How Did Wikileaks Do It?

grassy_knoll writes "Related to the Wikileaks video recently released and discussed here, the NY Times reports: 'Somehow — it will not say how — WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt a graphic video, released Monday, of a United States Army assault in Baghdad in 2007 that left 12 people dead, including two employees of the news agency Reuters. The video has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube, and has been replayed hundreds of times in television news reports.' The article is light on details; what encryption algorithm was used? Was this a brute force attack? Did someone pass the decryption keys to Wikileaks along with the video? Something else?"

Comments

occam's razor

[Dan667]

Better question is why where these people killed when they were unarmed?

Re:Not true

[Wonko the Sane]

I thought the whole point of "leaks" were to get information out there, and let us decide what it means.

That all goes out the window when you selectively edit the video to gloss over the fact that the "innocent civilians" were packing RPGs

Re:Not true

[sopssa]

Military is all about killing other people. Are you saying that isn't bad?

Re:They also left out a good deal of context

[martyros]

First, someone had an RPG (or, what sure looks like one). I think they were pretty justified in firing, then.

Re:Not true

[Runaway1956]

What war crime? Define war crime.

A ground unit, Hotel 26, was fired on from this area. A gunship came in and destroyed a group of armed men. The cameramen were embedded in that enemy unit. Reporters who want to live to be great grandfathers don't generally become part of an armed unit.

Those reporters who are embedded in the US military's various units face the very same risks that the reporter in the video faced. They can get just as dead, just as easily.