it. Now that computers are as fast as they are, and the amount of data floating around out there, it's surprisingly easy to put two and two together, and gather intelligence that can be harmful. Here's a realworld example of exactly what I am talking about: Paul Graham on PR talks about how anyone can track down which companies are controlling what the press says, and making trends happen by causing people to believe they already are happening. Now imagine if you were trained to find little nuggets of info like that! That's what they are trying to prevent. It only takes one slip-up to create a critical vulnerability, exposing a position or future activity. So give 'em a break.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
bush is even having things classified even after they have been testified to before congress, or been discussed on 60 minutes.
Of course he hasn't gone as far as Reagan who wanted to prosecute them for their testimony before congress even though the info was not classified at the time of the testimony.
The bush administration has leaked classified info when it serves their purposes. Remember Valerie Plame? She was setting up a sting to bust nuclear weapon smugglers.
Sometimes it is in the national interest to leak. Remember when Reagan classified the reports of fraud and waste? Those leaks were in our national interest whereas keeping it classified was not. He made a public show of fighting waste and fraud, but behind the scenes he was not, but at least the issue was before the public eye.
Edmunds is now fighting to have her info heard before congress. Her info points to complacency before and after 9-11. they have classified her info so much she can't even tell congress.
I was an Army spook, I know the arguments. Not everything should be declassified, but waste, fraud, treason should be declassified. The Valerie Plame leak was treason in my opinion.
This is not the first time they have made this type of mistake. Embarrassing them in this way can only make them be more security conscious. Security is about the small things.
photosMy Photostream
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
The most interesting thing that I've found in it so far is that apparently VOIP is a primary communications mechanism for Army units over there. Now THAT is a Slashdot-worthy story.
No relation to Happy Monkey
It's dark, you're travelling on a dangerous road known for ambushes. You can't see the huddled shapes lurking in the darkness behind their vehicles. Suddenly a floodlight paints your vehicle. You can't see anything but the floodlight and shots are fired. American checkpoint or insurgent ambush? Decide quickly, because you'll be killed if you stop and it's insurgents, and you be killed if you don't stop immediately and it's the Americans.
American checkpoints in Iraq are not well-lit traffic-coned "approach the gate and the waving officer slowly" affairs. They block the road at the best place to kill oncomers and hide behind their barriers. It's often the worst place for approaching vehicles to see the roadblock until you're on top of it. By then, they start firing "warning shots" in the general direction of (if not into) your vehicle. It doesn't always play out like that, but dozens of dead Iraqi families can't be wrong...
Here come da fudge!
So much for the govt. using PDF...looks like they'll have to switch back to ASCII text documents.
...whether they did that on purpose. I mean, it doesn't seem to occur to any commenter to doubt the authenticity of the hidden text. But maybe, that totally insignificant hidden text was put there on purpose. Are you folks all naive or am I getting slightly paranoid?
Maybe they were thinking: Let's hide this stuff in the main document so that people will believe it when it's "uncovered".
Who ordered that?
By which you mean:
a) The mainstream media's refusal to note Sgrena's far leftwing anti-Americanism and vitriolic brand of Communism as it may cast doubt on her veracity.
b) Sgrena's ever-changing stor[-y/-ies].
c) The physical evidence that not only refutes Sgrena, but displays the exceptional skill of the American military. ("Hundreds of bullets!" versus evidence of accurate and economical rounds sent downrange.)
d) The fact that satellites recorded the entire incident, that evidence was used to establish that Sgrena was a mendacious leftwing loony and further exonerate the US military of any wrongdoing.
e) The fact that CBS news deliberately omitted any mention of the satellite data so as to lend credence to their fellow traveller Sgrena.
f) The fact that no one in the media or public forum seems concerned that Italy is engaged in the deceptive and dangerous practice of rewarding terrorists (yes, Virginia, they are terrorists.) with millions of dollars in ransom money, thereby encouraging more kidnappings.
h) The fact that Italy chose to engage in this reckless behavior without notifying Coalition forces thereby endangering many more lives than that of a tired old adherent of that classic brutal form of government known as Communism.
i) The fact that no one seems willing to quote Sgrena's statements from prior to her kidnapping, such as "I'll be safe among them [terrorists], because I'm on their side!"
j) Your willingness to use the term "subsequent cover-up" without any (even slightly) credible evidence.
I don't mind you publicly riding your cute little "USA/BUSH = HITLER!!111" bandwagon, because free speach makes it easier to spot the idiots.
But I'd certainly expect moderators to be able to see through your miasma of willful ignorance and hatred of the greatest military power in the world.
Remember, ignorance is natural, knowledge comes eventually, but stupidity requires persistence.
Interestingly, an Italian blogger Gianluca Neri was the first to discover the fact.
p porto_cal.html
r evolezza.html
On his blog www.macchianera.net, he says that this morning he called the newspapers to let them know, but nobody paid attention to him. He then published on his blog.
http://www.macchianera.net/archives/2005/05/il_ra
Later the newspapers spread the story without refering the source:
http://www.macchianera.net/archives/2005/05/lauto
The rumor is that he is somewhere just outside of Bagdad airport. While he is physically in US custody he is technically in the legal custody of the Iraqi government. He won't be tried under US or international law. He will be tried under Iraqi law. So what were you saying?
In Republican America phones tap you.
Wired News
Not in this case, however, as the US Government can not hold copyrights.
-Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Treason, or perhaps more accurately, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, including financial backing, is also illegal.
Can you site a single case where there has been a treason conviction for financial contributions? Treason is meant to be a serious crime. Aid and comfort is meant to be things like a non combatant military role (logistics officer, army engineer, navagational officer) in an army in active shooting war with the US. That's far short of a guy who throws a couple bucks at a cause you disagree with.
To even stand a chance of a treason conviction you would have to be a sworn member of Al Quida involved in an operation against the United States. Congress meanwhile has not declared war so even given this I'm not so sure you couldn't beat a treason conviction.
Funny how the right loves to talk about treason but they have yet to actually try one of their "XYZ committed treason" people (Jane Fonda and John Walker Lindh being classic examples) because they know damn well the courts would reaffirm a very high standard for treason.
Yes, I'm sure the US govt actually forgot to get rid of the classified text from the document. I think its a real possibility that they released this on purpose, maybe censoring crap information, to appease the italians, when the real censored text was much more incriminating. oh well, guess we'll never know.
Well, some people may remember that in 1998, a US pilot flew a jet into a ski gondola in the italian alps and killed 20 people. He was brought back to the US very fast (IIRC before notifying italian police). He was later acquited in an US court.
Not difficult to see why italians have difficulties to trust US army "judicial" system.
---
Hate to tell you this but there actually are quite a few foreign fighters in Iraq. Lot of fair skinned Syrians. Also, quite a bit of drug abuse going on by these "fighters."
This guy is way out there
"The problem with that idea is that the foreign-fighters idea is a myth concocted by Bushie to distract people from the fact that the Iraqis fought us every step of the way like, well, like a people under occupation by a foreign power."
Uh....riiiiight. That's why the Iraqi Army divisions...disappeared?!?!
Did you even watch this on TV as it happened? Personally, I've got almost the entire first 4 weeks on tape. Most of it was a drive in the country.
Watch some film from WWII of the battle in Stalingrad. THAT is f"ighting every step of the way." Taking off your uniform and abandoning your weapons is not "fighting every step of the way."
#1. IED & VBIED analysis. The attackers already know that. The only people who don't know it are the US citizens who only watch Fox news. That is how the attackers can improve their attacks. So no military reason to hide that info.
#2. Analysis of specific checkpoints. Again, the attackers already have that information.
#3. Combat readiness analysis - this might be useful to the attackers, but most likely won't be. The attackers aren't going to attempt to match military units.
#4. Description of the layout - not useful to the attackers. They can already see it. About 50 cars had already seen it. That is one of the items they consider when improving their attacks.
#5. Grid locations - again, the attackers already know that.
#6. Details on searches - again, the attackers already know that and have used that information to improve their attacks.
#7. Details of threat assesment methods - possibly not fully be known by the attackers. But, given the number of recorded shootings of civilians, this information wouldn't be very useful. Which is why the suicide attacks have increased.
#8. Analysis of "normal" traffic - again, that information is available to the attackers already and it is part of what they've used to improve their attacks.
etc, etc, etc.
About the only information that should have been completely removed are the names of the soldiers/officers involved and their units. They can be impacted by various journalists and such seeking stories.
None of the other information wouldn't already be known by the attackers.
And operating as if the attackers did NOT know that information just leaves you vulnerable to more attacks.
As can be seen in the report. The soldiers secured the points they were most vulnerable from. Including overpasses where grenades could be dropped.
You have to assume the enemy has all the information you do before you start operations. Otherwise, when the enemy DOES know something that you are relying upon him to NOT know, you're fucked.
Some highlights, in my opinion:
Wouldn't "accidently" selectively releasing classified information be an effective propaganda technique? That way people would think that since it was classified it must be true?
Perhaps I'm just too paranoid about the modern media-goverment incest going on for the past few decades.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Where is your proof for this? Isn't it just as possible that it might be true but they don't want people to believe it so they release it in some questionable way?
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
Good god! I bet FDR created the great depression so that he could take over!
I can't believe I've been so blind...
By the argument that Guantanamo is in Cuba and therefore the US constitution doesn't apply there, surely the whole base should be subject to Cuban law?
You cannot shoot out the rear window from the front without it showing damage to the front. Thus the U.S. story does not hold up to the facts.
After all, these are terrorists, right? Well, how do we know? Is the military infallable? Is every accused person guilty?
In fact we know with as much certainty as we know anything that some of the 500 people incarcerated in Guantanomo Bay are not terrorists. Simple statistics is all that is required to prove this. We know that the cops sometimes arrest the wrong person, and that for that reason we have courts. And we know that sometimes courts convict the wrong people, and for that reason we don't have the death penalty (oops, sorry, you guys in the U.S. do, don't you?)
We also know that the Guantanomo detainees were captured in an environment very much subject to "the fog of war", which gets used as an excuse every time the U.S. military fucks up and kills a few Canadians.
Given all this, it is extremely doubtful that the error rate in accusations of terrorism is less than 1%. If it is 1%, then on average we would expect 5 innocent people to be incarcerated in Gauntanomo Bay with no rights. A Poisson distribution with a mean of 5 has P(0) = 0.0067, so there is a 99.3% chance that there is at least one innocent in Gauntanomo Bay, even under these extremely conservative assumptions.
Given that the U.S. military tribunals that are passing judgment on the detainees believe that wearing a Casio watch constitutes evidence of terrorism it is pretty clear that the rate of incarceration of innocents is much higher than this. It is also worth noting that the tribunal does not even get the model of the watch correct--the F91 does not have a compass. It makes one wonder what other mistakes they have made in the evidence that still remains classified.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1957
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/2 5/1516242&mode=thread&tid=25
Why won't the US let the Italians inspect the car? The Italians purchased the car from the rental company so they can do forensics. The US won't let them have the car. Why not? Hello? Bueller? Bueller?
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD28Ak01.html
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1957
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/2 5/1516242&mode=thread&tid=25
Why won't the US let the Italians inspect the car? The Italians purchased the car from the rental company so they can do forensics. The US won't let them have the car. Why not? Hello? Bueller? Bueller?
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD28Ak01.html
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1957
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/2 5/1516242&mode=thread&tid=25
Why won't the US let the Italians inspect the car? The Italians purchased the car from the rental company so they can do forensics. The US won't let them have the car. Why not? Hello? Bueller? Bueller?
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD28Ak01.html
Well, to be perfectly honest, she _did_ get shot. Which is not supposed to happen, but alas, it did. I don't believe there was a conspiracy; I'm pretty convinced by those docs that the whole thing was a sad, avoidable cockup caused by insufficient training, poor communication, and a whole lot of other elements of Murphy's Law in action.
My point about "American troops shouldn't be there" being a pretty useless statement holds, though. By that logic, Italian journalists with an axe to grind shouldn't be there either. Granted, the troops have, in an indirect way, a choice about this--as in "don't join the army if you don't want to go to war." However, Italian journalists with an axe to grind have a pretty direct choice in the matter. War zones are dangerous places.
I agree with one of this discussion's fanatics' statement that the US troops have more choice than the Iraqi civilians, but in this case, although civilians do sadly seem to be catching a lot of casualties, the woman who was shot (not to mention Callipari, the poor bastard) had a choice.
She does have an anti-American viewpoint, but frankly, there is nothing wrong with that, and it's her fundamental right to harbor and express such a viewpoint (even though I think she's a plank based on her previous writings.) I live in Europe (not Italy, admittedly) and I haven't heard a lot of credibility given to her rantings about a conspiracy to shoot her (she's a pretty irrelevant figure on the whole); rather people are upset that the thing happened at all.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage