WikiLeaks Starts Mass Mirroring Effort

A beautiful mind writes "WikiLeaks is asking for hosting space on Unix-based servers. The replication is implemented by a rsync+ssh based push that copies static files to a known path, authenticated via the private half of this public key. The complete website is a few GB in size, making it feasible to replicate on a large scale. The mirror list will be published when the number of independent mirrors reaches 50." Note: wikileaks.ch seems to be down for the moment, but eventually the above links may require that instead of 213.251.145.96. See also this WikiLeaks address finder. And for even more news, try this Twitter search.

Comments

Make it static.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Lower the barrier of entry even further, and just throw up a torrent or ten of static files which can be hosted anywhere, without fear of compromising your own server.

Re:Make it static.

[geminidomino]

If they're just mirroring what's currently on the site then most of the cables stuff is not there

Are you high, or just engaged in the most inept disinformation campaign since the Iraqi WMDs? It took me all of 30 seconds to go to the site and pull up the list of the cables. 10 more seconds let me pull up 5 of them to verify that the links work.

Re:Make it static.

[neokushan]

I think he's trying to say that most of the cables have not been released PUBLICALLY. The ones on the site are just the ones that have been released, there's quite a few more to come.

Re:Make it static.

[Dan East]

Exactly. I do not like what Wikileaks has done, but even so I can be the devil's advocate, and say that EVERYONE should be pissed at Assange. Those that want the information to be free should be very concerned that Assange wants to release it piece meal, ramp up the drama and attention to him and his site as much as possible, and provide commentary (aka judgment) regarding the information. All this is doing is giving time for him and his site to be taken down. The US may move rather slowly and clumsily over these sorts of affairs, having to check the legality of this and that and get allies involved, etc, but given enough time, there's a good chance they will be able to get Assange on something.

The files should ALL be placed online, in a distributed manner, and be done with. Not be Assange's little plaything to manipulate and play around with. Really, this guy has a major ego / power complex, and it will cost him eventually.

Re:Make it static.

[causality]

Exactly. I do not like what Wikileaks has done, but even so I can be the devil's advocate, and say that EVERYONE should be pissed at Assange. Those that want the information to be free should be very concerned that Assange wants to release it piece meal, ramp up the drama and attention to him and his site as much as possible, and provide commentary (aka judgment) regarding the information. All this is doing is giving time for him and his site to be taken down. The US may move rather slowly and clumsily over these sorts of affairs, having to check the legality of this and that and get allies involved, etc, but given enough time, there's a good chance they will be able to get Assange on something.

The files should ALL be placed online, in a distributed manner, and be done with. Not be Assange's little plaything to manipulate and play around with. Really, this guy has a major ego / power complex, and it will cost him eventually.

I was going to make a post saying it's rather poor planning to only just now realize the necessity of a de-centralized distribution model... but I think your explanation gets closer to the heart of it. Unfortunately people with the very best of intentions can exhibit the kind of ego you're describing. It doesn't even have to be a deliberate act of self-glorification; it's more like a default state one can overcome.

Re:Make it static.

[Sir_Lewk]

Wikileak's stated intention is to release these cables all over a period of several months because "doing them all at once would not do justice to them" (paraphrased).

Now what they could (and supposedly have) do is release all the cables in an encrypted format, continue to release them in batches as they are currently doing, and leak the key if there is ever a problem. Supposedly this is what their "insurance" file from a while ago is for.

Re:Make it static.

[Charliemopps]

He has to release it a bit at a time. The fact of the matter is, they have many many huge stories. If they release several bombshell issues at once, they are likely to have some of them ignored by the media because they'll just go after the most sensational stuff. They are playing the media like they should play the media.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been released publicly... they are just encrypted.

Re:Make it static.

[icebraining]

What you can attention seeking, I would call covering his ass. He's much protected if he's a "personality" than unknown.

Also, the info has been coming out anyway, regardless of attacks and pressures, so I'm not sure what's the problem with the slow release. It's not like they can't release it faster if the need comes. For all we know, it may only need a couple KBs to all be released: the key to Insurance.aes256.

Re:Make it static.

[icebraining]

Next, I'd spam the torrent sites with dozens of "Wikileaks" torrents, all containing my disinformation. When you download one of these torrents, how do you know it's real?

Sign the files and tell the key publicly?

Re:Make it static.

[Arancaytar]

That works too, but this form of access presumably allows them to push updates as well.

Re:Make it static.

[Sir_Lewk]

non-paraphrased:

Why not release everything now?

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.

We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents to ensure that there is time for them to be written about, commented on and discussed widely in public, something that is impossible if hundreds of thousands of documents are released at once. We will therefore be releasing the documents gradually over the coming weeks and months.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any student of Machiavelli would know that he's doing the release in a way to cause the most damage. If he released all at once, there'd be a big sized storm for a short while and then it would be over. But by releasing them piecemeal there's the potential for many big storms for over a long period of time.

Re:Make it static.

[RAMMS EIN]

Another point of view is that WikiLeaks had best inspect what they release, and do their best to prevent putting lives at risk, especially those of innocent bystanders and those who are working for the greater good. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't: if they take their time to filter and redact, they are delaying and possibly twisting the truth, but if they don't do that, they are irresponsible.

Re:Make it static.

[nurb432]

He IS the media. With their same faults.

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

Assange has done more for Democracy, as in the right of people to direct the actions of their government, than the entire Western world has done since WWII. That's why the United States government is so pissed off: it despises the right of people to know what their government is up to with their tax dollars. It didn't want Pakistanis to know of their government's complicity in the drone strikes. It didn't want to admit that the puppet government in Afghanistan was riddled with corruption, even though the State Department has been aware of this fact since the beginning. Just like it didn't want it getting out that we have been systematically destroying democratic institutions, from Iran to Vietnam to Argentina to Palestine, because reality might upset some of it's electorate.

Sure, Assange is kind of a douchebag. You don't think Patrick Henry was? Churchill? However, the marketing ploy of providing this narrative and stringing along the releases has kept this in the news far longer than the previous leaks. It's unfortunate that the mass media, which is owned by corporations, has no self-interest in the truth anymore. But the last hole that can be exploited is the desire to keep their ratings up, and he has done well to exploit this weakness in the system.

If COINTEL PRO had been leaked in the same dramatic fashion, perhaps more people would remember it. The fourth estate is broken. It's going to take soap opera narratives with entertainment value targeted at the masses in order to fix it, which is a hell of a lot better than another war.

The stage is now set to hopefully expose Bank of America or some other major institution for fraud and corruption. Personally, Assange is the only douchebag I would trust with that information. Everyone else in the media are compromised. They are fools, cowards, and intellectual prostitutes.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've read, he's not the dictatorial leader of wikileaks that everyone imagines. I wish there was both a way to verify this and a way to disseminate the info so that everybody else would realise, but maybe just replying to you will be enough to make me feel better for now. It seems like we all sort of assume he's the boss, and the people on the news certainly use words that make it sound that way, but actually the facts are that wikileaks has a nine member advisory board and stuff and Assange is just the front-guy for taking shit from the press and so on.

I don't disagree that it's kinda lame how they trickle the data out, but it does seem like it's more of a clever media savvy organisation's decision than that of one media savvy guy. It's all "he" t

Re:Make it static.

[danhaas]

Erasing informants' names and other (truely) dangerous informations seems like a bit of work, and I doubt they have a large staff. Could anyone confirm if they are near their processing limit, thus releasing it piece meal?

Re:Make it static.

[Sir_Lewk]

Correction: By releasing them in small batches, they are ensuring that each story gets the attention it deserves .

Any shitstorm that results from this isn't at the hands of wikileaks, but at the hands of those who actually caused the shitstorm. The people the cables are about.

Re:Make it static.

[leehwtsohg]

Just to remind you - these latest cables are just the last and probably most significant of a huge list of things that wikileaks released. Look at the "all leaks archived" link on the wikileaks site for an incredible list of torrents of all the leaks that wikileaks already did, some of which already had great influence in some countries/companies (iceland, peru, australia...). It is not all about the US.

I think that they are releasing the data so slowly, because there are many parts in it that have to be digested slowly - see for example the media flare up going on in spain because of the released documents, the clusterbombs issues in the UK, the anger in germany over the 15% overhead taken by the US army, etc. If it was all released in a day, such issues would be buried among hundreds of others of similar importance.

Re:Make it static.

[SanityInAnarchy]

It also requires me to give them ssh access. No thanks.

Re:Make it static.

[The Living Fractal]

The US may then benefit from attempting to crack the encrypted cables and releasing them all at once -- since they certainly can't eliminate them all now that they have been decentralized.

Or, simply put, the US may not care very much. I haven't seen anything released that is a big surprise.

Re:Make it static.

[Threni]

Failed reading comprehension, huh? Please provide the link where I can download the hundreds of thousands of cables, not just the few hundred released on the site.

Re:Make it static.

[JWSmythe]

    It'd be easy enough to throw a VM like VirtualBox on your machine, assuming you have full control over it. I do it for something that simply wouldn't install on a couple machines I have. You could give him access, and all he/they would have access to is that virtual machine.

    There are larger risks though. How long until the feds come knocking on your door. That's not just US based, you could likely have your nations law enforcement seizing all of your equipment. Even if they didn't, I'm sure the DDoS attacks will come back. They may be by some kid in a country you've never heard of, some militant group, or by governments around the world trying to suppress the information. A DDoS from seemingly random locations is a lot easier to pull off and a lot more anonymous than a court order to seize property.

    I thought about mirroring his stuff. I actually did, but it's not available to anyone else yet. I can't weigh the continuity of my own sites and freedom, versus the need to get his information of dubious sources out to the general public.

    I do believe in free speech, and I believe he should be allowed to run with it. Hell, there are plenty of conspiracy nuts out there, that put up all kinds of anti-government propaganda. The pressures being put against him are only serving to make it clear that there is some truth to what he's putting out there.

Re:Make it static.

[Ignatius]

This can be trivially fixed by digitally signing the content.

Re:Make it static.

[nospam007]

Seed, people, seed.

BTW for the moment, http://cablegate.wikileaks.lu/ is still working.

Re:Make it static.

[Sir_Lewk]

he's not the dictatorial leader of wikileaks that everyone imagines. I wish there was both a way to verify this and a way to disseminate the info so that everybody else would realise

While true, it is not in wikileaks interest for this to become commonly known. Assange's job is to be the shit-shield for wikileaks, while everybody wastes their time hurling smear campaigns and arrest warrants against him, wikileaks is able to continue it's mission as before.

Do you notice the dozens and dozens of replies to every wikileaks article that follow the general form: "I wouldn't be opposed to wikileaks, but Assange is a [tool/jerk/douche/rapist/spy/...]"? That is wikileaks strategy in action. Since you are in on the truth, feel free to laugh at them :)

Re:Make it static.

[jambox]

Really? I think it's pretty clear he's trying to make it more dramatic so the leaks get more media coverage. He's become quite expert at making the regular media types salivate ahead of a release; this is no mean trick. I think if nothing else it shows that "new media" isn't new, it's just the old media on a website. We're just starting to conceive of what new media is.

Re:Make it static.

[Skal Tura]

Thank god i live and was born in Finland. Freedom of speech seems to still be somewhat appreciated around here - and people know that i host Wikileaks mirrors. If i disappear mysticiously, several hundred people will know really fast, and they will tell their friends and so on - a full blown media frenzy fast, if anything happens. Operating a rather large hosting company for our niche has it's benefits too ;)

So i'm not afraid, and i trust that if there was life endangering information Assange and his team have censored that bit. In the earlier leaks there was huge concern of such, but i saw articles that there was nothing which endangered lives directly.

But i do know this: What the US banks are doing *NEEDS* and *HAS TO* be released publicly. It seems so likely they are doing quite a fraud, apart from what's already visible (tax payers bailing them out).

Yes, i am quite a bit feeling like checking the "Post Anonymously" box, but that only goes to show that governments are not serving citizens anymore! Governments should be afraid of citizens, not vice-versa. and drawing to the comfort that i do happen to live in Finland, a neutral country, and for the most part our government wants to do the right thing. Let alone that our president isn't afraid to be aggressive to voice her and our governments opinion if she sees wrong doing, even if it hasn't anything to do directly with us. Yes, Finland is a weird tiny big country.

Re:Make it static.

[glebovitz]

I see the point you are making, but I still think all of the diplomatic cables on Wikileaks reveals little new information. You really think we didn't know there is complicity with Pakistan on the drones, or that the U.S. has been bouncing ideas back and forth with China on North Korea. I think you give way too much value to Assange and these leaks.

How about this? Did Assange provide leaks on information that would have predicted the housing crisis meltdown? Did he have secret memos that he released on BP before the cap blew and the information hit the public press? Did he release information about the crisis in Greece, Ireland, Portugal prior to the information being released to the public? I only ask, because that stuff would actually matter to me. In case you aren't paying attention, the only issue people are focusing on in the U.S. are jobs and the economy. I can't find a lot on Wikileaks that tell us why the parties are waging PR wars and not actually solving any problems. Maybe if Assange had dirt on Boehner or McCain, or Pelosi or a host of other political leaders, it would be relevant to people here.

The U.S. government is pissed off because disclosure of private cables used in diplomacy violates protocol and spreads distrust between the countries involve. Everyone has their own agenda, and diplomacy is the art of navigating those agendas. Without privacy there is no diplomacy and without diplomacy there are wars. Lets tape all your private conversations with your lover, wife, friends, and acquaintances and post them on Wikileaks and see how they affect your relationships. Even if they taken in context, they will threaten your intimacy.

I have no problem with Assange and what he is trying to do in the name of openness. His approach seems to be lets shoot for idealism no matter who it fucks. I am not saying the approach is bad, but it is naive to blindly believe it will have positive results.

Re:Make it static.

[marcansoft]

AES256 keys are 32 bytes.

Plus a 16-byte IV, but that can just be all zeroes and isn't strictly speaking required (you do not need it to decrypt the file, except for the first 16 bytes).

Re:Make it static.

[Opportunist]

It's not so much surprise, but the confirmation of what was suspected.

It's not so much that the US think little of some European leaders that's the "scandal". That was to be expected, ok? Duh, you could see it in the way they act. What's the scandal is that now you can't just grumble and accept it because you can't really confront them with it because, hey, of course it ain't so, sorry if you feel like this...

Now there's proof that this is the case. No longer "you're imagining things". Here's the proof!

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem with being "disappeared" is that, even though everyone now knows why and who may have done it, you're still gone. You *should* be afraid.

Re:Make it static.

[ToasterMonkey]

Sign the files and tell the key publicly?

So you know you got the right data if you get the right key. You know you got the the right key when... ?

Re:Make it static.

[ToasterMonkey]

While true, it is not in wikileaks interest for this to become commonly known. Assange's job is to be the shit-shield for wikileaks, while everybody wastes their time hurling smear campaigns and arrest warrants against him, wikileaks is able to continue it's mission as before.

Right because there is no shit being thrown at Wikileaks, and when any of this is mentioned in the media, if they even mention a source (why bother?), it's Wikileaks. Go ask anyone on the street if Assange rings a bell. Hell, most people wont even know what the hell you're talking about if you said "those leaks in the news." Don't fool yourself, those who care, they know full well who's involved. I like how you think Wikileaks can magically pull off some public stealth maneuver in light of everything they've done.

I think people are not opposed to whistle blowing. Whatever you call the crap Wikileaks is doing, it's self destructive, and is going to HURT actual whistle blowers in the future. You know, the ones that might actually benefit society.

What corruption has been exposed thus far?

Re:Make it static.

[martin-boundary]

Without privacy there is no diplomacy and without diplomacy there are wars.

No. Diplomacy requires communication between states, not privacy. It's far easier to communicate in private, but it's categorically not necessary.

Moreover, it's hyperbolic to imply that wars are caused whenever a few diplomats get to be embarrassed. Remember the proverb for want of a nail...? The chain of causality you're proposing in this instance is as naive as that song.

In a democracy, the government's business is public and transparent. That's the social contract, and the constraint that diplomats should be expected to abide by it. If they can't, then maybe it's time they retire.

Re:Make it static.

[F.Ultra]

So install rssh and restrict that account to pure scp transfer, that is probably all they are using it for anyways. http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/rhel-centos-linux-install-configure-rssh-shell.html

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

You really think we didn't know there is complicity with Pakistan on the drones

The United States and Pakistan denied that. Specifically, they denied earlier reports that a private military force from Blackwater/Xe was operating in that country without the knowledge of many people in the American and Pakistani governments, and certainly their citizens. This proves that they were both lying to their constituents. At what point on the road to fascism would you like to stop?

How about this? Did Assange provide leaks...

I'm not chasing any red herrings today, thanks.

Everyone has their own agenda, and diplomacy is the art of navigating those agendas without the consent of your citizenry, and often in direct opposition to their interests.

Fixed that for you.

Without privacy there is no diplomacy and without diplomacy there are wars.

The only thing preventing me from believing that is the entirety of modern history. If diplomacy wasn't built on lies, it wouldn't break down and cause war all of the time. If everyone knew that that Saddam Hussein was a US henchman, there would be no public support for the Iraq War in 2003. (Support had to be manufactured from forged documents obtained diplomatically from Britain.) If everyone knew that Saudi Arabia was the leading funder of Al Qaeda, we wouldn't be in Afghanistan. We wouldn't have just sold Saudi Arabia sixty billion dollars in advanced weaponry.

Lets tape all your private conversations...

Let's establish first that my private conversations and intimate relationships are responsible for death, destruction, and the soiling of Constitutional principles. They are called public servants for a fucking reason.

I have no problem with Assange and what he is trying to do in the name of openness. His approach seems to be lets shoot for idealism no matter who it fucks. I am not saying the approach is bad, but it is naive to blindly believe it will have positive results.

Right now the world is shooting for greed no matter who it fucks. I'd rather be committed to ideals.

This fucking realpolitik is astounding from the mouths of Americans. You have no reason to plead fealty to power, but you choose to do it out of sheer cowardice and apathy. Apparently your civil liberties will have to be entirely destroyed before you value them again.

Re:Make it static.

[grcumb]

The US may then benefit from attempting to crack the encrypted cables and releasing them all at once....

I suspect that the US already has them in unencrypted form. 8^)

Re:Make it static.

[cheekyboy]

Hangon, people complain that he releases stuff without redacting names and no cleansing of inocent names.

But then you complain he doesnt release it all at once.

So which is it? It takes time to go through all that data.

You're like complaining that you get 1/2 a cake for free and not all of it for free.

He could have not published a byte, but only sent it to news papers, so are you going to bitch about all the news papers publishing his info too?

In the old BBS days, sure, we would all dump and release it all. But if you piss off 50% of the global super power nations, I think its wise to take it slowly.

Besides there is the insurance backup file which has it all incase he's locked up.

Oh, and a big middle finger to all critics.

Re:Make it static.

[jambox]

If COINTEL PRO had been leaked in the same dramatic fashion, perhaps more people would remember it.

You got it, this I think is Assange's master plan. Good, isn't it?

Re:Make it static.

[guyminuslife]

The universe is a lie; all truth is fiction, everything you know is wrong. We believe that we are humans, that the world around us exists, but perhaps it is just God playing a cruel prank on us, making us believe in reality.

That being said, it's pretty easy to compare public keys and checksums, and somewhere on the Internet someone will do their homework to determine that misinformation is being distributed. And they'll tell people and sites like Slashdot will report on it, and we can easily see what changes have been made.

Look, it's not that hard.

Re:Make it static.

[the eric conspiracy]

Assange has done more for Democracy, as in the right of people to direct the actions of their government, than the entire Western world has done since WWII.

So you think this is more important than say the Berlin Airlift, the Korean Police Action, the US involvement in the Greek Civil War, the Brussels Pact, the establishment of NATO, SEATO and the UN, the strategic arms limitation treaties, the opening of China/US diplomatic relations, the founding of the Solidarity Union, and the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. Combined.

Poppycock.

Re:Make it static.

[Sprouticus]

Thank you for your efforts.

Re:Make it static.

[icebraining]

Yes, but they'll need at least a couple KBs to transfer the key in any way instead of just having it sit in memory.

Re:Make it static.

[Sir_Lewk]

Nice save attempt, but you're not that smooth. :P

Re:Make it static.

[Jafafa Hots]

The response to Wikileaks demonstrates that governments ARE afraid of citizens. That's why they've done everything possible to keep us from having access to any information or tools to do anything about what we learn.

Re:Make it static.

[parodyca]

"Lets tape all your private conversations with your lover, wife, friends, and acquaintances and post them on Wikileaks and see how they affect your relationships. Even if they taken in context, they will threaten your intimacy."

If I were purporting you represent you in these conversations with my lover, then I think you would have some right to know what I was saying. In democratic societies there are serious limits to what can be negotiated in private specifically because the population DOES have significant rights to know about them. That is how it should be. Too much has been negotiated in private. It is not right and it is time for that to stop.

Re:Make it static.

[Kagura]

From what I've read, he's not the dictatorial leader of wikileaks that everyone imagines. I wish there was both a way to verify this and a way to disseminate the info so that everybody else would realise, but maybe just replying to you will be enough to make me feel better for now. It seems like we all sort of assume he's the boss, and the people on the news certainly use words that make it sound that way, but actually the facts are that wikileaks has a nine member advisory board and stuff and Assange is just the front-guy for taking shit from the press and so on.

So he's the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Wikileaks?

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

irresponsible for telling the truth because soldiers in a battlefield could be put at risk? how about the evidence shows that the soldiers are there unjustly, so they are being put at risk by members of their own government. The irresponsible act certainly isn't that of the person to tell the tale.

Your line of reasoning would vindicate Bernie Madoff and crucify the person that uncovered his criminal activities because that person clearly helped tear down the American economy with their irresponsible leak.

If a government does something that has a negative effect on its people, those people have a right to know. If a government is plotting against the people of a nation, those people have a right to know. The truth must be complete or it is just politics and propaganda.

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

I was going to make a post saying it's rather poor planning to only just now realize the necessity of a de-centralized distribution model.

I think the most important part of wikileaks is not so much the content of the leaks, but the reaction of people in power to them.

We have learned more about the connection between corporation and the power in the past week than we have in the past several years.

While the content of the Citibank leaks will be most interesting, the all-out scramble to stop Wikileaks and jail Assange that started the day after it was announced that the next document dump would be from Citibank tells us a whole lot about where the power really lies in this world, and who's really in charge. It also shows just how much of what passes for "government" and "sovereign nation" is nothing but theater to keep us entertained while those that really rule the world execute their agenda. The way they took down wikileaks, severed their connection to donations and continue to play whack-a-mole with a website shows just how meaningless our "rule of law" really is when they really want to get rid of something and cover up some information about their activities.

How fitting that Interpol should issue arrest warrants for Julian Assange and former Vice President Dick Cheney within 24 hours of each other. As I've said before, one of those two men was guilty of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent and only one of those men has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on his hands. I wonder if Interpol will spend the same resources executing the arrest warrant on Cheney as they will on Assange. So an admitted traitor and war criminal can act with impunity but someone who simply publishes a web site of documents that other people provide is considered Public Enemy No 1.

The Wikileaks Saga is an amazing story, and its just starting. There is the possibility, however remote, that the world can be a changed place because of Wikileaks.

As Assange quoted Theodore Roosevelt: "“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people...To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.”

Re:Make it static.

[Rich0]

I tend to agree, although one aspect of their strategy at least makes sense.

They released the insurance file. Presumably over time they can release additional ones.

As long as the insurance files contain unredacted information that is MORE damaging than the stuff that will be released, there is incentive for governments to leave wikileaks alone.

On the other hand, no doubt the powers that be will place the wikileaks operators under heavy survailence, with the intent of figuring out who has the keys to the insurance files. If they feel confident that they know where all the keys are, they could act quickly and secure everything in a single move. Of course, to do that they need to sequester the keyholders indefinitely - if they provide them access to attorneys, press, etc, then the keys could be disclosed.

While this is a fairly dangerous cat-and-mouse game, the wikileaks strategy actually could be better in the long-term for their operations. A more decentralized system would probably still be more effective, if it could be made to work (who do you leak something to, when nobody is in charge?).

In theory Freenet/I2P and tor internal sites already form a way to disclose leaks in a fairly secure and hard to stop way. The problem is that these kinds of decentralized technologies are so arcane that the people who have the information to leak don't use them.

Re:Make it static.

[brentrad]

Assange has done more for Democracy, as in the right of people to direct the actions of their government, than the entire Western world has done since WWII.

So you think this is more important than say the Berlin Airlift, the Korean Police Action, the US involvement in the Greek Civil War, the Brussels Pact, the establishment of NATO, SEATO and the UN, the strategic arms limitation treaties, the opening of China/US diplomatic relations, the founding of the Solidarity Union, and the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. Combined.

Poppycock.

What do any of those examples have to do with "the right of people to direct the actions of their government"?

Re:Make it static.

[grcumb]

Lower the barrier of entry even further, and just throw up a torrent or ten of static files which can be hosted anywhere, without fear of compromising your own server.

If reliability and low-cost, high-performance service are important, I suggest that we all upload the data to Amazon's peerless cloud servers. If thousands of people do it, I'm sure that Amazon would be thrilled to be recognised as a strong supporter of humanity's fundamental right to communicate freely and without fear of coercion.

*blink*

... What?

Re:Make it static.

[Zancarius]

It's not so much that the US think little of some European leaders that's the "scandal". That was to be expected, ok? Duh, you could see it in the way they act.

The humorous thing to me, and I'm speaking as an American here, is that the paranoia of the TSA makes a great deal more sense when taken under the context of the WikiLeaks info. If our leadership is this insanely paranoid about other nations, it makes me wonder what they've been saying internally (within our border) about average Americans ("they're all terrorists!"). That's stuff we'll probably never find out, but if it's anything like what's been released...

Like many others, I really wasn't all that surprised with what the WikiLeaks data contained. The releases concerning Iraqi "abuse" were largely just a reflection of the Sunni/Shia split post hand-over and the US forces turning a blind eye (though, really, what could be done once you've officially handed something over?). The more significant abuses (think Abu Ghraib) were fairly well covered by the media and were leaked shortly after discovery; lesser ones, like what was in these leaks, weren't really as bad as some sources claimed. Though, the diplomatic wires were laughable and explain a great deal about what the idiot State Department seems to think of our own allies. Suffice it to say: The only thing that surprises me is how long we kept this under wraps.

Now, ultimately, there's only one person in this world who deserves the justice he'll soon face, and that's the guy who was entrusted with this information who leaked it to Assange. I'm afraid though that this entire effort to arrest Assange is essentially an elaborate witch hunt, because someone, somewhere really wants to shoot the messenger.

I've generally been quite supportive of the US (it's my home after all), but I think we deserve a bit of international embarrassment with the inane antics we've been playing. I can't say we didn't have it coming.

America: We fondle our citizens and make fun of your leaders.

Re:Make it static.

[Burz]

Sign the files and tell the key publicly?

You know you got the the right key when... ?

When you get it from A) a reputable keyserver, B) someone you trust who's known about Wikileaks for some time.

Re:Make it static.

[HockeyPuck]

Assange has done more for Democracy, as in the right of people to direct the actions of their government, than the entire Western world has done since WWII.

What a statement... maybe you've been watching too much FoxNews and forgot your history. Here's a few things off the top of my head which are much more important from a standpoint "in the right of people to direct the actions of their government" than some guy releasing a bunch of emails/letters/phone conversations detailing our negotiations with other nations concerning finding Bin Laden or bombing Iraq.

Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gave all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public--hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments, as well as greater protection for the right to vote.

Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing, and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and as of 1974, gender; as of 1988, the act protects the disabled and families with children. It also provided protection for civil rights workers.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was lead by Eleanor Roosevelt. Article 21 said, "everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."

The Womens' Suffrage movement, many countries only in the 20th century first allowed women to vote and or obtain positions in government. Ask your mother/grandmother if they care more about the right to vote or what Assange is doing. $5 says they have no idea who he is.

India became a democratic Republic in 1947 and held its first elections in 1950. Remember it was previously under British rule.

What about the rise of democracy in the 70s and 80s after the fall of the USSR?

 

Re:Make it static.

[Archangel Michael]

Well, so far, all the stories I've seen lately are *YAWN* boring. Stuff is mostly the same kind of stuff I used to assume existed, *YAWN* . Most of this stuff doesn't affect me much in any way shape or form, *YAWN*.

And I find all of this to be a big distraction as Obama and the TSA are increasing their Gestapo tactics at airports, trainstations and what not, which DOES affect more Americans every day.

And most of the info coming out doesn't hurt the US as much as Assange would like it to. Most of the Cables coming out don't play well elsewhere. About the only thing critical of the US is that now we're proven we can't keep secrets very well. But most of this info is probably not all that secret anyways (except to the public). The public doesn't really care much about them so ... *YAWN*.

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

he's doing the release in a way to cause the most damage.

Whatever Assange's motivation, it seems to me that the way he's releasing them is doing the most good.

Our only hope at this point is to disrupt the race by corporatists to create a world feudal state. If you don't believe that the goal is to create a feudal state, just look at the change in US society since Ronald Reagan. Our corporatist puppet government is actually in the process of letting millions of American families fall into poverty so that people making more than $250,000.00 per year won't have to go back to paying the same taxes they paid during the 1990's, a decade that was so kind to the rich. We have a political party that has promised that nothing will be done, and the government may shut down unless the most prosperous get to keep the reduced tax rate that George W Bush gave them a decade ago, a reduction that increased the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars.

In 1979, the top 2 percent of the population owned 10% of the nation's wealth. Today, it's over 50%. Even more shocking is the fact that the bottom 40% (FORTY PERCENT) own exactly 0% of the nation's wealth. That's a feudal society. So maybe the US middle class won't have as much money to spend on consumer goods, so they just move on to China where they're just now starting to give out the credit cards. And the Chinese leaders are just pushing their population down the chute to the economic killing floor. The cycle of "middle class growth, middle class collapse, feudalism" that took the better part of a century in the US will take just a few decades in China.

Just think of the amazing story that got lost in the shuffle last week about the audit of the Fed and the huge sums that were given to companies like Verizon. Bailouts for companies that didn't need bailouts, just because. And they're going to pay for it with cuts in Social Security and health care for elderly.

It can't be disrupted fast enough.

Re:Make it static.

[izomiac]

IMHO he should encrypt it, bundle it into a torrent and release it into the wild. If he's ever placed into custody, scream the password at the crowd. If he mysteriously disappears, let some dead man's switch timer (or a person) start spamming it across the internet. If the fear is that information that really ought to be kept secret is mixed in there (e.g. military positions, equipment specifications, or witness protection lists), then encrypt everything individually. Give the keys to "trustworthy" citizens of the respective countries to review/release if anything should happen to Wikileaks.

IOW, this ensure that the information will be made available regardless of what the future brings. It also places Wikileaks in a better position since there's no single point of failure. Governments will realize that there is absolutely no way to keep this information from being released, so they'll likely cooperate with a piecemeal release pattern to give them time to do damage control.

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

Almost all of those movements in the United States were opposed by the US government until they gave in to years of struggle by popular movements comprised of dissidents. If you'd read your history, you would know that.

For every country liberated by the fall of the USSR, another has been destroyed by agents of the United States government. To recap:

Vietnam, followed by direct and indirect destruction of Laos and Cambodia
East Timor destroyed by Indonesia, who were equipped by the US

And then you have Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Haiti, Grenada, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan... and I could go on. All sovereign nations prevented from directing their own destiny by the US government.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that part of the slow release was the careful pruning of names of people in harms way (and if in doubt, black it out). They caught a lot of heat for the initial releases of information that weren't redacted. Now they have more of a system. They are also getting hammered by massive DDoS attacks (some from China, some from Russia, some from other places...). I wouldn't be surprised if the US cyber command centre didn't take a swing or two at them. Unix based servers (particularly BSD ones) are particularly tough nuts to crack. You can't break the network stack, but you can hurl a huge number of requests at it. Botnet botnet, where ar't thou botnet? Oh! On the botnet magnet Wikileaks! I have a unix based box, but no open IP address to send anything (just a 192.168 subnet from which my ISP is really good at blocking port 80).

Re:Make it static.

[Zancarius]

The only thing preventing me from believing that is the entirety of modern history. If diplomacy wasn't built on lies, it wouldn't break down and cause war all of the time. If everyone knew that that Saddam Hussein was a US henchman, there would be no public support for the Iraq War in 2003. (Support had to be manufactured from forged documents obtained diplomatically from Britain.) If everyone knew that Saudi Arabia was the leading funder of Al Qaeda, we wouldn't be in Afghanistan. We wouldn't have just sold Saudi Arabia sixty billion dollars in advanced weaponry.

I agree with your assertion of Saudi Arabia. I do, however, feel that you're greatly over simplifying the matter with Hussein. Remember: Many of these individuals were the result of US relations in the area largely due to the USSR and the Cold War. Yes, it came back to bite us, but sometimes such policies are generally short sighted at best. I realize that this is how it appears to be today, but it's often very important to take things into the context of history at the time in which they occurred.

Other than that, I generally agree.

You have no reason to plead fealty to power, but you choose to do it out of sheer cowardice and apathy. Apparently your civil liberties will have to be entirely destroyed before you value them again.

Two or three months ago, I would have dismissed you as mildly angsty. Two years ago, I would have dismissed you as insane.

Today, I feel that you're exactly correct. The biggest problem we have here in the US is that the majority of people don't give a damn about anything, so long as they get a pay check, can put food on the table, and can drive to work in the morning. I was sincerely hoping that the idiocy that occurred with the TSA would shock my fellow countrymen into realizing that our government is pushing us closer and closer toward tyranny. This Thanksgiving holiday proved my hope to be misplaced. No one cares.

We have a Constitution--it's the supreme law of the land--but we're ignoring it, our leaders are trampling it, and our judges are dismissing it as invalid. So yes, you're absolutely right. Americans are losing their civil rights every day. Worse, most people actively and openly express that they feel this is a good thing.

You know what really bugs me, though? I was reading the ACLU's response to the TSA stuff, and someone commented on there: "I don't care what they do as long as I'm safe."

I think that should tell you everything you need to know. This is why I feel the WikiLeaks situation is really quite entertaining. It humors me to watch my leadership squirm.

Re:Make it static.

[Zancarius]

While true, it is not in wikileaks interest for this to become commonly known. Assange's job is to be the shit-shield for wikileaks, while everybody wastes their time hurling smear campaigns and arrest warrants against him, wikileaks is able to continue it's mission as before.

I just really hope you're right, and that they continue operating as before. Originally, I was opposed to some of their methodologies until this incident. Then I realized that a little transparency with the government now and again is a healthy thing. More so if it is a huge embarrassment.

If nothing else, this has simply explained a great deal more about the domestic paranoia the US has demonstrated (with the TSA for example). If we treat foreign policy in this manner, just think of what the domestic wires are like...

"They're all a bunch of terrorists," said one shadowy figure to the other.
"Why do you say that, Senator?" asked the other.
"Look at them," the first continued, "they're voting; they're practicing their Constitutional rights. By God, I know a terrorist when I see one!"

Re:Make it static.

[Kiuas]

Governments should be afraid of citizens, not vice-versa. and drawing to the comfort that i do happen to live in Finland, a neutral country, and for the most part our government wants to do the right thing. Let alone that our president isn't afraid to be aggressive to voice her and our governments opinion if she sees wrong doing, even if it hasn't anything to do directly with us. Yes, Finland is a weird tiny big country.

For the most part I agree, the goverment is trying its best. But right now, the current ministers, especialy our minister of information, are slowly forgetting or things like ignoring freedom of speech. The fact that some pages are still being censorerd in the make of "preventing the spreading of child pornography" (even though most of the pages censored do not actually contain child pornigraphy, or pornography of any kind) and that they allow things like the "lex nokia" (effectively allowing not only corporations, but also some private organisations such as housing companies to monitor the network usage and emails of ther members) - though it hasn't apparently been used since it passed - proves that many people in the current goverment have seemingly forgotten the importance of these fundamental rights. Also, Finland has been repeatedly fined for breaking the EU articles on freedom of press and speech (note: link in finnish).

And our president hasn't said a thing about these issues - nor for example the fact that Finland is one of the few remaining countries ehere one can still be fined for blasphemy (a law, which has been used a couple times even in the 21st century). And with the current presidential powers being what they are, it wouldn't make a one damn difference. The office of the president under the current constitution is akin to the king of the Swedes: a public figure. All the concrete power rests in the hands of the prime minister, who also has done or said nothing to defend a citizen's right to freedom of speech and expression.

In the upcoming elections next year, none of the major parties have so far informed that they would be focussing on these kind of issues. And why would the? Taxation, budget and immigration are the "hot topics" here like in most western countries so they are what's being used to entice voters. I like being a Finn living here, I think this is a great country and that our educatioon system for exmpale is probably one of the best if not the best in the world. And the political system is beyond repair yet - the major parties just really need a wake up call; a snap on their fingers to remind them that they cannot keep slowly chiselling away our personal freedoms while we're distacted. They need to be shown that this is not the US of A (no offense to any americans) and we won't swallow any "patriot acts" they try to push down our trhoats and that in the spirit of true democracy we will throw them out the door of the senate if they do.

That's why, if you're like me and are truly worried and care about thigns such as freedom of speech, I advice you to consider strongly about not voting any of the major parties in the next elections. Instead, I'd recommedn voting for the Finnish Pirate Party which is not by any means only a party concerned with torrenst and p2p like many unfortunately think - if you check their themes and core values from the site you will notice that personal liberties and freedoms are infact their key points along with de-criminalization of piracy for personal use. They have many candidates focussed primarily on the personal freedoms.

So yes, we're still a great nation. But by no means perfect. So please, for the sake of all of us, stop thinking that we're flawless and vote for somebody who doesn't think that it's a good idea to censor the net abd limit personal freedoms because child pornography is EVIL or because we don't want t

Re:Make it static.

[dysfunct]

Go look at the cables. It'll only be a problem if your name is xxxx xxxxxxx.

Re:Make it static.

[societyofrobots]

Don't forget Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Italy. It was absolute tyranny when we rammed democracy down their throats. Now they are horrible countries!

And you do realize American soldiers replaced the Panama military dictator with one elected by citizens of Panama, right?

Re:Make it static.

[tycoex]

Since when were we supposed to consider the government and/or giant corporations our friend(s)?

Re:Make it static.

[IonOtter]

All the files are online, right now. All 1.4 gigabytes of them. Just put the terms "insurance.aes256" into torrentfinder.info and check the hash before wasting your time on 1.4 gigs.

Then just hold on to it. If someone in either the US government or some other agency does something stupid...

The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

You do realize that Noriega was a CIA asset, right?

The 1988 Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations concluded that "The saga of Panama's General Manuel Antonio Noriega represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures for the United States. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, Noriega was able to manipulate U.S. policy toward his country, while skillfully accumulating near-absolute power in Panama. It is clear that each U.S. government agency which had a relationship with Noriega turned a blind eye to his corruption and drug dealing, even as he was emerging as a key player on behalf of the Medellín Cartel (a member of which was notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar)." Noriega was allowed to establish "the hemisphere's first 'narcokleptocracy'".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Noriega

Look, if you don't believe a country has the right to determine it's own destiny, that's fine. Just don't bitch when China invades. Get out there and wave the red flag like the obedient coward that you are, and the powerless citizen that you aspire to be.

Re:Make it static.

[the eric conspiracy]

The governments that were being contained or overthrown by these actions definitely would not acknowledge the existence of that right.

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

Let's go through your list:

1. Berlin Airlift - Saved 2 million residents from going hungry, which was fallout from the partitioning of Europe between WWII allies

2. Korean Police Action - Do you think North Koreans or Chinese have more freedoms today? Is there more suffering in rural China than in the DPRK?

3. Greek Civil War - How is foreign government intervention democratic when the result is a dictatorship?

4. Brussels Pact/NATO: currently the occupying force of Afghanistan.

5. SEATO? The one that didn't do shit about Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, East Timor...?

6. UN: Would be great if the United States would accept it's legitimacy. Right now it's just the chessboard upon which the Great Game is played.

7. The strategic arms limitation treaties: I don't think the West gets credit for cleaning up the mess it created by escalating nuclear proliferation, like secretly allowing Pakistan to develop nukes.

8. the opening of China/US diplomatic relations: which only really happened after Tiananmen Square, once China proved it had the will and the capability to kill it's own citizens to keep business going. Hardly the diamond of democratic progress you're looking for.

9. the founding of the Solidarity Union: Perhaps the only real success story of the Cold War. Too bad anything supportive of unions is out of vogue with US propaganda.

10. the fall of the Soviet Union and reunification: for every country liberated by the fall of the iron curtain, the west destroyed at least one trying to subvert the spread of communism through clandestine military action

Let's go through my list:
50s
- Coup of democratic governments in: Iran, Guatemala
- Attempted coups in Laos, Vietnam
- Support of Duvalier over democratic movements in Haiti

60s
- War in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos
- Coups and assassinations in: Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Greece, Congo, Brazil, Indonesia
- Attempted coup in Cuba

70s
- War in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, East Timor
- Coups and assassinations in Chile, Angola, El Salvador, Nicaragua
- Escalation of Afghan War

80s
- War in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama
- Coups and assassinations in: Columbia, Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador

90s
- Coups and assassinations in: Haiti
- War in Iraq

00s
- War in Iraq, Afghanistan
- Military strikes in Pakistan, Yemen

This is not the whole list, does not touch military and diplomatic support, and does not touch weapons sales.

Re:Make it static.

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Dude you live in a fantasy land all of those facts were very well known. The Pakistanis knew their government was complicit in the drone strikes they said as much on the street and with suicide bombs in protest. And the Afghanis knew all too well that there government was corrupt since they were the ones that had to pay the bribes. What fairy planet with unicorns do you live on? So thanks for playing but you have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

If anything the only real revelation was that we were doing the bombing for the Yemeni government and they were taking the credit for it. And how does that help democracy since that only provides propaganda for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which are Islamic extremists?

Re:Make it static.

[dch24]

I suppose Wikileaks is already aware of the possibility they may dissapear, and knows exactly how to take advantage of decentralized distribution.

• http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/wikileaks-insurance-file/
• http://erictric.com/2010/12/04/what-does-the-wikileaks-history-insurance-file-contain/

Re:Make it static.

[copponex]

What do any of those examples have to do with "the right of people to direct the actions of their government"?

The governments that were being contained or overthrown by these actions definitely would not acknowledge the existence of that right.

Exactly. And the United States doesn't recognize that right either. Somewhat for it's own citizens, and absolutely for the unfortunate citizen of any country in the way of US interests.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.
-- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State, 1973

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

If diplomacy wasn't built on lies, it wouldn't break down and cause war all of the time.

People lie.

It sucks, but it happens. Husbands lie to wives. Parents lie to children. Friends lie to friends. Strangers lie to people they've never met. And groups lie to other groups all the time.

That's part of how society works.

Open, complete honesty doesn't make everyone get along. If I tell someone right to their face that I think they are a complete scumbag, their reaction is not going to be peaceful. If I tell my boss that the project is delayed because I have to completely redo his sloppy work and everyone thinks he's a joke, I'm not getting a bonus next month. And if I tell the missus that yes, that dress does make her posterior seem enlarged, I'm not getting any. Sometimes lies are wicked, and sometimes they are just being polite. Yes, I'm lying when I tell the lady in question that she looks beautiful in that terrible dress, but the ends rather justify the means of that minor distortion of the truth.

Now, that's not exactly a fair comparison to national diplomacy in life or death circumstances, but consider this: if your option is to be completely and utterly honest, which will result in your embassy being thrown out of the country almost immediately, or to lie a little bit and retain your position and perhaps exert a little influence, which choice are you going to make? If you have the option to deceive the masses to stop a war, is that truth worth more than the hundreds or thousands of lives that would be lost in the conflict? If protecting your nation means covering something up, are you willing to throw the country you serve under a bus for token idealism?

It's far from perfect, but life is far from perfect. Sometimes, people simply can't afford to be honest. Diplomats fall right into that category, because all they have are words and influence. That means getting along with people, and they can't do that if they are brutally honest and shout every private conversation to the world.

Re:Make it static.

[societyofrobots]

No need for the personal insults.

I'm all for a country choosing it's destiny, just not dictators of that country being allowed to choose by killing their own people that disagree.

Despite your anti-US sentiment, South Korea would look like North Korea if not for our meddling. Europe would have become Nazi if not for our meddling. China would be a province of Japan if not for our meddling.

Sure, we messed up a few times, but don't be selective in your evidence.

Re:Make it static.

[Kagura]

2. Korean Police Action - Do you think North Koreans or Chinese have more freedoms today? Is there more suffering in rural China than in the DPRK?

That's a very, very good list, however this point is almost like a troll. I wish you would take it back or rewrite it. Obviously almost all of Korea was united under a capitalist and western overseer, but China stepped in to prevent that influence on its doorstep. The US never had intentions of seriously invading beyond the Yalu.

Re:Make it static.

[sumdumass]

All you have to do is state some objective other then benefiting yourself and you can be a complete asshat and pretty much get away with it.

It's not about levels of harm or to whom the harm is directed, it's about token gestures to absolve your own guilt or complicity. It's why some politicians can just say "I'm sorry" and everything is all right while others have to quit public service altogether for relatively the same crap. It's kind of petty but it satisfies some people and allows them to reconcile their guilt pretty easily.

Re:Make it static.

[Kagura]

What corruption has been exposed thus far?

Unfortunately, NONE so far. The only good things the diplo leaks have brought us is transparency in the government, which is NEAT to look at and read but is disruptive to our country's ability to conduct strategic relations.

Re:Make it static.

[Kagura]

Two options:

1) They are a CIA front and are going to let Assange be "captured" before more than a few hundred cables are released, or

2) They are really at their processing limit for redacting names.

And I didn't think the CIA conspiracy had much wind before, but now I'm giving it a little more thought...

Re:Make it static.

[Ihmhi]

Honestly? I wouldn't worry too much about disappearing. You'd have to be a madman to fuck with Finland.

Re:Make it static.

[ljw1004]

That sounds like a US perspective. I think the cables have all reflected very well on the US, as expected, and confirmed that it's a responsible decent world power.

The scandals we're seeing is more about FOREIGN governments who have been lying to their people. Some of us suspected they lied some of the time, but I don't think we knew about how much, and I don't think we knew about all the instances of it.

I didn't know about Yemen government lying to its people. I didn't know about UK government lying to parliament about cluster bombs. The German news was enough to cause a resignation. Wikileak's Kenyan news a few years ago was enough to cause a revolution, basically -- rioting and protests that led the corrupt government to collapse.

Re:Make it static.

[Kagura]

You know, if I wanted to discredit Wikileaks for some reason, I'd arrange a situation where Wikileaks needed to establish mirrors, such as DDOS'ing the main site and getting the DNS entry removed.

Then I'd set up my own Wikileaks mirror and pepper the files with plausible disinformation. When you look at a Wikileaks mirror, how do you know you're looking at the real thing?

Next, I'd spam the torrent sites with dozens of "Wikileaks" torrents, all containing my disinformation. When you download one of these torrents, how do you know it's real?

Finally I'd make sure that everyone was aware of the disinformation I'd planted. Job done - nobody can tell which files are genuine and which are fake.

Why, it would be just like the time those rightwingnuts faked FOIA.zip to make it look like the most brilliant scientists of our time were actually all a bit dodgy.

There are probably much better ways of doing what you are talking about... why not submit false files and then once Wikileaks releases them, you have your government discredit them publicly? It's called the "poisoning the well" approach.

Re:Make it static.

[oWj9*7!7dsggh7]

The humorous thing to me, and I'm speaking as an American here, is that the paranoia of the TSA makes a great deal more sense when taken under the context of the WikiLeaks info.

That reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said in his comments on the Criterion Collection edition of Brazil: that he had intended it as satire, but after September 11th, it had begun to look like reality.

Re:Make it static.

[budgenator]

Once the students left and the office door closed, the teacher would open her desk drawer and with a shaking hand give me horrifying photos of disinterred bodies. The Timorese resistance would dig up the fresh graves of torture victims, take photos for evidence, and pass them through their underground networks to this teacher, who would then get them out of the country through me and other diplomats. ... The third most common topic in the WikiLeaks cables is human rights, with American diplomats doing the same thing we were trying to do in Indonesia: Make the world a little better.

That’s hard to swallow for the cyber mob that is celebrating the embarrassment being inflicted on the U.S. government this week. But the damage done to Washington is nothing compared to the pain that is about to be inflicted on the confidential sources in Russia, China and Sudan.
WikiLeaks just made the world more repressive

Those informants are real people, many actually doing what wikileaks is supposed to be doing.

Re:Make it static.

[ljw1004]

"I think you look great in that dress".

"We the government think the best way to run a democracy is to systematically lie to the electorate".

It's ludicrous to compare the two. Also you missed the middle ground between "uncontrolled verbal diarrhea of opinions" and "deliberately tell outright factual lies".

Re:Make it static.

[mysidia]

should be very concerned that Assange wants to release it piece meal, ramp up the drama and attention to him and his site as much as possible

I assume the piece meal release has something to do with not indiscriminately releasing everything.

If he were to distribute the data before redacting information, he could jeapordize lives. He could also jeapordize the integrity of his sources -- Wikileaks claims to have not compromised sources, by suppressing any information that could identify the source.

If he were to indiscriminately spread the uncensored documents to a distributed system, there would be a risk that something was not redacted that should be redacted, and that it could fall into the wrong hands, and lead to people's lives being put in jeapordy, or the sources of the leak getting discovered

Re:Make it static.

[DragonWriter]

"We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents"

So they're concerned about the people who leaked the documents, but not about the people who could be killed because of them?

Read in the full context from which you excerpted that quote, that is very clearly a part of an expression that is saying that the information itself is important enough that they don't want most of it getting ignored by the media because its all in one big dump, so in the short period in which the "dump" is news, no one actually gets to most of the material.

You may, of course, disagree with WikiLeaks evaluation of whether the information being released is that important for the public to know (so far, most of what has gotten covered in the media hasn't seemed that important to me, but I haven't gotten reviewed the raw data myself and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if the media was not focussing on the most important bits) but deliberately distorting the argument being made doesn't advance your case well, especially in a forum where the context is readily available.

Re:Make it static.

[tobiah]

He has, in a sense. He's distributed an encrypted static version and distributed it to thousands. If anything happens to him the password will be published.

Re:Make it static.

[Thing 1]

Just like it didn't want it getting out that [neocons] have been systematically destroying democratic institutions, from Iran to Vietnam to Argentina to Palestine [to the US]

Re:Make it static.

[tobiah]

"How fitting that Interpol should issue arrest warrants for Julian Assange and former Vice President Dick Cheney within 24 hours of each other."

Nigeria has just suggested they would request an arrest warrant through Interpol, in regards to an ongoing bribery investigation regarding oil and gas rights. Haliburton paid out about $600million in a settlement for this case, so there's something to it, but I really doubt there's going to be an arrest warrant.

Re:Make it static.

[uolamer]

There was an insurance file posted a while back. It is encrypted, no key provided. Most people assume it is the entire cablegate along with most everything else they have that has yet to be released.. We also assume there are at least a few people with the key and the ability to post it if shit happens.. (it could just be a bad porn though, we do not know since it is encrypted)..

appears cablegate is on piratebay already.: http://thepiratebay.org/search/wikileaks/0/99/0

Insurance file: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance
SHA1: ce54d3a8af370213d23fcbfe8cddc8619a0734c

Re:Make it static.

[_Sprocket_]

Assange's job is to be the shit-shield for wikileaks, while everybody wastes their time hurling smear campaigns and arrest warrants against him, wikileaks is able to continue it's mission as before.

I like the new tact. Instead of putting Assange on a pedestal as a hero, we're going to put him on a pedestal as a martyr. Assange isn't an egotistical ass; he's a wiley tactician. Yes. I'm sure that'll play well. Then you can continue with posting donation links again.

Re:Make it static.

[I_Voter]

Go copponex yes yes yes

RE: Yawn Yawn Yawn

I think that leak about the contents of a July 24 2009 cable, which summarized the assessment of the US embassy in Honduras on key facts that were politically disputed by supporters of the (Honduran) coup regime provides important information to U.S. citizens relating to the actions of our U.S. Executive branch, and is significant. This leak has not been widely covered by the U.S. media probably because it does have political significance for U.S. citizens, as well as the citizen of Central and South America. It is certainly being covered elsewhere.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1012/S00018/wikileaks-honduras-us-busted-on-support-of-coup.htm

Re:Make it static.

[cpricejones]

Unfortunately, sometimes "the most good" is not what is good for the U.S. (or so it's leaders would have you believe). More information is almost always a good thing provided that the earpiece can intelligibly sift through it. What Wikileaks has reemphasized is the power of the new technology in aiding information flow and the hilariously bad decision it was for the U.S. to information share post 9/11.

Re:Make it static.

[Frosty Piss]

If i disappear mysticiously, several hundred people will know really fast, and they will tell their friends and so on - a full blown media frenzy fast, if anything happens.

This is like saying "If someone runs me over in a cross-walk with their car, I'll sue them for a MILLION dollars..."

Yes, and they'll still be a paraplegic.

Re:Make it static.

[rodgster]

Just like with all the propaganda of the US government. I don't mind. Because I have nothing to hide. US Gov probably wishes there was a 4th amendment now.

Re:Make it static.

[benjamindees]

I think the most important part of wikileaks is not so much the content of the leaks, but the reaction of people in power to them.

Exactly. If you didn't know 90% of the stuff in those leaks already, then you aren't going to learn anything from it being placed on some distributed servers somewhere and emanated via a thousand blogs and newspaper back-pages. You're going to learn it when there's a name and a face going around giving television interviews and provoking a backlash both from the established powers and from the ignorant public that maintains them. From what I have seen, Assange has done a deliberate and masterful job of attention-whoring for his cause.

Re:Make it static.

[clarkkent09]

If your point is that every country is necessarily better of if it was run completely democratically (i.e. by the vote of the majority) Chile is one of the best examples to the contrary. Instead of being the most prosperous and most free country in the Latin America for the last 30 years or so and approaching the living standard of the developed world (after the moderately nasty post coup period in the 70s), without Pinoche and his US backers it would have been another Cuba, which is what Allende was planning together with Castro. Average monthly wage in Chile today: $800. Average monthly wage in Cuba: $20.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another point of view is that WikiLeaks had best inspect what they release, and do their best to prevent putting lives at risk, especially those of innocent bystanders and those who are working for the greater good. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't: if they take their time to filter and redact, they are delaying and possibly twisting the truth, but if they don't do that, they are irresponsible.

If wikileaks would filter these cables, there's no guarantee no lives would be in danger. Julian is dealing with that threat right now and he sacrificed enough for us to know about these cables. I think that wikileaks should not be obliged to inspect the contents of the cable. That's our job.

Re:Make it static.

[IICV]

If that author had made a better case than "here's an emotional story; therefore Wikileaks is bad", then maybe you would have a point.

As it is, the bit about torture victims is a non-sequitor, and honestly I don't see how Wikileaks releasing these cables affects it. Let's just follow the chain of reasoning through, shall we?

1. The journalist meets with the school teacher and receives the torture photos
2. The journalist cables the torture photos back to Canada
3. Canada uses the torture photos as leverage to make the torture stop
4. Wikileaks releases the torture cables.
5. The journalist is kicked out of the country
7. The Canadian embassy is burned down
6. Canada uses the fact that the journalist was kicked out of the country and their embassy was burned down as more leverage, because now everyone knows what the country was doing.

I can't imagine how it would work out the way the author thinks it would - but then, he's used to doing things secretly, and not in the open. Do you think cockroaches understand the benefits of sunlight?

Re:Make it static.

[naasking]

Some might say the U.S. needs scale back its strategic relations a little. They have so many fingers in so many countries, it's not even funny. Speaking as a Canadian here, who are generally friendly with the U.S., the influence you have on our country's policies pisses me off.

Re:Make it static.

[naasking]

http://pgp.mit.edu/

Re:Make it static.

[Angeret]

Ego asided, it looks to me like each cable published thus far has been redacted where a name appears other than those of the sender or a publicly known figure. Several have XXXXXXXXXXXX in odd places, even in Subjects. That's why there's the threat that if he goes down the whole lot will be released "as is".

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm not reading the same cables as everyone else, but I don't get how people are putting a positive spin on these cables when it comes to the actions of the US. I see a government that lies to it's people. I see a government that is propping up corrupt and tyrannical regimes, a government that covertly subverts democratic movements that threaten these regimes. I see a Machiavellian superpower using spying, blackmail and bribery to influence international diplomacy and uphold the interest of powerful corporations.

How is choosing to escalate a war despite realizations that so far it only made the enemy stronger and any favorable outcome unlikely not considered a war crime/mass murder. Especially considering we are the ones selling weapons to the middlemen that resell them to those who fight our soldiers...

Re:Make it static.

[10101001 10101001]

Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.

President?

No one had gone bananas, not in that way at least.

Only six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was the ideal Presidency fodder.

DNA was a wise fellow.

Re:Make it static.

[Splab]

Jup, well known - easiest way to avoid a scandal in the newspaper is to create an even bigger scandal.

Re:Make it static.

[Max_W]

You do not understand. Julian Assange wants to show the real situation with the freedom of press. He, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, decided "to live not by lies". He is not like you and me, he is taking a stand, fighting for the truth. Even if this truth is extremely unpleasant and even destructive.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn motto was: [Zhit ne po lzhi.] "Live not by lies.". He also broke some laws of that time, he had to go through horrors of GULAG, but such people, Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Julian Assange, cannot be frightened. They are the pillars of humanity.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,
I also happen to live in Finland but I find out strange that "the most part our government wants to do the right thing".
What we have in Finland is state controlled media \ education system that very efficiently educates citizens to
believe that Finland is The Most Uncorrupted Nation on earth.

There are several reports from Finnish police how our own media refuses to report corruption or mismanagement.
Relic of our life as Soviet satellite, where media was conditioned to extreme self control.

I admit my first visit to real Western European country was shocking experience that truly changed my life.
But that said I just would like to underline to others that Finland is not example country of free speech,
but great example how you can placate citizens with efficient use media and education.

Finland is otherwise nice country but there is plenty of work to do still. False sense of superiority is not helping
us. Cleaning up soviet era relics from government would be first steps to start to improve our quality of living
(we have now oldest cars in Europe on average, quite achievement for high tech country). And I wouldn't
mind of having aggressive independent media here.

We certainly are NOT in position to start lecturing other countries how to run transparent government.

Yes and previous writer told that government will make him disappear for what he did. Thats not the
way they do it. I quote one interesting threat in forum where there was discussion about sensitive
topic about vested interested. Rough translation is something like :
"If you dont play the ball (drop sensitive topic), everything you'll try to do (in Finland) will just fail"
One example of ruined life will teach thousands of dissidents.

Funny part was that guy responded that he is not living in Finland and will continue purging this
wrong doing. And just couple of days ago European Union contacted Finnish government branches
and has already started investigation. Hurrah!

Sorry about rant. I don't usually write comments, but thought that this was important enough topic for
me to throw in my maybe misguided opinion.

Re:Make it static.

[Frnknstn]

Could anyone confirm if they are near their processing limit, thus releasing it piece meal?

They claim to be:
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/

"As we've gotten more successful, there's a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly."

Re:Make it static.

[Minix]

I think it's easy enough to understand *this*:

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them."

Re:Make it static.

[AGMW]

... And most of the info coming out doesn't hurt the US as much as Assange would like it to. ...

There seems to be a general assumption that Assange is Quixotically tilting at the US. That's not my perception at all.
WikiLeaks has been given some interesting documents for publication and they are making them public, as per the wishes of the donor! It just so happens some of them are about the US.

Now if people were to suggest that the donor of the US Specific documents was having a go at the US there may be a better case for it, but much like all the fuss in the UK over the MPs Expenses malarky, I could equally validly suggest that having seen the cancer of corruption within the government(corporation, whatever) it is the whistleblower's duty as a citizen(employee, whatever) to provide the sharpest knife to allow the corruption to be cut out!

Indeed, given the knowledge that there is something rotten in your government it could be considered treason if you didn't do something about it!

We, as the public, should stop focusing on Assange as a figurehead (who set himself up as such because of the effort being expended by those outed to discover the people behind WikiLeaks and he thought it better to provide a target than have them discover their own!) and rather concentrate on the information WikiLeaks provides.

Well done to WikiLeaks! In general, you are providing a valuable service to every nation affected because that dirty laundry needs airing and the longer it is allowed to fester the worse it will smell!

Re:Make it static.

[Xelios]

WikiLeaks also promises its sources that it will work to get "maximum impact" for whatever they provide. If you're risking life imprisonment for "treason" by giving WikiLeaks internal documents then this actually means a lot. Nobody wants to take that risk only to have their work forgotten by the media after a couple of days. WikiLeaks knows that by staggering the release like this and keeping the media interested they'll encourage others to take that risk too.

"The promise that we make to our sources is not only will we defend them through every means that we have available, technological and legally and politically," said Assange calmly, "but we will try and get the maximum possible political impact for the material that they give to us, and..." There, Colbert interrupted. "So 'collateral murder' is to get political impact?" Assange responded by saying, "Yes, Absolutely." Source

Re:Make it static.

[villejus]

Keeping the website up and running despite the attacks and hosting problems is important for Wikileaks. It is a way to show their power. I am not a fan of Wikileaks, but I've thought of some ways to keep controversial websites up and running in last couple of days. One of my idea is based on smartphones. There there millions of smartphones in the world. One could create a Java/Symbian/Android based web-server package and deploy that to the fans of Wikileaks around the world. Then these smartphones deployed around the world would create a web-cluster of say, hundreds of thousands of servers at least. You would also need a DNS server returning IP addresses pointing to these mobiles in a round-robin/similar algorithm. Of course for this setup to work, the Smartphones would need a public IP (and the mobile operator to allow access to the mobile's IP). Of course there could be some quality related problems, but I don't see a reason why this wouldn't work - if above requirements/assumptions would be passed.

Re:Make it static.

[gerddie]

If your point is that every country is necessarily better of if it was run completely democratically (i.e. by the vote of the majority) Chile is one of the best examples to the contrary. Instead of being the most prosperous and most free country in the Latin America for the last 30 years or so and approaching the living standard of the developed world (after the moderately nasty post coup period in the 70s), ... .

Simply wrong

Thus, between 1970 and 1989, Chile's GDP "grew at a slow pace (relative to the 1960s and to other Latin American countries over the same period) with an average rate of 1.8-2.0 per cent. On a per capita basis . . . GDP [grew] at a rate (0.1-0.2 per cent) well below the Latin American average . . . [B]y 1989 the GDP was still 6.1 per cent below the 1981 level, not having recovered the level reached in 1970. For the entire period of military rule (1974-1989) only five Latin American countries had a worse record. ..." [Petras and Leiva, Op. Cit., p. 32]

As for the living standard:

Per capita consumption fell by 23% from 1972-87. The proportion of the population below the poverty line (the minimum income required for basic food and housing) increased from 20% to 44.4% between 1970 and 1987. Per capita health care spending was more than halved from 1973 to 1985, setting off explosive growth in poverty-related diseases such as typhoid, diabetes and viral hepatitis. On the other hand, while consumption for the poorest 20% of the population of Santiago dropped by 30%, it rose by 15% for the richest 20%. [Noam Chomsky, Year 501, pp. 190-191] The percentage of Chileans without adequate housing increased from 27 to 40 percent between 1972 and 1988, despite the claims of the government that it would solve homelessness via market friendly policies.

Re:Make it static.

[rmstar]

Outside of the US, the picture you paint is more or less the picture of the US everyone has, and has had for many decades.

Re:Make it static.

[makomk]

Exactly. If you didn't know 90% of the stuff in those leaks already, then you aren't going to learn anything from it being placed on some distributed servers somewhere and emanated via a thousand blogs and newspaper back-pages.

It's not just a question of what everyone knows but also of what can actually be proved. 90% of the stuff was widely suspected, but there was no way of actually telling if it was true until Wikileaks leaked these cables.

Re:Make it static.

[azalin]

I'm so happy my name is xxxx xxxx. Puh, that was close

Re:Make it static.

[tirnacopu]

While the GP may be exaggerating a bit, this this study quotes frighteningly close numbers, and they only track up to 2007, while stating that

..there has been an "astounding" 36.1% drop in the wealth (marketable assets) of the median household since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. By contrast, the wealth of the top 1% of households dropped by far less: just 11.1%.

Wikipedia has informations dated 2001, but with a later note mentioning the same trend.

Re:Make it static.

[makomk]

The Pakistanis knew their government was complicit in the drone strikes they said as much on the street and with suicide bombs in protest.

They just couldn't prove it, and without that proof it was easy for the US media to spin this as just another example of evil Mooslim terrorist nutters. The big benefit of Wikileaks' leak is that all this stuff can no longer be denied.

Re:Make it static.

[azalin]

Do you really think, that not every nation has more or less the same set of documents on the leaders of other nations?
Of course a few egos will get scratched but I think most governments where less on the "how dare they" side and more on the "I'm just happy our honest files didn't get out". Well of course it is embarrassing as hell for the US right now, but most foreign relationships will really suffer because everyone has more or less the same stuff in their databases too.

Re:Make it static.

[MRe_nl]

It's not called "the Prince", it's called "the Ruler" ("Il principe").

Re:Make it static.

[jimicus]

The US probably doesn't much like the idea of foreign governments collapsing left and right any more than their own. Better the devil you know and all that.

Re:Make it static.

[Johann Lau]

Assange wants to release it piece meal, ramp up the drama and attention to him and his site as much as possible [...] The files should ALL be placed online, in a distributed manner, and be done with.

no, and no: http://slashdot.org/submission/1408796/Wikileaks-took-advice-from-media-outlets

Re:Make it static.

[azalin]

People lie.

And people know that other people lie or at least tend to sweeten things up a little for us.
Any diplomat who always believes without doubt what he is told by a diplomat of another country should probably rethink his career choice.
People will also talk behind your back, they always have and always will. Accept it.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely, it's a shame some people aren't smart enough to realise this.

The War Diary leaks had a lot of awful shit in them that deserved much more media attention than it got, but by releasing it as one massive batch all we got was a few days about a few select scandals in them then nothing.

I'm not convinced that those bitching about Assange's ego really have much to base that on and there's a large degree of double standards- people who bitch about government/corporate abuse but do nothing about it then bitch at someone who does. There's plenty of those here, but even in real life we've got Sarah Palin as perhaps the ultimate example - "CONSTITUTION, FREE SPEECH, SMALL GOVERNMENT!!!! Oh wait, Julian Assange is exercising free speech why aren't you killing him for us government?". This interview explains some of the questions his detractors often bring up, so it's a shame they have to come up with their own made up answers (i.e. he's doing it for his ego, he's doing it because he hates America etc.)-

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/

But other frequent whining about American focus is a bit short sighted, and I have to wonder if people have actually been following the news or reading the cables if they believe it's an anti-American thing too- Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan have all been painted in a negative light, Iran and North Korea have been painted as much weaker than many believed they actually were. How is this anti-American? Some of America's arch enemies have suffered a blow as much as America has with the release of these cables. Sure the leaks are America, but that doesn't mean it's exclusively an attack on the US- on the contrary, it's more a use of US intelligence to show a realistic picture of the world as a whole. I guess some people are just much more zealous about their country being exposed for wrongdoing than others, particularly when they've pretended to themselves their country is perfect. Those who whinge about government and corporate abuse but also whinge about Wikileaks/Assange, should just go sit in a cave, because not hearing anything about the outside world is the only way they will be happy.

What I don't understand though in all honesty is why the partner media sites like The New York Times, The Guardian etc. don't just host a mirror for them. I mean, what's the government of the UK and US etc. going to do, shut down the websites of a major newspaper? Good luck in dealing with the uproar that would result from that. You could argue they might lose some readership, but I'm sure the fact they've partnered with Wikileaks and are running the stories in the first place defines there readership who would and wouldn't support them already.

Re:Make it static.

[moonbender]

Dozens or hundreds of people are getting killed around the world every day either directly by or because of their association with Western forces. We're indirectly responsible for thousands of more deaths for various reasons. We'll sell guns to whoever the fuck wants them and don't give a shit when they shoot each other. And suddenly people discover their conscience because US human intelligence "assets" are involved? Yeah, right.

Re:Make it static.

[Joce640k]

Still drinking the government kool-aid, eh?

Wikileaks redacts all the documents to remove names.

Re:Make it static.

[Joce640k]

It takes time to go though them and change names of informants, etc. to XXXXXXX XXXXXXX, I'm guessing that's one reason for the delay.

Re:Make it static.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm amazed to see comments like this, because it seems like people aren't realising Wikileaks is just a middleman. They get their material from whistleblowers, they pass that material to journalists (such as The NY times and The Guardian) who do the necessary redactions and actually publish them. Wikileaks then takes the redacted materials from the journalists, and copies them on their website to taunt the offended parties and take the heat away from the journalists.

If the necessary redactions aren't made, you should blame the journalists, not Wikileaks.

Re:Make it static.

[airfoobar]

These are diplomatic cables being released, not military. The previous two "war logs" releases were of military material, and after a lot of FUD from the Pentagon, even they had to admit that no-one was put in danger because of them.

Re:Make it static.

[BlackPignouf]

Please note that there were no "Top Secret" cables that have been released by Wikileaks.

Anything really embarrassing for the US would probably be classified as such.

Re:Make it static.

[MRe_nl]

"Really, this guy has a major ego / power complex, and it will cost him eventually".

THIS GUY has a major ego / power complex???

Sure, and the owners/governments/public servants of the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France are meek and docile white hat, ego-less do gooders, who have shown time and time again they can be trusted with any amount of power.

Re:Make it static.

[JakartaDean]

My dad sent me word of this story, as I'm a Canadian living in Indonesia. I think the guy's a bit of a joke. Entry-level attaches leaning on a host government to change policy? There are good reasons, I assume, for having low-level attaches but I can't imagine any of them changing the behaviour of a host government. Perhaps the author simply doesn't want to admit that his job only existed for him to collect data and gain experience. With Youtube, flikr and wikileaks he isn't needed to go to Dili to meet a schoolteacher. He also doesn't seem to get the way information is now getting into the public domain, of which wikileaks is an example at least as much as a driver.

Re:Make it static.

[G_REEPER]

Anyone notice how assange is becoming the real Elliot Carver. The latest reports is that this new file is insurance isn't that like blackmail according to US laws ? So does everyone who host a mirrors become guilty of being a willing accomplice?

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

You're right, the arrest warrant on Dick "Mr Burns" Cheney is pending. I want to see what excuse they will come up with to Nigeria for not issuing it.

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

Not exaggerating a bit. 40% of the American population has more debts than equity. That's precisely what it means to have zero wealth.

Re:Make it static.

[ZigiSamblak]

The irresponsible thing the US has done is having official diplomatic cables with insulting gossip, evidence about espionage at the highest levels of the UN and dubious/illegal deals with companies and regimes. And the small fact of having all these documents available so it is likely one person could singlehandedly access and leak all of them causing a major diplomatic nightmare for many powerful political and business people and forces.

Re:Make it static.

[can.you.feel.my.808]

Although I'm sure that in some respects you are right, seeing as the US is a larger first world country that is not rife with unmanageable corruption among other problems inherent with government in less developed countries, I think that the main reason that we see the emphasis on foreign entities is because the leaked cables were US State Department communiques regarding these various other entities. Had the leak been from some other foreign State Department we may have seen several damning reports regarding the US instead.

Re:Make it static.

[SwedishPenguin]

US media is very selective in what it publishes.. The NY Times for instance reported that Iran had obtained missiles from North Korea, but completely omitted the Russians completely refuting the notion and the complete lack of evidence.
They see what they want to see...

Re:Make it static.

[vxice]

Until everyone has had enough and any and all talk about wikileaks becomes background noise "oh they are still releasing stuff?"

Re:Make it static.

[The Living Fractal]

Thank you for saving me the trouble...

Re:Make it static.

[BrokenHalo]

And if I tell the missus that yes, that dress does make her posterior seem enlarged, I'm not getting any.

True. Even if you let it be known that you happen to like big bottoms, the same applies. Such is life...

Re:Make it static.

[DragonWriter]

Until everyone has had enough and any and all talk about wikileaks becomes background noise "oh they are still releasing stuff?"

Reading the news recently, except for the articles about the really boring stuff (the catty Mean-Girls-esque characterizations in some cables) and the articles about the controversy rather than the content, most of them haven't mentioned WikiLeaks prominently in the lead paragraph or headline (some of mentioned "cables" in that context), and many of them involve information from the cables that have been confirmed and supplement from other sources. (This is true, e.g., of the stories I've seen covering the information that the Chinese Politburo directed the attacks on Google, for instance.)

As long as the cables being released contain information that is fuel for stories where the fact that WikiLeaks is one of the sources isn't the primary focus of the story, the fact that the news audience may be burned out on stories about WikiLeaks, as such, isn't really all that relevant to how reporters dealing with the substance will approach the WikiLeaks dumps.

The stuff that is most prominently associated with "WikiLeaks" (and pretty much all that is covered on TV news that I've seen, but I don't watch that much TV news and there are reasons that every study has shown that the more you consume TV news, the less aware you are of current events) isn't generally the most important stuff coming out of the cables.

Re:Make it static.

[johanw]

They shouldn't. I want to know who the traitors are who help US occupation forces. In my country, those who helped the Germans in WW2 had a problem too when they became known.

Re:Make it static.

[petit_robert]

>> You have no reason to plead fealty to power, but you choose to do it out of sheer cowardice and apathy. Apparently your civil liberties will have to be entirely destroyed before you value them again.

>Today, I feel that you're exactly correct. The biggest problem we have here in the US is that the majority of people don't give a damn about >anything, so long as they get a pay check, can put food on the table, and can drive to work in the morning

Well, it is a major concern when you have a family. But I would add another reason for this apathy : it's the staggering amount of propaganda by all possible means, in favour of the so-called superiority of liberalism.

See for instance the financial sector, that pushed so hard for deregulation for decades, then arranged the 2008 bailout. That took a lot of favourable opinions dispersed in every possible way to influence the legislative process; for relatively little money I might add, considering what they took home.

In computing, I witnessed as a developer the accomplishments of free software, which are absolutely astounding, with *no* management. Over the past few years, I have noticed a marked increase in what is commonly referred to as 'FUD' (for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), messages posted in forums that are meant to present free software in a negative light. I thought until recently that these attempts were futile, and would be easily dismissed; now I am not so sure, because it seems these efforts have been stepped up. I guess it's easier to pay a for a few writers of FUD than to actually do good products.

So, I would say skull gouging, as we call it were I write from, is a major factor. No wonder the reaction is so violent whenever someone speaks the unedulcorated truth.

Re:Make it static.

[Opportunist]

In that case I'm really waiting for your explanation of the Iraq thing.

Re:Make it static.

[Fnord666]

Indeed, given the knowledge that there is something rotten in your government it could be considered treason if you didn't do something about it!

Given the events of the Valerie Plame affair and the people involved, it is clear that this sort of thing is just fine with the US government.

Re:Make it static.

[budgenator]

the point is the author wasn't a journalist, he was a low level Canadian Attaches, a member of the Canadian Diplomatic Mission who then passed the documents up the chain to the people who could apply leverage. With the American cables released informants are going to be much less confident that their information will be held in confidence. Now the people with the power to turn on the lights will not know which room the cockroaches are hiding in.

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

Have you got a citation for that? It sounds exaggerated.

Here you go.

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

They both did the same thing, the only difference is a matter of degree.

What they did was in no way similar.

Dick Cheney outed a covert CIA agent just because her husband wrote an op-ed that disagreed with the Bush Administration. Julian Assange runs a website that publishes documents the people submit. There is nothing similar about them.

Re:Make it static.

[Vintermann]

With all these *YAWN*s, I wondered if you were trying to parody all the hipsters who claim "there's nothing new". Sure you didn't listen to Wikileaks when they were on vinyl?

I'm not going to list it all for you, but one of the very first things that came out was that Hillary had ordered diplomats to spy on UN representatives - including from the other permanent Security Council members. You think China and Russia are going to be happy about that?

No. For all we know, maybe everyone does it. However, Hillary was the one who got caught. It's like holding in football (soccer): Everyone does it, but they still get a penalty if the referee sees it. I bet they had to give significant concessions to China and Russia in order to keep it down.

(By the way, in case you bought in to the propaganda that it wasn't really spying: Yes, grabbing someone's encryption keys and biometric identification is spying, not mere information gathering.)

Re:Make it static.

[PopeRatzo]

The tax reduction didn't increase the deficit. Spending increased the deficit.

Fine, but now that the money's spent and we have the deficit, giving the richest 2% of Americans a tax break instead of letting their taxes go back to where they were in the 90's, which will increase the deficit by 700billion over 10 years, is fiscally irresponsible. To do it when nearly 10% of the population is out of work, and while stopping their lifeline in the form of unemployment benefits, is completely immoral.

The deficit did not get created in the past 2 years. Letting the deficit explode just so a relatively tiny group of people who have had it very well can buy a few more German-made cars is an act of treachery against the nation.

Re:Make it static.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Who are you replying to?

-1 Offtopic.

Re:Make it static.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Nope, they're using it for rsync at least.

And why would you assume I'm on CentOS, or anything RedHat-derived?

Re:Make it static.

[Zancarius]

Well, it is a major concern when you have a family. But I would add another reason for this apathy : it's the staggering amount of propaganda by all possible means, in favour of the so-called superiority of liberalism.

You're right. I wish you weren't, but you are.

I'm afraid that the problem is going to be compounded here in the US because of further extensions of the "nanny state" that are intended almost exclusively to create greater dependence upon the government. Such dependence breeds greater apathy, and I'm not really sure we're going to be able to recover. Ever since the "Affordable Healthcare and Patient Protection Act" of this year, (which includes a great deal of new tax legislation--in 2012, the IRS will be forcing 1099 forms to be issued by anyone who receives credit card payments in excess of $600) I think it's become obvious that we here in the US have absolutely no clue whatsoever how to run any kind of social program. We're not even interested in looking at examples overseas, because somehow our notion of what it should involve is clearly superior.

And yet, the population remains blissfully apathetic about what is happening. Sigh.

I guess it's easier to pay a for a few writers of FUD than to actually do good products.

You know, I bet they write that off as advertising costs. ...I'm not joking.

But yes, absolutely. F/OSS has proven, in my mind, that amazing things can be accomplished by a disparate group of individual volunteers from around the globe. I think that's what has caused a lot of corporations grief that aren't really sure what specifically to do about it (or whether they should adopt it). Yet, the influence of F/OSS has forced a number of those same companies to rethink past strategies (MSIE may be a bad example, but look what Firefox has scared MS into doing--or trying, rather).

IMO, F/OSS represents, really by extension of the Internet, the ultimate human freedom. Free flow of information, free exchange; the only thing halting this progress is the establishment. It's not surprising to me that the COICA and other efforts by the US Congress have been focused on stopping much of this.

They're afraid.

I really wish I knew what the answer was. Thank you for the thought provoking post.

Re:Make it static.

[F.Ultra]

How nice that rssh allows rsync with default config then... And that link was only because that was the first one to show up on Google and it looked very generiv even though it was a centos/rhel site. And there where links to debian/ubuntu from it aswell. So I'm not assuming anything. Why are you so worked up?

Re:Make it static.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Why would you assume I'm "worked up"?

I dismissed your link because you did seem to be assuming quite a bit, and at least one of your assumptions was incorrect -- "restrict that account to pure scp transfer".

Re:Make it static.

[easyTree]

Last I checked, 2 wrongs don't make a right.

You need to check again. When the first wrong involves distorting the law to make moral actions illegal, the second wrong does make a right.

Re:Make it static.

[uninformedLuddite]

Here's the proof!

It's so handy having the proof to crimes and bullshit we have known have been going on for years. There is absolutely nothing in any of the leaks so far that has surprised me at all. Even the fact that Israel appears to be getting a free pass surprises me not at all. The fact that the US closes a bunch of domains for piracy and copyright violations but doesn't pull the same trick on WL when it is hosted at Amazon and pointed to by everyDNS just shows how inept they are and not how in cahoots they are.
The fact that JA is still on the loose with claims in the mass media that they aren't sure where he is or they would have him by now is just proof of his hacker invincibility. The fact he got a slap on the wrist for his 1991 hack-joke when anyone else would have got at least a decade in a federal pen and then subsequently becomes the most hunted/hated public enemy on the planet is just more proof of his hacker invincibility.
His handle 'Mendax', likely derived from the Latin term 'Splendide Mendax' means essentially to lie or be untruthful in a noble cause and is just more proof of his elite hacker reputation and that he is just such a misunderstood noble invincible hacker. Of course, his connections with The Economist and the Rockefellers(you can now discount everything I say because I said Rockefeller and that is proof of an unhinged mind) should also just be proof of his credibility and hack-worship-worthiness.
This is all very deep and extensive rabbit hole, planned for a long time, to perform a necessary function as the old systems fail/fade away and new ones are born in their wake. New wonderful systems, midwifed by WL, and unfortunately presided over by the same bastards that presided over the old ones. He even boasted that the world will change to a better and more hopeful place because of his humble, selfless, and mendacious self. What I don't understand is how smart people fall for the same old shit as before just because it is on such a massive scale. I can practically here Goebbels giggling like a silly school girl in his grave.

Re:Make it static.

[Etiko]

You make a great point. Wish I could mod you up.

Re:Make it static.

[Skal Tura]

The child pornography censoring filter spurred the "mostly" :)

Thank you for the new information, i haven't been following this issue much lately.

Our president does have one important power still, and it's the veto right. Afaik, she can deny any bill she doesn't like, am i right?

Taxation is always hot topic around here, how to increase taxes that is! GRR! They keep increasing all the time. As a car hobbyist i feel this extremely hard.

I know i'm voting for a candidate of "Perussuomalaiset", not sure whom yet. Will do my research when the time comes.

Political system has indeed been quite broken for the past decade or so, but it's starting to repair with "Piraattiliitto" (Pirate party) and "Perussuomalaiset" (basicly means average joe finns). I was actually quite happy for example Tony Halme getting elected, he has what people call life experience, meaning exactly the kind of person who needs to be there. Didn't work out so well, but atleast he had his chance.

Finland is far from perfect, but from all the countries, i do prefer being here. As a business owner this is quite good country to be in as well, despite the extremely heavy taxation. Paperwork is rated to be one of the easiest.

Re:Make it static.

[Skal Tura]

Everytime time thinking about the winter war gives me schills.

Always reading about the events shows mostly tactical & strategic superior planning by finns, along with "pure willpower" what we call "Sisu", just pushing through and keep pushing until there's nothing to give anymore despite no matter how hard you try.

We were vastly overwhelmed in numbers and supplies.

Now i think it's time to watch again "Winter war", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098437/

Re:Make it static.

[Skal Tura]

The press is quite free, remember the bribery scandals as of late?

Yes, there are still soviet relics, but we are also a very young country who has got really far in a very short time span.

It's not that long ago we gained our independence, but in today's world we are leaders in many industries, sports etc. Given the low number of finns, in a really big country which is very expensive to maintain on per capita basis, we are indeed doing an amazing job.

The old cars thing is a two proned thing, we are afterall a rally country, and many of us drive older cars due to preference. Like i do. I occasionally go shopping for a newer car, but they all suck from a driver's perspective, and instead i buy an older car.

Yes, i drive almost 30yo cars out of preference. I don't want ABS, i don't want ESP, i don't need central locking, i don't need power windows, and most of all i refuse to drive a heavy front wheel driven car. FWD cars are damn awful driving experience, outright scary during winter, when you are used to have a controlleable RWD car and try to go at the speeds you are used to with RWD, you are extremely likely to just crash the FWD car on the first time you need to turn.

Could you tell me about that threat thing, EU investigation thing more? I'm curious what it's all about.

Re:Make it static.

[wtfamidoinghere]

Humm, I'm sorry to barge in like this. I'm not a US citizen, I'm from one of the so-called PIGS :)

But it seems you had some people there shouting before those crisis happened, and all they got was embarrassment and getting laughed at. ( check "Overdose: the next financial crisis" on youtube).
It really doesn't matter anymore. We're fscked anyway.

Re:Make it static.

[Kiuas]

Our president does have one important power still, and it's the veto right. Afaik, she can deny any bill she doesn't like, am i right?

No, not anymore. She can still deny signing any law, but that only delays the law from coming into effect. If the senate (eduskunta) passes a law and she doesn't sign it, it will wait three months, after which the senate can the vote on it again and this time it will become a law and come into effect even without her signature.

Our president under the current constitutional law has no concrete power - she only has a role as na official representative of the State. All the actual power resides with the prime minister but she doesn't have a veto right on laws either.

Re:Make it static.

[ThatsNotPudding]

Since when were we supposed to consider the government and/or giant corporations our friend(s)?

Since the last TV commercial. Pay attention!

Re:Make it static.

[hesaigo999ca]

problem is content changes all the time, you would have an endless massive overload of incomplete or out of date files running amuck out there, where as letting them access a server, they can develop an auto updater that mass updates all servers at once from 1 focal point which then could be changed per need basis, like when a server is brought down.

If i log on to wikileaks from any point it is supposed to all be the same, where as if i download a torrent, it will only be as up to date as the date i downloaded it on, as after that, the info has been changed and a new torrent has been seeded.

Re:Make it static.

[jonescb]

I don't think a torrent makes much sense right now. They're releasing new cables every day, so the torrent files would go out of date really fast, and the peer swarm would be fragmented by this. Maybe a zip or a tarball might work? But that would take a lot of bandwidth since the package would be a couple of gigabytes. The advantage of using mirrors is that Wikileaks can use rsync to automatically update all the mirrors to have the latest information. And because of the way rsync works with incremental updates, it saves them some bandwidth. If one of the mirrors decides to distribute the HTML files as a torrent or a zip package themselves, they can do that as well.

Re:Make it static.

[DarthVain]

Shhhhhh!

That's just what we need.

The next day the headline will read: "US government confirms with study that torrents steal billions from RIAA and MPAA with the proceeds going directly to terrorism!"

The day after "US invades internet looking for torrents of mass destruction!"

Re:Make it static.

[F.Ultra]

So you are simply an asshole, well good to know I guess. And all this because I wanted to be nice and helpful...

Re:Make it static.

[rawler]

Or simply publish checksums.

Re:Make it static.

[bartok]

To my knowledge, the name of the bank was not revealed. Where did you read that it was about Citibank?

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

Had you not noticed that Wikileaks has had to take time to redact information such as names of informers?

It would have been irresponsible for Wikileaks just to have dumped all the information unedited onto the internet.

Oh, and I couldn't care less about Assange's personal motivations/problems, that is just a feeble smokescreen by the US/other governments to deflect attention away from the real issues.

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

The English translations I have seen are called The Prince. Most people will have read one of these rather than read it in the original.

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

Or, simply put, the US may not care very much. I haven't seen anything released that is a big surprise.

That is precisely what is so worrying to the rest of the world.

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

I think the cables have all reflected very well on the US, as expected, and confirmed that it's a responsible decent world power.

I don't think you've been reading the same cables as everyone else then.

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

the point is the author wasn't a journalist, he was a low level Canadian Attaches, a member of the Canadian Diplomatic Mission who then passed the documents up the chain to the people who could apply leverage. With the American cables released informants are going to be much less confident that their information will be held in confidence. Now the people with the power to turn on the lights will not know which room the cockroaches are hiding in.

Surely in this case, the photos of torture victims would have been better off being posted on the internet, freely available to news sources (e.g. the BBC and the Guardian here in the UK) to use, and thereby create additional pressure on our government to put pressure on the Indonesians?

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

the only reason ASSange is doing it this way is to extend his moment in the spot light. how do we even know the information he is releasing is real? I refuse, unlike many of you, to take off my skeptic's hat just because it's wikileaks.

If the information is not real, why the fuck are US politicians calling for him to be executed?

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

Don't forget Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Italy. It was absolute tyranny when we rammed democracy down their throats. Now they are horrible countries

The Second World War (at least) was different, the US and its allies were defending themselves against the Axis powers' attempts to control the world.

They didn't pre-emptively strikes to force US-style democracy.

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

What corruption has been exposed thus far?

The whole fucking Iraq war was corrupt, Wikileaks helped to provide evidence of this.

Re:Make it static.

[tehcyder]

Two options: 1) They are a CIA front and are going to let Assange be "captured" before more than a few hundred cables are released, or 2) They are really at their processing limit for redacting names. And I didn't think the CIA conspiracy had much wind before, but now I'm giving it a little more thought...

Could you clarify for a simple soul like me exactly what the CIA are going to get out of this?

Re:Make it static.

[Zancarius]

That reminds me of something Terry Gilliam said in his comments on the Criterion Collection edition of Brazil: that he had intended it as satire, but after September 11th, it had begun to look like reality.

What's sad is that it now appears that every "good idea" in politics started out as satire...

Re:Make it static.

[the eric conspiracy]

1. Berlin. So what is your point? Without the West's intervention those 2 million people would have been part of East Germany.

That IN ITSELF is of far more import than anything Wikipedia has done to foster self-determination. And that's just the first item on my list.

2. North Koreans don't, but without the police action North Korea would be a lot larger than it is today. South Koreans were aided immensely here. How is Wikileaks of more impact than that?

I could go on and on, but it would be silly. Your argument is complete hogwash.

You completely ignore the end result which is the simple fact that the world has far fewer totalitarian governments and far greater self determination now than at the end of WWII. That fact is so large, so obvious and so powerfully true that it is staggering to claim that Wikileaks is comparable to the progress that has been made. It speaks of a lack of understanding of history than is hard to comprehend.

Was the progress a smooth and trouble free one? Of course not. Human events don't work that way. But where we are today is very different from 1948.

But of course you choose to ignore that.

Private Mirrors?

[Tubal-Cain]

The replication is implemented by a rsync+ssh based push...

Can we make our own private backup via rsync pull?

Re:Internet in prison

[__aardcx5948]

Really? I think Wikileaks is more scary to the government then a few mass murderers... (unfortunately)

Out of curiosity...

[Anonymous Coward]

How large would a torrent file of everything they host be? Feasable?

Captcha: pipeline

Re:Out of curiosity...

[neokushan]

Considering there are torrents out there several hundred gigabytes in size, I'd say that a torrent is definitely feasible. If they're worried about leaking too much too quickly, they should encrypt it with a 2048 character encryption key so nobody can access it until they say so (or better yet, have a few torrents encrypted separately). Then if they get pulled, it wouldn't take much to get a pastebin put up somewhere with the decryption key(s).

Re:Out of curiosity...

[3seas]

Well the WikiLeak_insurance file is about 1.4GB https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance

but that is encripted and contains much more than their site, excluding the insurance file.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[fishexe]

Considering there are torrents out there several hundred gigabytes in size, I'd say that a torrent is definitely feasible. If they're worried about leaking too much too quickly, they should encrypt it with a 2048 character encryption key so nobody can access it until they say so (or better yet, have a few torrents encrypted separately). Then if they get pulled, it wouldn't take much to get a pastebin put up somewhere with the decryption key(s).

Apparently they have already done this.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[neokushan]

Oh well, great minds think alike.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[leehwtsohg]

Actually, they should encrypt some with 64bit, some with 65 (is that possible?) some with 66, etc. Crackable, but slowly. This way, even if the key never gets out, eventually we'll know....

And because of different encryption strength, it will still get released slowly.

Re:I'd host it if....

[igreaterthanu]

As for #2, TOR should be enough to get around that. However this would make #1 much worse.

Other countries?

[steeleyeball]

They should do China, which is messing with the internet as much as anyone... China has more secrets. There should be no reason Governments should be afraid of the truth... unless they are selling their own people out.

Re:Other countries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody should leak information about China to them, then. Wikileaks aren't the ones actually leaking this, you know - they just act as a middle man to ensure anonymous leaking and widespread distribution.

Re:Other countries?

[Erikderzweite]

I have no information that they are withholding the leaks they have received about Chinese government, you?

No stopping the current information at least.

[Jugalator]

Since it's already released. It's already been revealed at least in Swedish news, that part of the encrypted "insurance" file that's been distributed via BT, is the *full* cablegate archive -- remember that by far most haven't been released yet, at least not to non-news organizations. And that's part of that file, and then some unknown stuff too. So if anything would happen to these guys that would piss them off enough, they'd just release the keys and boom, thousands of users would have this data.

Re:No stopping the current information at least.

[slashqwerty]

I would like to discuss one of the cables. I can link to it right now, but will that link be active in two days? How about two hours? As long as wikileaks has to keep moving, discussion of the content is hampered.

By the way, the cable I linked to was about Google being harassed by the Chinese government. The cable was from July 2009, nearly a year before Google finally left the country. The last paragraph got my attention:

8. (SBU) Comment. Google is the only international search engine still doing business in China. It is an important symbol. If Google were forced to withdraw from the market, the move could attract heavy international attention. End Comment.

It sounds like they were strategizing that sitting back and watching things unfold could be a better option than stepping up and discussing the topic with the Chinese government. I guess you can decide for yourself what you think the best course of action was but the comment is certainly interesting.

Re:No stopping the current information at least.

[IonOtter]

So if anything would happen to these guys that would piss them off enough, they'd just release the keys and boom, thousands of users would have this data.

Assange: "If the unencrypted files are distributed, world governments will fall."

Uncle Sam: "Even if it is unencrypted, it would take a number beyond reckoning — thousands — to distribute them all."

Assange: "Tens of thousands."

Uncle Sam: "But my lord there is no such force."

[They walk to the balcony of the tower Wikileaks and Uncle Sam looks in awe at the sheer number of Pirate Bay downloaders. A horn sounds and the pirates cheer.]

Assange: "A new power is rising. Its victory is at hand. This night, the land will be cleansed with the light of truth! March to Washington DC! Leave none unimpeached! To war!"

Uncle Sam: [A tear rolls down his cheek.]

Assange: "There will be no dawn for lies."

Re:No stopping the current information at least.

[cheros]

"So if anything would happen to these guys that would piss them off enough, they'd just release the keys and boom, thousands of users would have this data."

That's not much of a threat - it'll be released at some point anyway so pulling the bad teeth in one go would actually only hurt once. I'd call them on that, there is only one answer to blackmail anyway.

If that's the best they can do I bet Russia is already packing a shipment of Polonium 210 to spice up Assange's cooking..

Re:No stopping the current information at least.

[moonbender]

Yes, the difficulty to link to Wikileaks is annoying. However, googling the reference ID (ie. the document name in the URL) seems to work fairly well. Somebody should set up a tinyurl-like redirector: blablalba.com/#RefID redirects you to the correct cable document on a currently working server.

Re:No stopping the current information at least.

[VirtualJWN]

Should change the name of C++ to the "TSA" then??

Re:No stopping the current information at least.

[Weezul]

Except the insurance file was posted before they'd redacted the cable gate archives, or presumably even the war log. If this information were public, there would be many U.S. informants assasonated in Afganastan, and maybe elsewhere.

Afaik, there have been no assassinations of U.S. informants caused by wikileaks. And we do not expect the non-redacted files will ever be released.

Assange has stated the insurance file's key gets kept on a "dead man's switch". It follows that any direct action against wikileaks by anyone will clearly hurt the U.S. along with numerous others.

p.s. There has been suspicion that Russia's leaders are far more personally vulnerable to wikileaks because they're basically robbing the country blind. We'd therefore suspect Russia will not risk attacking Assange or wikileaks, except as retaliation for ruining Putin's personal finances, yet conversely wikileaks cannot safely release that information.

Why not just release everything?

[js3]

Ok from what I understand some intelligence person released this information to wikileaks, so why is wikileaks sitting on this info releasing it piecemeal? Why not just release everything at once to all of us. problem solved.

Re:Why not just release everything?

[js3]

Or buying time to make back-room deals with governments that may not want certain info to be published. You don't know Mr. Assange, just because you think he's on your side doesn't make it so.

Re:Why not just release everything?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Wikileaks provided the full archive to five different newspapers before all this started, right? If there is something good buried in these cables, the government should not be bargaining with Assange. They need to be bargaining with The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, El Pais, and Assange, all at the same time. Conspiracies are hard to achieve with that many actors and agendas involved.

Re:Why not just release everything?

[zakeria]

So your Government is out to kill you? umm next!

Re:give keys?

[Sir_Lewk]

You don't give them your keys, you simply allow them to authenticate with their private key by adding their pubic key to your authorized keys list.

You control your server, so if you're paranoid take some precautions. Set up an account (or better yet, an accout on a new VM) specifically for this with limited permissions and access. If you're really paranoid, you obviously won't be doing this at all.

Can you sing "Streisand effect is not about a nose

[giorgist]

Everybody now

Can you sing "The Streisand effect is not about a nose"

To the tune of the monty python song

"Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" :-)

I want to, so bad

[fishexe]

I want to, so bad...but the servers I admin are all in a lab with defense contracts. And I really don't want my boss to lose his job. So it would be a bad idea. Makes me wish I'd kept my home server around though.

Re:I'd host it if....

[Skal Tura]

We do, and we are hosting couple static mirrors for them...
Yeah, it might sound a bit risky but who knows.

We gave 2 static mirrors now... Who knows if we add say 60 more :)

FreeNet

[nurb432]

Once again ill say it. That is the perfect distribution method when you are being attacked by most of the free world.

Re:FreeNet

[IgnoramusMaximus]

This is actually the first honest to goodness situation in which Freenet (of which I am a long time skeptic) could fulfill its stated role. I am rather surprised that its promoters are so low key in these discussions since the Wikileaks debacle is definitely the break Freenet always needed to become mainstream. If Freenet could be associated in the public's eye with absolute freedom of speech, not just with some fringe aspects of it - like child porn, it would have changed its status entirely, beginning with much larger user base and many, many more contributors and developers.

Re:FreeNet

[DryGrian]

I'm active on the Freenet IRC channel (#freenet on freenode irc) and we've been discussing for a few days how much this a perfect opportunity to really demonstrate what Freenet is capable of.

Over the next month or so we will be implementing some network level changes as we roll out v0.8. There is an actively updated WikiLeaks mirror available over Freenet, which you can find on the index pages.

For those who don't know, Freenet is an anonymous, distributed file-sharing network. Many plugins are available for encrypted communication with trusted peers over this network, including Freemail, FMS (Freenet Message System), Frost/Thaw, jSite, and flip.

Re:FreeNet

[IgnoramusMaximus]

My biggest beef with Freenet was always the fact that it is not self-contained (as in having its own encrypted multi-container, plausible deniability capable local storage and its own fully-embedded web browser/chat/image/video player and the whole thing running atop of a customized bootable Linux CD/USB-stick or some such secure but easy to deploy environment). As it stands, the people who need Freenet the most and who are not capable of building their own secure OS environments (which is very, very difficult to do properly) can be easily busted as the only way to "look into" the data on the Freenet is by using external (and thus completely insecure and full of traces) applications. This of course applies to other similarly incomplete and superficial "solutions" such as I2P and Tor, the difference being however that unlike Freenet they do not promote themselves as a panacea for dissidents in dangerous circumstances.

Thus Freenet is in my view a highly dangerous - to its supposed audience of dissidents - proposition and which is why pornography became its main use. Instead Freenet developers began chasing red herrings such as the deeply flawed and self-defeating "darknet" network-fragmentation-followed-by-inevitable-suicide concept.

Wikileaks is an ususual situation in which mere persistence of the Wikileaks data outside of government control is sufficient to thwart the power elites and their usual weapons are rather blunt in stopping the spread of the information - yet individual users of Freenet would not be at extreme danger for doing so. That is why Wikileaks is pretty much an ideal fit for Freenet, until its developers pull their collective heads out of you-know-where and get serious about truly oppressive regimes, ranks of which are apparently destined to be joined by the so-called "western democracies" in not-so-remote future.

Re:FreeNet

[amphibian]

Part of the problem is we need storage. Another part is that we need uptime. Neither is really compatible with booting even from a USB stick - and really, that's out of scope anyway, that's something somebody should write who knows more about building operating systems than we do. However, we do take some precautions with regards to local security, and plan to take more in the near future. For instance, we tell the browser not to cache anything, we encrypt (optionally with a password but in any case easily got rid of) potentially incriminating data on disk, and we strongly recommend users install Truecrypt (since unfortunately we can't turn on swap crypto or lock pages in memory). A significant proportion of the community think taking any local precautions is a bad thing, since it violates the unix philosophy... As regards darknet, it is simply the only possible option in any even vaguely hostile regime. For instance, China has managed to block most of the Tor hidden bridges. Apart from that, it is also the only realistic option for really good security on Freenet: an attacker can connect to everyone, and Freenet's architecture on opennet isn't really suitable for dealing with this. It is of course possible for nodes to connect to both darknet and opennet, and the hope is that users will gradually add their friends as Freenet becomes faster, easier to use, more popular and has more content.

Re:FreeNet

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Part of the problem is we need storage. Another part is that we need uptime. Neither is really compatible with booting even from a USB stick - and really, that's out of scope anyway, that's something somebody should write who knows more about building operating systems than we do.

Unfortunately it is quite in the scope of the problem of dissidence. You are confusing technical/developer issues with real-life ones, which unfortunately trump any cop-outs of that sort. A bunch of government thugs is unlikely to take a pity on you because the developers of your "secure" communication system you used had difficulties making it secure beyond a small fraction of what was required to make a difference between you being roughed up but crawling out of jail or you finding your way onto the execution grounds. It will be a small comfort while you stand there to realize that it was not in their "scope"...

Also I mentioned the USB stick / bootable CD scenario only as the "OS" part of the deal - the local, encrypted, plausible-deniability storage would of course have to be on a separate hard disk (formatted by a system like Freenet to achieve the steganographic/multi-layer effect).

However, we do take some precautions with regards to local security, and plan to take more in the near future. For instance, we tell the browser not to cache anything, we encrypt (optionally with a password but in any case easily got rid of) potentially incriminating data on disk, and we strongly recommend users install Truecrypt (since unfortunately we can't turn on swap crypto or lock pages in memory).

All of these are woefully inadequate in places where Freenet is actually needed. To begin with, anything more complex than a simple HTML page data on Freenet, such as manifestos, documents, images, videos etc must be downloaded and viewed outside of its protection, thus making Freenet's encrypted cache a moot point.

As to TrueCrypt, their protection is seriously flawed because it is incapable of hiding the activities (and thus extensive traces) created by the OS itself. One can for example easily find what one watched from Windows registry entries that Media Player creates, temporary files etc.

So it all comes back again to containment. Until Freenet (or a system like it) offers full containment, the dissidents are much better off staying far away from it.

A significant proportion of the community think taking any local precautions is a bad thing, since it violates the unix philosophy...

Right. Just shout "Unix philosophy forever!" instead of "Down with the Dictator!" at that execution...

Anyone who prefers "Unix philosophy" or some other ideology over real-life protections during development of a supposed dissident tool is essentially arguing for people to be jailed and killed to feed his/her ego ...

Again, this total lack of perspective is what leads to Freenet's unpopularity. Unfortunately dissidence is an all or nothing proposition. There is no "cool" or "neat", modular, "small tools each doing their job well" way to do it. You either get the whole fool-proof, plausible-deniability enchilada or you go down in flames. And even when you do have totality of untraceability and encryption, you can still go down from your unfriendly regime's random thuggery. That is why you are a dissident to begin with. Having half-assed tools increases your chances of being a martyr exponentially. The problem is even more severe due to the fact that most dissidents are not computer experts and thus they misunderstand the weak nature of protections offered by Freenet and things like TrueCrypt and thus end up with a false sense of security, which is very likely to put very wide smiles on the Secret Police interrogator's faces.

As regards darknet, it is simply the only possible option in any even vaguely hostile regime. For instance, Ch

Meaningless Gesture

[Alcoholic Synonymous]

The current leaks are out. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Syncing around the world will do no good if the centralized source synced against keeps vanishing and eventually stays vanished.

My point is, that the current damage is done. Yanking WikiLeaks offline is about preventing further damage, and when it finally does go for good, people will be left with a stagnant, yesterday's news version. A million mirrors of previously disclosed documents wont help future leaks get distributed, while the people mirroring the current ones are literally just stepping into harms way.

Re:Meaningless Gesture

[js3]

so far I don't see any damage done

Re:Meaningless Gesture

[SumterLiving]

Well, it official now. No damage done so put the whole thing into an e-book and sell it on BoringBooks.Com. Game Over.

They really should call this...

[owlnation]

Operation Streisand!

The first real battle of the internet?

[nurb432]

Could this be the first real battle waged mostly in the digital world? Every free country is out to get this guy and prevent him from getting his word out. The outcome of this will speak volumes for the future for the concept of being able to speak your mind.

( yes, i know there is questions about legality of the data, but that isn't the real issue here )

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[jambox]

Could this be the first real battle waged mostly in the digital world?

Could be - I can't recall anything getting the net *quite* as stirred up as this; and with top-dogs like Hilary Clinton wading into it too.

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[zakeria]

Could be the last also as Julian Assange is seeing to that nicely.. Do you really think this will help to keep the Internet free and open!! get a grip!
Assange is public enemy number one!

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[Idiomatick]

Nope. DVD encryption key was the first online battle. That shit was embedded in song, flags and pictures across the net. It was available on MILLIONS of sites within days.

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[DragonWriter]

Could this be the first real battle waged mostly in the digital world?

No. There have been several previous battles between states and non-state entities waged in the digital realm. One of which -- the Chinese Politburo-directed attack on Google -- is being reported on because it was discussed in the cables in the WikiLeaks dump.

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[rmstar]

Do you really think this will help to keep the Internet free and open!! get a grip!

You are so bloody right, it hurts. It is also probably going to lead to a clampdown on the press. The real question is whether that "free and open"-ness was worth much to begin with, considering that it seems that it was guaranteed only as long as we used it for farmville and stuff, chat about sports, or just to hail our dear leaders.
As a certain mr. Assange said a few days ago:

Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. [...] We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.

(You can read the whole thing here)

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[Daedalon]

Could this be the first real battle waged mostly in the digital world? Every fascist country is out to get this guy

There, corrected that for you.

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[Xyrus]

Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead.

Re:The first real battle of the internet?

[nurb432]

I disagree, as DVD encryption "battle" didn't really impact the common man. Most of the general public wouldn't have had a clue.

The Wikileaks battle is all over the press and is huge with common people who had no idea that it even existed a short time ago. They may not fully understand what is gong on, but this time they know about it and are taking sides.

Similar to the Napster incident, so few 'real' people knew, it was just a blip. Even tho the fallout did reach out to the regular folk.

As a US Citizen,

[Anonymous Coward]

So, being a US citizen here, and presently in the US, if I offer up a personal box, how much trouble am I in legally?

If I do get 'hauled in' what could I possibly be charged with?

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Aryden]

You can be charged with and imprisoned for illegally obtaining and possessing classified documents.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[PsychoSlashDot]

So, being a US citizen here, and presently in the US, if I offer up a personal box, how much trouble am I in legally?

If I do get 'hauled in' what could I possibly be charged with?

As someone who isn't a US politician, I'm not equipped to fully answer your question. They're the ones with the power. They're the ones whose wrongdoings are being revealed. That's a really grim combination. I'm guessing that you're in exactly as much trouble as they decide and you'll be charged with whatever they feel like. Probably treason or some trumped up terrorism charge.

Understand this: patriotism in the US now means supporting the government, not the constitution.

The only thing you can do to protect yourself is educate as many fellow citizens as possible and vote for anyone who isn't in favor of the idiocy going on. If there are no non-idiot candidates left, frankly it's time to rebel. But that's just my opinion.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Rob the Bold]

You can be charged with and imprisoned for illegally obtaining and possessing classified documents.

If you've come across "classified" documents through unofficial and unverified channels, then there's a lot of plausible deniability there, right? How could you know that they were truly classified documents? If they're secret, then their existence -- and their nature -- must be, by definition, secret.

OTOH, distributing classified documents to which you had legitimate access -- and thus knowledge that they were secret -- would be much more prosecutable.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[misexistentialist]

How much trouble are you in ethically if you don't?

Re:As a US Citizen,

[guruevi]

If you want to host it in the US, I would suggesting getting the ammo box with you to the datacenter and be prepared to defend your actions in front of sham courts in far-away-istan if you get a court at all. You won't have access to a lawyer after the fact so I suggest you make an arrangement with one before you do so. Alternatively you might never be heard from again.

It sounds a lot like I'm describing the Soviet Empire or Third Reich here but that's what it has come to now in the US.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[RegTooLate]

You run the risk of the ones you do business with disassociating themselves with you. Perhaps a little FBI file will open up. Either way, until they find you doing something else wrong you are fine. Only those who are allowed access to classified documents can know what true classified documents are and only they can leak illegally obtain the documents. If documents are found on a street and someone finds them, it is not they who have broken the law but those who left the documents there. If they are given to you, it is not your fault but it of that person that gave them to you. IANAL but having wikileaks isn't going to end you up in court. I saw a editorial cartoon today with santa looking at the computer, fuming. The caption said, "Wikileaks released his entire 'naught and nice' list..." R. MeKee.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[shanec]

If there are no non-idiot candidates left, frankly it's time to rebel.

Fortunately there's a few left...
https://twitter.com/#!/repronpaul/status/10716266021003264

@RepRonPaul
Re: Wikileaks- In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[DragonWriter]

So, being a US citizen here, and presently in the US, if I offer up a personal box, how much trouble am I in legally?

Potentially, quite a lot. A case could arguably be made for espionage under 18 USC Sec. 793, particularly subsections (b), (c), (e), and/or (g) or 18 USC Sec. 798, either one of which carries a ten year federal prison sentence. It would probably be harder to make a case that it meets the requirements for the death or life imprisonment espionage provisions of 18 USC Sec. 794, but given the way the US government is responding to WikiLeaks right now, I wouldn't rule out a federal prosecutor, given the opportunity, going for that with the lesser offenses as an alternative to make a point.

Its somewhat parallel to the Pentagon Papers case, which might seem reassuring, but its worth noting that when the Supreme Court struck down the restraining order against the New York Times in that case it was only on prior restraint grounds, it did not hold that the government could not prosecute for espionage (the Espionage Act was the basis of the injunction sought) based on the fact of the publication (though no charges were ever filed on that basis.)
 

Re:As a US Citizen,

[_Sprocket_]

If you've come across "classified" documents through unofficial and unverified channels, then there's a lot of plausible deniability there, right? How could you know that they were truly classified documents?

Wikileaks puts out a call for people to hold on to The Documents everyone is talking about. You answer the call. You accept Wikileaks' key so that they can start dumping The Documents on your system. And then you're going to claim ignorance?

This is where amateur hour ends. Either go in to this fully acknowledging your own risk or stay away from it.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[mswhippingboy]

So, being a US citizen here, and presently in the US, if I offer up a personal box, how much trouble am I in legally?

If I do get 'hauled in' what could I possibly be charged with?

As someone who isn't a US politician, I'm not equipped to fully answer your question. They're the ones with the power. They're the ones whose wrongdoings are being revealed. That's a really grim combination. I'm guessing that you're in exactly as much trouble as they decide and you'll be charged with whatever they feel like. Probably treason or some trumped up terrorism charge.

Understand this: patriotism in the US now means supporting the republicans , not the constitution.

The only thing you can do to protect yourself is educate as many fellow citizens as possible and vote for anyone who isn't in favor of the idiocy going on. If there are no non-idiot candidates left, frankly it's time to rebel. But that's just my opinion.

There, fixed that for ya...

Re:As a US Citizen,

[GlassHeart]

Understand this: patriotism in the US now means supporting the government, not the constitution.

Which is why even Republicans, who just won the House of Representatives and can effective block action in the Senate, support the Obama government in most of its policies.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[wasabu]

In my view they key to the Wikileaks strategy is to seduce the authorities into publically betraying the principles they porport to stand for, most principally, the rule of law. Here in Aus, this has never been so blatant, our puppet Prime Minister DECLARING Assange's actions "illegal". Due process anyone? Cursory study shows that the Constitution was effectively torn up with little political colateral at the advent of The Patriot Act, a huge shift shoved down the throat of Congress 2 weeks after 9/11, with 30 minutes to read 500 pages. Conspiracy anyone? Democracy only existed for a blip in the US and now we return to feudalism. The power of the internet as the people's platform to have it's interests matter was a miscalculation by the Globalists in their 300 year old agenda for a feudal One World System. This is opportunity to thwart eternal slavery must be taken.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Patch86]

I'm intrigued- I've got a question that's been bugging me ever since the Wikileaks drama started, and I'm interested if anyone can shed any light.

Wikileaks is basically filling the same role as a newspaper- someone has sent them classified documents, now they're publishing them. If a government wants to stop a newspaper publishing something, they usually apply for an injunction order in a civil court. Failure to comply with injunctions can result in criminal charges, such as contempt of court.

Why has the US government not applied for an injunction on Wikileaks? The site hasn't actually done anything wrong yet; disobeying an injunction would be something they could actually nail them with. Why on Earth have we gone straight from "we don't like it" to "murder him in his sleep" without any intermediate legal steps?

Injunctions would presumably be easier to get than trying to smear Assange with sexual offences or take the site down with DDOS attacks. If Wikileaks were a newspaper it would certainly have been the first move by the government, instead of trying to strong arm them with illegal and semi-legal attacks.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Alain Williams]

Understand this: patriotism in the US now means supporting the politicians, not the constitution.

I hope that that is a realistic correction, in that it is the individuals who are pursuing their own agendas and who have the ears of the media who are the problem. Ie most civil servants would prefer/want to do the right thing, but have to do what their political bosses tell them to do.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[SumterLiving]

Really? If the US is now just like the old Soviet Empire or Third Reich, then they weren't all that bad in my opinion. What were they complaining about. Or maybe you are being overly dramatic?

Re:As a US Citizen,

[vxice]

"If there are no non-idiot candidates left, frankly it's time to rebel." Or run yourself?

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Rob the Bold]

If you've come across "classified" documents through unofficial and unverified channels, then there's a lot of plausible deniability there, right? How could you know that they were truly classified documents?

Wikileaks puts out a call for people to hold on to The Documents everyone is talking about. You answer the call. You accept Wikileaks' key so that they can start dumping The Documents on your system. And then you're going to claim ignorance?

This is where amateur hour ends. Either go in to this fully acknowledging your own risk or stay away from it.

I'd maintain that I couldn't know they were the real deal or not. I'd just be taking Wikileaks' word for it. And besides, I still wouldn't be the person bound to keep the information secret. US citizens take no oath to protect the secrecy of the government if they don't have some kind of clearance in the first place. I suppose British subjects may have such an obligation under the Official Secrets Act, but that's just what I pieced together from sugar packets.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[_Sprocket_]

I'd maintain that I couldn't know they were the real deal or not.

Moot point. The prosecution can easily show your intent to house classified documents. And if doing so means you've broken the law, you're in a very bad position (you're in even more trouble if they really are legitimate - and nobody has yet to put forward evidence that showing these documents aren't genuine). Keep in mind that when law enforcement sets up a sing (be it prostitution or bombing a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony), no actual criminal event takes place. But the prosecution can show that the target intended for it to take place and that's enough.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Rob the Bold]

I'd maintain that I couldn't know they were the real deal or not.

Moot point. The prosecution can easily show your intent to house classified documents. And if doing so means you've broken the law, you're in a very bad position (you're in even more trouble if they really are legitimate - and nobody has yet to put forward evidence that showing these documents aren't genuine). Keep in mind that when law enforcement sets up a sing (be it prostitution or bombing a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony), no actual criminal event takes place. But the prosecution can show that the target intended for it to take place and that's enough.

Heh. Heh. He said 'moot'. No law was broken. That's enough. Case closed.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[_Sprocket_]

I'm sure the reality denial defence you propose would work out real well.

Re:As a US Citizen,

[Weezul]

IANAL. You might become vulnerable under the Espionage Act for distributing the Iraq war logs. Applying the Espionage Act gets really tricky however, apparently no journalist or whistle blower has ever been convicted. So you're likely safe. And all the informant names are redacted in the Iraq war logs, making the Espionage Act less relevant. I imagine any other leaks are even less relevant under the Espionage Act.

If you're particularly worried, you might distribute just their older leaks, and their upcoming bank leak. Holder cannot prosecuted you under the Espionage Act for merely distributing the bank leaks. :P

Re:As a US Citizen,

[guruevi]

Neither Germans nor Russians were complaining back then. It was the people they disenfranchised that were complaining. The poor and those that dared oppose the government were the ones suffering much like now.

Re:Internet in prison

[Planesdragon]

A mass murderer, assuming he's not in the US, is an international problem. We've left other countries to more or less mind their business since our country's founding. ("More or less" meaning that we largely negotiate and strongarm with whomever manages to act like a government in some cases, and when we don't do that we always regret it.)

Wikileaks, however, is an organization that has come to directly target the operational security of the USA. It's not even journalism -- it's just "secrets are bad." There's hardly anything in the last three big releases that should be news to ANYONE. (War is hell in Iraq. War is hell in Afghanistan. What countries say in private isn't what they say in public.)

OTOH, I wouldn't say that the federal government is SCARED of wikileaks. If they were really a problem, Obama has an absurdly broad array of options, the most fast-acting of which would be to recognize WIkileaks as a terrorist organization. (What ELSE do you call a private group dedicated to breaking laws and changing the political direction of a country that they are not citizens of?) . OTOH, Assange is a big enough prick that it looks like all we have to do is wait, and he'll hang himself. (Yes, if you're mid-sex and she says stop, failing to do so *IS RAPE*.)

Consider it carefully -- Re:I'd host it if....

[siddesu]

While I am kinda rooting for wikileaks in this, I think anyone who is considering to sign up to think about this:

1. you give them shell access to your host
2. you grant access on the basis of a ssh public key, which you're getting from an unencrypted page. It could be anyone's and it could be coming from anywhere.

Consider the risks carefully before you sign up.

Wikileaks: please put some more thinking into your backup plans, even if you have to come up with them in emergency.

Re:Consider it carefully -- Re:I'd host it if....

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as the shell access thing goes, I think there are two valid choices:

1. Use chrootssh along with some security settings in ssh that limit the user to only using the rsync command. There used to be a really good tutorial on doing that but I can't find it at the moment. Try this one for now or google around. There may be some other methods of doing this (I'm thinking Apparmor or SElinix).

2. Use a virtual machine as the host. Take your pick, VMware, Xen, UML, VirtualBox, whatever. Then lock down the VM like crazy as you see fit since it only has to serve this one purpose.

Probably best would be to use a virtual machine running the chrootssh stuff with Apparmor or SElinux limiting the filesystem access. The best of all for the hyperparanoid.

Re:Consider it carefully -- Re:I'd host it if....

[Mjec]

I have given access, using rssh to limit capacity to rsync, scp and sftp. I'll monitor how it's used, can kill it instantly if I need.

Re:Consider it carefully -- Re:I'd host it if....

[gilgongo]

While I am kinda rooting for wikileaks in this, I think anyone who is considering to sign up to think about this:

1. you give them shell access to your host
2. you grant access on the basis of a ssh public key, which you're getting from an unencrypted page. It could be anyone's and it could be coming from anywhere.

Yeah, I thought about that to.

As to point 1., you don't have to give them shell access, just rsync over SSH. So, give the shell as /dev/null in /etc/passwd (and don't set the password, to be extra safe).

As to point 2., well, it's a question of trust alright. About the same level of trust I give to updating software via Debian apt repos, or any number of scenarios where the publisher says "here's my public key, please use it". Not foolproof by any means, but it's a chance I'm willing to take.

Re:Consider it carefully -- Re:I'd host it if....

[siddesu]

As an admin, I have ways to make it safe enough. My post was targeted to the large part of slashdot crowd that runs Ubuntu and would have just copied the Wikileaks instructions verbatim.

In which case, they would have given anyone who would have intercepted a HTTP request for a key full root access.

TMI

[mathimus1863]

Wikileaks behavior here is ridiculous, and I don't think we should be supporting them at this point. Trust me, I am all for exposing corruption and illegal behavior, but that's not what Wikileaks released. Every partnership, company, country, etc, must have the ability to have frank internal conversations about various relationship with others, that must be private. Examples:

Clinton instructing diplomats to spy on UN officials : RELEASE
Afghan corruption throughout military operations: RELEASE
Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE
Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE


These extra releases have done nothing but put many countries into very awkward diplomatic relationships, which does nothing to benefit "fighting corruption." Those kinds of releases are stupid and unecessary.

In this case, I think wikileaks went waaay too far. Assange just wanted to make history by releasing all of them, because nothing like this has ever become public before. On that note, despite my bitter disagreement with him, it is intensely interesting to see a complete cross-section of classified US diplomatic discussions and assessments, and related communications with otehr governments. Probably not worth the damage done to global "social" health, but I will read every word of it...

Re:TMI

[Gorobei]

Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE

Why? We've been in Afganistan for longer than WW2. A bit of light here might help the US citizens understand this is a quagmire worth quitting now.

Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE

Why? He's a douchebag.

If you don't want that fact noted as part of US diplomacy, that just don't say it. Or fire the idiot who felt the need to write the factoid in an official cable.

 

Re:TMI

[Doc Ruby]

That's your list. Other people have their lists, perhaps overlapping. You have no more standing than anyone else to claim yours is the correct list.

As for the value of the Karzai assessments and English prince quips, they are what has focused public attention on these leaks, including the ones you agree are worth releasing. Without the gossipy ones, the corporate mass media of the world would ignore all of it, except as headlines about Assange himself, which would be largely attacking him, and counterproductive to getting the public to look at the leaks.

Which is in fact the main problem, that's now exposed. The NY Times wasn't directly given copies of these leaks, because they spun the last leaks to make it harder to get leaks to the public, the opposite of their role as supposed journalists. Most US media was exposed as at least subservient to government messages, however false and even inane, attacking the releases, and in many cases actively collaborating with the government to protect it from public perception. That's the government's job, to protect itself, and mixing the two is the most seriously bad fact exposed by this leak. It should now be perfectly clear to a lot more people that in the normal course of events our journalists collaborate with government on propaganda, rather than inform the public about what's done supposedly in the service of the people. Probably the greatest defect in our society, directly protecting the two others: bribery and reckless debt at every level.

The other big problem is just the ridiculously broad sweep of secrecy in the US government. Secret "security letters" prohibiting people telling even their wives they've been indicted, let alone the public that is named as the complainant in the secret court cases. Secret wiretaps on everyone, web email and phone. "National security" excuses that kill lawsuits by people imprisoned and tortured for years without any evidence there's even a reason they were captured. All "secret", so immune to any due process, yet in reality available to something like three million people with "security clearance". At least one of whom wasn't reliable enough not to leak this stuff to Wikileaks. Securing so much info among so many authorized people is probably impossible, yet the government pretends that it's necessary and practical - a huge waste, as well as a severe security risk in the much smaller amount of info that really should remain secret, at least for a while.

Then there's the big problem in international diplomacy itself. That applecart is letting the Iraq War go into its 9th year, the Afghanistan War go into its 10th, military action spreading to many countries, Iran continuing towards a bomb, N Korea actually bombing S Korea, genocide continuing in Sudan, drug wars consuming Mexico without releasing Columbia or any other country already in it... That applecart needs to be upset. The amount of damage done by these mostly petty revelations mostly damages the counterproductive complacency that US diplomacy cruises under. Indeed, despite the government's various whiners about how damaging these leaks are, the State Department totally refused to help Wikileaks redact the leaks - proving they value whining about it more than whatever's damaged by it. More truth reported to the public along the way would make diplomacy better, more effective, more trustworthy instead of just an ocean of lies no one believes.

This leak was a purge. The actual damage was small and localized. The actual damage done by the systems it upset is much worse. There is no end in sight for that business as usual unless it's upset. This leak is a chance for that to be upset. And as we now enter the phase of actual recriminations against someone not in the club of domesticated "journalists", including arresting Assange for "rape" and terminating Wikileaks access to the Internet without any due process, and perhaps even assassinating him or someone close to him as people including the Canadian prime minister have called for in public, there will be more backlash. And a hell of a lot of backlash against this incompetent yet tyrannical security state is both earned and long overdue.

Re:TMI

[Sprouticus]

I used to think this. Upon further consideration I changed my mind. Just because this is how thing have been done in the past, why does it have to be done this way now? Why can't we have diplomacy without back room deals? Why cant peoples REAL opinions be exposed and known.

I think if there was more honesty in the world things would be better. Maybe not easier, but better.

Re:TMI

[giorgist]

Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE

Why the heck not ... We are getting a different story o the truth, and that will blow into our face very quickly.
In fact I recon the US goverment has had enough and they sent these files to wikileaks them selves.

Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE

Big deal, what does it mean that diplomats are embarased ?

Re:TMI

[Bennij]

I agree that Wikileaks released a bit too much, but that's not what this is about anymore. Good or bad, "right" or "wrong," the actions of WikiLeaks are protected by the freedoms of speech and the press; these freedoms are now under heavy attack by corporations and governments, and it's our responsibility to protect them. These would be empty rhetoric, not freedoms, if we only applied them to those we agreed with. I've set up a mirror.

Re:TMI

[Altanar]

"Why can't we have diplomacy without back room deals? Why cant peoples REAL opinions be exposed and known.

Have you paid to politics lately? How much work has been done between the Democrats and the Republicans? None. Why? Because as long as there's someone watching, politicians will do everything they can to save face with their constituents instead of compromising. Diplomacy is Congressional politics where EVERYTHING they do is compromise. There's no 60 person, filibuster-proof majority in diplomacy.

Re:TMI

[societyofrobots]

Finally, intelligent comment.

I am all for the release of corruption and crimes, and against the suppression of leaks thereof. But that is not what happened.

Sure, having all your emails posted on the net for the international media to comment about can be embarrassing, but that doesn't make you a criminal. A quarter million documents were released, and not a single crime has yet to be found. Nadda. And frankly, as far as other governments are concerned, that makes me very proud of being an American.

So to you US-bashers, stop hating until a crime has actually been found.

Re:TMI

[pipingguy]

"...perhaps even assassinating him or someone close to him as people including the Canadian prime minister have called for in public..."

http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/12/01/flanagan-wikileaks-assange.html

Please check your facts, Doc.

Re:TMI

[i.r.id10t]

The US has been quagmired every time the bullets flew since WW2, mostly because politicians and political correctness started dictating targets and rules of engagements as opposed to letting the military do its job.

Re:TMI

[Gorobei]

Um, the US military's "job" is to do what the politicians tell it to do.

Or maybe you think it's an independent branch of government that should just use all its toys to "win" one for the USA?

You are a moron.

Re:TMI

[naasking]

WikiLeaks is taking a strong stance completely in opposition to the current trends in government of shrouding everything in secrecy: complete transparency. And they have demonstrated to governments that their secrets will not be secret for long. If the government hadn't been so paranoid and driven that fear into the populace with propaganda, WikiLeaks would never targeted the U.S. at all.

I hope WikiLeaks starts the pendulum swinging away from secrecy by showing the people exactly how much their government is hiding from them, and I hope it shows the media exactly how poorly they've been doing their jobs.

Re:TMI

[GlassHeart]

Because, for example, although somebody like Karzai can't be too surprised that the US doesn't really like or trust him, knowing exactly how much is extremely important. Enough to topple him? Enough to abandon him? Enough to assassinate him? Do you actually propose telling him if any of the three are true?

Re:TMI

[Tom]

Every partnership, company, country, etc, must have the ability to have frank internal conversations about various relationship with others, that must be private.

Can we agree to accept that if and when the governments accept that there are things in our lives that must be private, too ?

A government that respects the privacy of its citizens has earned some trust and respect for their backroom deals. But a government that violates the privacy of its citizens given half an excuse does not.

Quid pro quo.

Re:TMI

[jopsen]

These extra releases have done nothing but put many countries into very awkward diplomatic relationships

Really, I hear politicians screaming about how it could hurt diplomatic relations... But it's my impression that most countries doesn't really care...

In this case, I think wikileaks went waaay too far.

I don't know... On the one hand yes, what the point with this release, maybe wikileaks went too far... But there must be some sort of idea behind this, e.g. that governments shouldn't have secrets, or that whistle blowers should be able to blow...
The thing is I don't hear that argument anywhere in the media... All I see two "experts" debating how bad this leak is. There's nobody speaking up for wikileaks, so I think they're being represented unjustly in the media...
And if that's the only story the media can get from this, then that is sort of sad... I don't think the journalist who makes these stories would say no to taking a look at classified documents, and then it's a little hypocritical to complain about the leak...
Also note, wikileaks, didn't leak this, they just facilitated the leak... It's not their responsibility to keep secrets for the government.

Re:TMI

[Aim Here]

...

Candid assessments about Karzai's leadership : DO NOT RELEASE
Name calling of the Prince of England : DO NOT RELEASE

The thing is, if Wikileaks redacted cables based on the nature of the content, rather than a few names that might be considered 'at risk', then they would be accused of bias or editorialising or censorship - attacks on Wikileaks' integrity. Far better to release the whole thing and be accused of distributing trivia.

As for the cases you're talking about, Prince Andrew stands a very good chance of becoming King (it just depends on the order in which his mother and brother die in) and the monarch does have a lot of formal powers which can get abused to the detriment of democracy (These powers were used to forcibly deport the islanders of Diego Garcia and to unilaterally depose the Australian Government in 1975). The fact that Prince Andrew is a moronic jingoistic fucknut when there are no TV cameras in the room is actually of some serious public interest.

Re:TMI

[gnurfed]

First of all, as I'm writing this 667 out of 251,287 cables, or 0.27% of the total, have been released thus far. So we have a LONG time to go before we can summarize the leak and see "if it was worth it". They're doing the slow release so each piece is noticed, which I think is rather smart.

Second, I can't speak for all of the 667 released cables as I haven't had the time or patience to go through them, but one revealed the fact that CIA were still ferrying subjects of their "extraordinary renditions" over Sweden in 2006 without telling the Swedish government about it. The flights were tagged as private instead of official and was only discovered when the swedish secret service, dressed as flight staff, got into the plane and exposed them. This, of course, caused a serious diplomatic spat between Sweden and the US. Crimes against us poor swedes: 1, your argument that nothing has been found: 0.

I could be really mean and say one instance (concerning Sweden - again, I haven't had time to go through all the news from other countries) in 0,27% of the documents would indicate around 376 crimes against my country in the full batch, but that would be seriously absusing statistics.

Hopefully the remaining 250,620 documents will be as interesting as this first little teaser.

Re:TMI

[Doc Ruby]

That's a distinction without a difference, and a public retraction without credibility, as these leaks have shown they're just lying to the public while doing things like murderous drone strikes in private.

Re:TMI

[Doc Ruby]

And in private how different is the PM's statements? Or does it really matter? The PM didn't tell the public that such an assassination is prohibited and outrageous. Like if the PM's government prosecutes that advisor for calling for the assassination on TV.

The leaks show the importance of what they say in private, vs the BS in public like that advisor's public retraction.

Re:TMI

[mrxak]

When diplomats get embarrassed by seeing their confidential memos getting put in newspapers the next day, they may very well start self-censoring their memos. It's kind of important for diplomats and analysts to not self-censor, because Big Things get decided based on their reports. The net result of these cable leaks will very likely be no paper trails at all, or incomplete reports being sent up the command chain, and that doesn't really serve the public in the long term.

Re:TMI

[mrxak]

Most countries/governments don't care, but individuals mentioned in the memos and individuals who wrote those memos sure as heck care. If you don't think personal relationships are important to international diplomacy, you're seriously naive. I posted above about one very simple fact, and that's if diplomats and analysts get worried their confidential memos will be in the papers the next day, they'll start self-censoring. Either there will be no more paper trails, or people who make decisions based on their memos won't have all the facts. At any rate, the public isn't well-served in the long term. By all means, reveal the corruption, the abuses, etc. But the personal stuff, the embarrassing stuff released solely to embarrass individual diplomats and state officials, that's definitely TMI. It's tabloid BS done for reasons of personal profit and political gain.

Re:TMI

[mrxak]

If Wikileaks had integrity, they wouldn't be diving head-first into the muck. This is tabloid stuff, not journalism. If these guys were so concerned with integrity, they would exercise some editorial control and release only the stuff that actually matters: corruption, abuses, and so on. As I've understood it, these guys have the stated goal of hurting the United States because they're against the war. They're already biased, and they're already exercising that bias by the way they release things nice and slow to have the maximum impact, including meaningless tabloid nonsense. If there are major corruption and abuses to be revealed, they should reveal those first, should they not? That would be the responsible journalistic thing to do, no? Instead, we get things released simply to embarrass individuals.

People still use FTP?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I mean, giving Wikileaks an ssh account (as they're asking for) is pretty stupid, security-wise, but it's nowhere near as bad as giving _everyone_ your password by using FTP. You'd think Firesheep would've taught people something...

Re:People still use FTP?

[grcumb]

I mean, giving Wikileaks an ssh account (as they're asking for) is pretty stupid, security-wise.

Why? Provided you take reasonable security measures, there is nothing unusually insecure about this.

Just approach the problem the same way you would for any automated remote-access scenario (e.g. scripted backups):

• Make sure that you limit the number of hosts that are allowed to even talk to the port in question;
• Allow only the exact command to be executed, so they can't run arbitrary scripts;
• Un-set the execute bit on all files;
• Allow them access only via an entirely unprivileged and non-interactive account;
• Give them access to a carefully segregated file system (so they can't, for example over-write /bin/bash);
• Optionally, create a new virtual machine to host the data, one that is subject to strict firewall rules and has no network access to other infrastructure;
• Half a dozen other steps that aren't immediately springing to mind as I sit here on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Re:People still use FTP?

[JamesP]

offtopic but anyway

You can do a lot of things to allow a safe and contained usage of ssh

1 - Use a key, not a password
2 - chroot or maybe /bin/false (not sure if this can be overwritten)
3 - SELinux, etc (but it's a pain)
4 - have ssh handled by a VM, it can be something very simple

Re:People still use FTP?

[joost]

You have heard of things like virtual machines, chroot jails and unix permissions?

Insurance file torrent

[Gla'funk]

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/b9f0899e6537431b462ffcb16d9398ad

Re:Insurance file torrent

[needs2bfree]

Also from the cablegate site : http://88.80.16.63/torrent/cablegate/cablegate-201012041811.7z.torrent
See http://213.251.145.96/cablegate.html

team up with pirate bay!

[lejerdemayn]

why don't they just team up with the pirate bay for some distributed mirroring scheme? or ask them for the hosting, i'm sure those guys can handle some ddos?

Admin Courage

[Dangerous_Minds]

A simple checklist for admins when considering this: Do I... 1. support government transparency and general democracy? 2. own a web server and know a fair bit about security? 3. have balls of steel? If yes to all of the above, you too can be a proud owner of a Wikileaks mirror!

This is fantastic

[frank_carmody]

I live in Thailand and WikiLeaks is blocked here for some ridiculous reason. The more the 'authorities' around the world try to squeeze the balloon, the more it bubbles out somewhere else. So this is golden for me. The more they are forced to host their site in a non-conventional highly-distributed way, the easier it becomes for the people of Thailand to access it.

Re:This is fantastic

[Beerdood]

The governments (as well as corporations i.e. amazon, paypal) are probably blocking wikileaks as a political statement as well. They have to realize that once something is on the internet, there's no way to ever make it disappear. It's a diplomatic statement to the US & other governments that says "hey, we totally with you - we don't want diplomatic information being released, because we probably have some secrets ourselves that would upset the public if they found out".

Re:This is fantastic

[wallydallas]

well said Frank. when someone claims that it is criminal for publishing the truth about a war criminal, well, time for me to join the "criminal" rather than let the "war criminal" get off easy.

Booth is

[ourcraft]

Booth has been rotting for more than century, and as such is building this great country, building the soil of a land of plenty, as such he is certainly contributing, and many can not say the same.

let me tell you

[unity100]

they are important. very important.

Re:The files will be corrupted

[HJED]

Hence, requiring a ssh login.

Re:Internet in prison

[Gorobei]

A mass murderer, assuming he's not in the US, is an international problem. We've left other countries to more or less mind their business since our country's founding. ("More or less" meaning that we largely negotiate and strongarm with whomever manages to act like a government in some cases, and when we don't do that we always regret it.)

Huh? A murderer is a problem for the nation he did the murders in. Or are you assuming two kinds of law: American and the magical non-American global law?

Wikileaks, however, is an organization that has come to directly target the operational security of the USA. It's not even journalism -- it's just "secrets are bad." There's hardly anything in the last three big releases that should be news to ANYONE. (War is hell in Iraq. War is hell in Afghanistan. What countries say in private isn't what they say in public.)

Ok, so you are saying the leaks are a non-issue? Oh, and when did "journalism" become the definition of freedom of speech?

OTOH, I wouldn't say that the federal government is SCARED of wikileaks. If they were really a problem, Obama has an absurdly broad array of options, the most fast-acting of which would be to recognize WIkileaks as a terrorist organization. (What ELSE do you call a private group dedicated to breaking laws and changing the political direction of a country that they are not citizens of?) . OTOH, Assange is a big enough prick that it looks like all we have to do is wait, and he'll hang himself. (Yes, if you're mid-sex and she says stop, failing to do so *IS RAPE*.)

Terrorism? wtf? Who is he causing to be terrified? Or do you define "terrorism" as "anything I don't like that doesn't seem to be against the law?"

If Assange is a douchebag,

[unity100]

He is MY douchebag. He is the way i would want any douchebag to be like. I would share a flat with such a douchebag, at any given point.

As far as douchebags go, there were a lot of douchebags among the people who have pioneered this age of democracy that the power elite has made null and void.

Benjamin franklin used to strip naked and sit on a chair in the middle of a long corridor in his mansion, after opening the windows from both sides and ensuring that the corridor had good breeze.

Thomas paine was SO aggressive in his crusade against religion that, he set up a church of reason, and started a new religion.

i can go on and on.

in the list that can be made out of quirkiness, oddness, douchebagness of those people who now we see as pioneers of freedom or fighters of democracy, assanges alleged 'douchebagness' wouldnt even qualify in the top 100.

and it is as another poster had just commented: assange has done more than any western government did for freedom and democracy, since world war II.

our governments do not want us to know things they have done. this was supposed to be a democracy, in which people were in power, as 'we the people'. we have become 'them the people', who are herded.

wake up. wikileaks is what we have. assange and his team, are the ones doing it. support them. for your future and your children's.

Re:If Assange is a douchebag,

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post - and as such Wikileaks has also exposed how freedom of speech really works in the West. Its alright, as long as your speaking about the other guy or pushing some pre-established party line.

Re:If Assange is a douchebag,

[rastoboy29]

Mod parent up.

If Julian Assange showed up at my doorstep running from an overhead police helicopter, I'd hide him.

Mind you, I'd ask him what the fuck he's doing in the U.S., but I'd still hide him :-)

Re:If Assange is a douchebag,

[unity100]

Please. Do go on.

i dont have the time at 08.00

Yet here we are, raising up Wikileaks as the champion of transparency and the greatest thing to happen for democracy and freedom in recent history.

well you know what ? it actually is. it is the best champion of transparency and greatest thing to happen for democracy in freedom in recent history, because, WE ARE IN SO MUCH CRAP.

that should tell you its importance. to even start fixing it, we need wikileaks to expose all the shit. only then, you can start to expect 'real' champions of transparency to come forth. and maybe at that point you will realize that, it only has been possible with the efforts of wikileaks.

Re:If Assange is a douchebag,

[kimvette]

Barack Obama failed to keep his promise of delivering government transparency, just as he hasn't kept his other campaign promises. The way I see it, Wikileaks is holding the government accountable and is delivering on Obama's campaign promise. As a citizen of The united States of America I am glad to see someone run a site like Wikileaks because having this wealth of information available will help dissuade future would-be tyrants from trying to pull off what the douchebags in power have been doing as they pull the wool over our eyes.

Also, isn't the timing of the charges against Assange pretty suspect? A leak was announced, warrants were put out for his arrest. The charges disappeared as the storm subsided. Another major leak was announced, and coincidentally newly released warrants were released. Please; I do not believe in coincidence.

We need whistle blowers and we need this information out in the open so people will open their eyes and consider throwing out ALL of our elected officials, and choose candidates who believe that the Constitution means what it says, and that it's important for ALL to be held accountable - even^H^H^H^Hespecially the "elite" politicians and the corporate execs they're in bed with.

Everyone else in the media are compromised.

[nurb432]

And you have no idea if Assange has been or not. Unless hes your best friend you really don't have a clue.

I also wont go as far as you have in raising him to nearly god like status, as while i agree he has done some good with some of the information he has given us, he has also done some bad. There really are cases where information is better left out of public hands for the time being.

Re:Everyone else in the media are compromised.

[misexistentialist]

The only way he could be compromised would be if he released fabricated documents. He is being accused of a lot of things, but no one has dared question his honesty.

Re:Everyone else in the media are compromised.

[zakeria]

well said! but it seems slashdot users tend to follow the crowd so your wise words are lost here :|

Re:Everyone else in the media are compromised.

[joebagodonuts]

The issue I have with the idea of

There really are cases where information is better left out of public hands for the time being

is the institution always gets to decide the time length, and they will always cover their ass. Nope - I would rather have some input, and EVERYTHING eventually sees the light of day. No more perpetual secrets.

Re:Everyone else in the media are compromised.

[tehcyder]

The only way he could be compromised would be if he released fabricated documents. He is being accused of a lot of things, but no one has dared question his honesty.

I'm actually quite surprised the US government hasn't snuck in a few howlers which they can then "reveal to be false" and use this to discredit wilileaks. I'd imagine something lurid about UFOs would work quite well.

In fact, I assume wikileaks must be doing some good old jouirnalistic fact-checking to ensure this doesn't happen..

Bravo

[Slutticus]

Never have mod points when I really need them. I've never seen people so terrified of the truth since.....well....hmmm.... I'd REALLY like to get a look at those Cheney Energy Task Force documents that they've been hiding from us for 10 years. I can hope that these will be leaked eventually.

Re:Bravo

[Zancarius]

Never have mod points when I really need them. I've never seen people so terrified of the truth since.....well....hmmm.... I'd REALLY like to get a look at those Cheney Energy Task Force documents that they've been hiding from us for 10 years. I can hope that these will be leaked eventually.

What I find funny is that a lot of Americans find this leak to be quite a relief. The only people who seem so pissed off about it are those in positions of power. They don't want us to know the truth, and at this point, I'd expect next year to see increasing pressure on things like the COICA and/or other measures to grant the Federal government the ability to censor information. Can't have the people finding out what their leadership is up to! Even some people on the right of the political spectrum here in the US (*raises hand*) are in favor of what WikiLeaks is doing; although, as I see it, you can't pick and choose your battles in pursuit of liberty, transparency, and fairness. That's why I see this as both hilariously entertaining and, generally, a good thing.

It is comedic to me that the Obama administration has only managed to live up to their promise of offering the most transparent administration in history by way of an Australian foreign national leaking secretive wires that were handed over to him.

Re:Bravo

[Zancarius]

Well, maybe the handing over thing was part of the transparency -the only way Obamacould do this without getting impeached/court martialled/JFK'ed

I doubt it, because it would be easy to spin these leaks as either 1) an inept administration, 2) a paranoid administration, or 3) an administration that doesn't particularly care and isn't interested in diplomacy (yes, I know, some of these wires are from the Bush administration but that only marginally matters at this point). Personally, I don't think Obama particularly cares.

The only significant use these leaks have for Obama is in 2012. With Hillary as the Secretary of State and most of this burden falling on her, Obama can easily use this against her if she were to choose to run against him. Clinton hinted on a talk show just this last week that this would be her last public stint. I think she sees the writing on the wall--the administration could easily use this against her if she were to try running.

Re:Bravo

[riondluz]

Its my private and secret hope that Obama is the leaker:)

Re:Bravo

[Zancarius]

Its my private and secret hope that Obama is the leaker:)

I wouldn't bet on it. He's too busy taking vacations and playing basketball/golf/whatever to care, and his compatriots are too busy listening to the MPAA/RIAA to do anything else but draft legislation that may drastically shape the face of the Internet in the US.

And mark my words, this WikiLeaks fiasco is going to result in a significant push by both political parties to gain greater control over the Internet.

Re:Bravo

[tehcyder]

And mark my words, this WikiLeaks fiasco is going to result in a significant push by both political parties to gain greater control over the Internet.

You sound like you think that's wikileaks fault.

Re:Bravo

[Zancarius]

You sound like you think that's wikileaks fault.

Don't split hairs--read through some of my other commentary (click my name, click comments) and you'll see that I feel differently. If you're willing to instead jump to inane conclusions, I guess I can't help you out there.

That said, it wasn't my intention to make it sound like it's WikiLeak's fault; I just happen to find it much easier to refer to this particular fiasco as the "WikiLeaks fiasco," because there are so many stupid things the US government has done this year that it's almost hard to keep track of. So in that case, yes, I apologize for being specific about which fiasco I was referring to. How horrible that I would dare clarify anything in particular. Oh, the horror.

Ultimately, the responsibility of censorship falls on the shoulders of the government. It just so happens that because of this situation, there are a lot of congress critters who are no doubt thinking that they can take advantage of this to push for stricter regulations on the flow of information. That isn't WikiLeak's fault, and I'm kind of angry that you'd pin me with blaming it on them.

Coincidence? I think not!

[Mysteray]

http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2010/12/amazon-severs-ties-with-wikileaks

"I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them. Wikileaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world."

C.f. "There are times when we must all endure adjustment to the Constitution in the name of security."

Coincidence? I think not!

Re:Coincidence? I think not!

[AHuxley]

That can get interesting. A Patriot Act Section 311 like designation for an ISP, server host or telco?
Any company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks has it digital reality opened to the full force of the US govs ability to shape cash flow?
No more banking, CC use, moving of funds to any bank that wants to connect to the USA or US credit cards.
The host becomes a cash flow North Korea and the hosts bank wonders about its profit without any U.S. banks and companies.

Re:Coincidence? I think not!

[Mysteray]

I hinted about this in a blog post last night http://extendedsubset.com/?p=40

I've been around a few years now and seen a few political battles play out. My gut feeling is that Lieberman's aides are madly trying to figure out how they're going to explain him out of this screwup. We might even see politicians calling for an investigating Amazon for conspiring with him. Tomorrow's talk shows are going to be interesting.

See for yourself. Check out Twitter #imwikileaks and #wikileaks tags right now.

Re:Coincidence? I think not!

[Daedalon]

http://criminaljustice.change.org/petitions/view/boycott_amazon_until_it_hosts_wikileaks_on_its_servers_--_for_free

Re:Coincidence? I think not!

[Mysteray]

Why would Wikileaks or (anyone for that matter) even want Amazon's services at this point?

In my opinion they've shown themselves to be an unreliable provider who will disable everything your business relies on them for and not even ask for paperwork before doing so.

Why Unix??

[sunderland56]

The pages are all just HTML. They distribute via ssh. So why just look for Unix servers, when they're really just in need of web-accessible disk space?

I'm no Windows fanboy, but a Windows server would do equally well.

Re:Why Unix??

[gregbaker]

I suspect they plan to push additional updates as they release more cables. That means a remote connection (secured with a secret: SSH key or similar) and something like rsync to update the files. There is no standard and reliable way to do that in Windows (as far as I know).

Re:Why Unix??

[FrootLoops]

I bet Cygwin can do it. Maybe someone more knowledgeable will come along and clarify the possibilities.

Re:Why Unix??

[maxwell demon]

What about posting to Usenet? Usenet postings are automatically copied to many servers throughout the world.

Re:Why Unix??

[Menkhaf]

Of course you can do it on Windows, it's just easier on Unix/Linux. SSH and rsync functions the same no matter what system, and is installed on practically all machines.

Re:Why Unix??

[FrootLoops]

Windows has no SSH program installed by default that I'm aware of. Did you mean "on practically all machines running Cygwin"?

Re:Why Unix??

[Menkhaf]

Yes. Installing SSH and rsync in cygwin, and a random webserver for Windows. Shouldn't take long.

Re:Why Unix??

[FrootLoops]

Cool, thanks.

A smart guy once said...

[burkmat]

"Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"
  - Linus Torvalds

Although I must admit this is a bit of a new approach... Ask the rest of the world for a shell on their boxes and mass upload. The point of having a lot of nodes copy the main one is redundancy, if someone *cough* The US *cough* get into Wikileaks stuff, what's to keep them from just logging onto all these servers and erasing the copies too?

Taking a redundant system and making it dependant on a single node... Not too clever.

Re:A smart guy once said...

[grcumb]

If someone *cough* The US *cough* get into Wikileaks stuff, what's to keep them from just logging onto all these servers and erasing the copies too?

Set the immutable bit on all the files and/or refuse to run any rsync command that contains the --delete flag.

Keep a separate backup.

Re:Internet in prison

[yndrd1984]

We've left other countries to more or less mind their business since our country's founding.
LOL. For counter-examples, I'd like to cite the entire second half of my American History textbook from high school.

There's hardly anything in the last three big releases that should be news to ANYONE.
Then why is this an issue for you?

If they were really a problem, Obama has an absurdly broad array of options, the most fast-acting of which would be to recognize WIkileaks as a terrorist organization.
Which is why we need wikileaks in the first place.

What ELSE do you call a private group dedicated to breaking laws
What law breaking? Every major news outlet in the US has released classified information, which is legal under US law. Only the people given access to the data are required to keep is secret.

OTOH, Assange is a big enough prick that it looks like all we have to do is wait, and he'll hang himself. (Yes, if you're mid-sex and she says stop, failing to do so *IS RAPE*.)
What are you talking about? The bizarre Swedish "sex crime" of consensual sex without a condom? And even if he did destroy his own rep, what about the other people in the organization?

Re:Internet in prison

[Mysteray]

What ELSE do you call a private group dedicated to breaking laws

What US laws has Wikileaks broken again?

I'm not saying they haven't broken any, I've just not seen anyone with list anything "they can make stick".

Everyone agrees Wikileaks is effective at getting something done, so if they're really a "group dedicated to breaking laws" you ought to be able to list several rather quickly.

He used linux when you shit in your dipers

[cheekyboy]

stop bagging him, what have you done for man kind, nothing, but pollute the landfills.

He has used linux in the early 90s, have you? Hes complete linux geek like us, so drop your name calling.

Yes I too hope all banks are exposed for the biggest fraudsters in history. (Though you can get a teaser of the truth at infowars.com)

Secret #1. Global Currency will be active after a planned crash MKII.

I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has it

[wallydallas]

I donated money via pay pal on Dec 3rd, the day wikileaks had their account cut off. Pay pal accounts are often put on a 180 day hold. I called paypal to verify my money is no longer held in paypal. They said they can say nothing about the issue. They would not even send that to me in writing. They would not give me a dispute number or any other tracking number for my unanswered question. The only comment they had was to contact the better business bureau. Anyone know a good laywer willing to call the pay pal legal department and find out where my donation is sitting?

This is why the need to use ssh/push

[ugen]

I think it is fairly obvious why wikileaks wants to use ssh/push method to mirror their data. They can't use polling because, frankly, with the way they are being pushed around and shut down all the time there is just no way to guarantee that any host, domain name or IP address they provide would be available for an extended period of time.

Push method with a specific public/private key would allow them to push content from anywhere, as they are being chased and forced to change servers and providers.

I thought it was obvious but may be worth clarifying.

Btw, the main site seems to be down again.

Re:This is why the need to use ssh/push

[wallydallas]

hey Ugen. Thanks. I've got an Ubuntu 8 server. I'd like to make it usable to wikileaks. Can you give me some short steps as to what SSH packages I should install, and then what steps I need to take to get it ready? I've used PGP keys before, but my server is mostly just a LAMP box hosting a CMS right now. What kind stuff would help me prep my server.

Re:This is why the need to use ssh/push

[netsharc]

Wouldn't a cleverer system would be, you get to download the 250000 cables at once, but all are encrypted, and they could periodically send out a broadcast of a private key, with each key unlocking a part of the cables (to be able to have control over which individual cables are published when, each cable would be encrypted using a different key). Unfortunately the only medium I know for rapid broadcasting would be Twitter (yeah, facepalm).

A PHP script "read-cables.php" could be set up, that when someone visits the url, it goes on Twitter to check for the existence of newly available key tweets, reads those tweets, and use the keys to decrypt the cable file(s), which should also be identified in the tweet, and store the cable(s) as plain-text...

Of course this would all be subject to DDoS by flooding Twitter with bogus keys, since they'd probably use the hashtag-mechanism to allow for rapid distribution from many Twitterers.

Re:This is why the need to use ssh/push

[Menkhaf]

Install openssh-server
Install rsync -- well, it's probably already installed
Install a webserver of a kind, e.g. lighttpd (that's what I normally use).

If you use lighttpd, just follow these steps:

• create a wikileaks user
• add the public key to /home/wikileaks/.ssh/authorized_keys (get it from http://213.251.145.96/id_rsa.pub )
• mkdir /home/wikileaks/public_html
• enable simple-vhost (sudo lighty-enable-mod simple-vhost)
• edit /etc/conf-enabled/10-simple-vhost.conf :
  • simple-vhost.server-root = "/var/www/servers"
• mkdir /var/www/servers
• /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart
• ln -s /home/wikileaks/public_html /var/www/servers/wikileaks.yourdomain.tld
• Add DNS record. Use a low TTL (eg. 30 mins == 1800 seconds) and change the entry to point at 127.0.0.1 or similar if you get DoS'ed
• Submit information to Wikileaks.

You might want to secure your server more, firewall etc. Check out fail2ban.

I knew of housing crisis & greece etc months b

[cheekyboy]

Dude, if you listen to podcasts from financialsense.com you would have know that ;

A) Housing crisis was predicted 2 years ago.
B) the PIGS are going down in debt - Portugal,Ireland,Greece,Spain.
C) Banks are lending/printing trillions

Who wrote the bible, did they think it would have 100% positive results? Certainly there have been millions that have died in the name of it. Was jesus irresponsible for speaking the truth?

Get mirror method from cryptome instead

[cheekyboy]

http://cryptome.org/0003/wikileaks-wikiing.htm

It's just a thought...

[thewils]

...but without the traditional forms of media (TV, Newspaper) vilifying Assange and Wikileaks or providing a forum for said attacks, there wouldn't be that much of a hoo-hah about this. The traditional media is really shooting themselves in the foot though, because it shows really how much they simply are a government mouthpiece and just repeating the party line. If they had done their job in the first place, there really would be nothing to leak and none of this would be news.

WaM

[Altanar]

Cue the 300 wikileaks "mirrors" that serve up 90% advertising, 5% malware, and 5% leaks?

Please help

[Anonymous Coward]

In my company (which I own) we have some servers available with their own IP and bandwidth. I'm also on a country where censorship is unlikely.

However I don't know much about server configuration and don't want to ask my IT people. I do know the basics and how to use shell and such

Would anyone please tell me how to comply with the following wikileaks requests:

-Setup an account where we can upload files using RSYNC+SSH

-Put our SSH key in this server

Thanks

Re:Please help

[sydneyfong]

I'm also on a country where censorship is unlikely.

You're joking, right?

Re:Please help

[zakeria]

In my company (which I own) we have some servers available with their own IP and bandwidth. I'm also on a country where censorship is unlikely.

However I don't know much about server configuration and don't want to ask my IT people. I do know the basics and how to use shell and such

Would anyone please tell me how to comply with the following wikileaks requests:

-Setup an account where we can upload files using RSYNC+SSH

-Put our SSH key in this server

Thanks

your in China?

Re:Please help

[Menkhaf]

Have a look at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1896338&cid=34450172

Hey! You jackasses in the Guy Fawkes masks!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what the guy who's face you've appropriated was up to? Now's your time to shine, Anonymous...

Throwing water on a grease fire

[mykos]

Nice try, United States Government.

Obi-Wan's last words apply here.

Re:Throwing water on a grease fire

[lennier]

Obi-Wan's last words apply here.

"Hey, watch what you're doing with that light-" ?

There was no rape you liing sack of

[cheekyboy]

She didnt say stop you prick. She loved it all. You cannot enjoy it and come out days later to say "oh its rape coz im a girl and have the power to ruin peoples lives" .....

"Ardin hosted a party in Assange's honour at her flat after the 'crime' and tweeted to her followers that she was with the "the world's coolest smartest people, it's amazing!"

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/swedens-reputation-is-on-trial-in-julian-assange-case/story-e6frfhqf-1225965772832

I2P can anonymously handle large volumes

[Burz]

...much better than FreeNet and Tor can. http://geti2p.net/

Many of the Wikileaks releases (including video files) have already been posted to I2P bittorrent trackers.

I love this mayham and shitstorm

[future assassin]

Today I killed two of my paypal accounts and will be killing my works pay pal account. I've also let them know it was because of Wikileaks. I have also just donated money to Wikileaks I look forward to be put on some list.

Re:I love this mayham and shitstorm

[zakeria]

and I just sent you $1,000,000

oh well ;(

Unix doesn't have Nth-power malware going after it

[Burz]

Unix (the free variants) can be fully audited down to the last bit if necessary (unusual/bar behavior can be much more easily explained and fixed with some investigative effort).

Windows is simply NOT up to dealing with high security needs.

Also, Microsoft is an American corporation

[Burz]

And the actions of Amazon and many other corps play dirty with their customers when the State Dept or Pentagon tell them to. I don't think MS is any exception to that corporatist dynamic.

Re:Also, Microsoft is an American corporation

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

If you think that Microsoft somehow has the power to take down any Windows server at will, you're insane.

And if they somehow had some sort of super-secret back-door that no one has found and that they've managed to keep secret from most of their employees (who would undoubtedly leak it), they can't just go and use it against one of the most high-profile organizations in the world.

Re:Also, Microsoft is an American corporation

[marcosdumay]

They already demonstrated the power to issue a patch to systems that had it disabled (an update of WGA on Win XP, it was covered by /. at the time).

Re:Also, Microsoft is an American corporation

[Burz]

Like marcosdumay stated, MS can inject code into any Internet-connected Windows system virtually at will.

Ultimately, they are no different from any American corporation like Verizon or AT&T who routinely inject surveillance changes into people's smartphones to turn them into traveling microphones without the user knowing.

They only care about privacy for corporations and the people who run them, and they don't give a damn about consumer privacy anymore.

Re:Also, Microsoft is an American corporation

[taucross]

Hey, do you mind if my bear sleeps in your bed tonight?. Don't worry, he's on a chain.

Re:Internet in prison

[tycoex]

To add to this, who cares if they break the law? If the law is working against the citizens' it should be broken. Ever heard of civil disobedience?

Who gives a crap about following laws that don't benefit "we the people." I don't see any specific laws that wikileaks broke, but if they did then those laws were obviously engineered to protect the government from its people. In which case, more power to them. Those laws need to be broken.

i cant tell if you are a moron.

[unity100]

or, you have not been able to comprehend the post you replied to.

you may also have come to this space/time continuum by some shitty time machine you have invented back in 1884, with all your moronic 'do you love your country' jargon that you are even unable to understand that who is censoring the internet is not assange, but 'the land of the free'.

all in all, you are surreal sir. either go back to 1884, or dont talk.

Re:i cant tell if you are a moron.

[zakeria]

you sir are the moron! Assange is the one causing the trouble here, there is the reason for secrets, and who needs to know what and when and for what reason! It's people like you sir! that cause censorship and lose of freedom.. go back to the 60's early 70's where you came from and where you failed before!

Redirecting money

[Relyx]

Do the mirrored files include the financial support page? What is to stop an unscrupulous person changing the bank details and collecting money from people wishing to donate to WikiLeaks?

- Andrew

Cryptonomicon

[MichaelSmith]

What we need is a cryptographically secure international currency. Julian Assange may be the person to make it happen.

Re:Cryptonomicon

[Sir_Lewk]

Bitcoins is an attempt at that, and seems to actually be getting off the ground.

What we need is for it to be embraced and adopted.

Re:Cryptonomicon

[Vintermann]

You can look it up on the archives of the old cypherpunks mailing list. It was a divisive issue, and many people saw it as neither desirable or possible. Julian Assange was there, it's not impossible he has taken a position on it one way or another. I for one hope he was smart enough to reject it.

Anonymous payment will always require an arbiter. Say you have a service you want to sell, and someone wants to buy it, and both want to hide their identity from the other.

Now if I do the work first, there's no reason why you should pay me: I would, by definition, not be able to seek you out and demand the money.
If you pay first, there's no reason I should do the work, for the same reason.

Now, with a trusted arbiter, you can easily pay for something anonymously. Major investors operate under freer rules than us mere mortals, so banks do indeed hide investments for wealthy clients. But there's always the danger that the government come down upon you with a heavy hand.

If the goods can be exchanged probabilistically (which not all things can: most importantly, information can't) the arbiter can give himself deniability. However, governments would take an extremely dim view of any bank providing a service like this; justifiably, in my opinion. So it's not gonna happen, forget about it.

But you wouldn't want it either. For instance, if the Koch brothers to be able to hire assassins in a completely untraceable way, life would quickly get unpleasant.

Direct link to new I2P anonymous mirror

[Burz]

Unofficial Wikileaks mirror on I2P
Yes, the full link really is that long. That is because I2P does not fully rely on domain names... that b64 string is the site's public key which is also it's address.

* You need the I2P software (a FOSS project and free download) to use both of the above address. *

The announce thread for the I2P mirror is here.

Once the info for the new site propagates through the network, you can even access the I2P mirror *without* the I2P software using this URL. Of course, using this method you won't be anonymous.

A word about I2P: It's a network that provides anonymized IP-like communication using methods similar to Tor, but designed to handle torrents and other large loads efficiently. It is also less centralized than Tor, and taking down even 90% of the nodes (incl original ones) should still leave it running and accessible. It also has facilities for automatically mirroring files and sites. One downside is that configuring your browser to use the I2P Web is a manual process that must be done carefully. Overall though it seems to be pretty impressive.

Re:Direct link to new I2P anonymous mirror

[lousyd]

Why the difference in domain names from i2p2.de to geti2p.net? For something like this especially, how do I know to trust the source I'm getting the code from? How do I know that either is not a phishing or honeypot site?

Re:Direct link to new I2P anonymous mirror

[Burz]

Good question. The i2p2.de domain is the original one, and geti2p.net is the new more user-friendly one. However the forum only exists on the old domain (and within the I2P network) at this point so I had to use that for the announce link.

It is not exactly rare for a software project to have more than one domain, and this is one of those cases. You will see both domains in the forum discussions and announcements, and I would think someone would have posted a very serious warning on one of the sites if the other domain was fake.

Re:Direct link to new I2P anonymous mirror

[lousyd]

Actually, i2p.net is the original one. Which is sorta the source of my wariness about the site. Perhaps I'm being too cautious.

Re:Direct link to new I2P anonymous mirror

[Burz]

My understanding is they lost that domain because someone left the project.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Idiomatick]

Well... it was paypal. I'm pretty sure they just do deposits at this point. I'd say that the majority of people that have used paypal have gotten robbed by them at some time. We really need an alternative :/

Re:Meaningless Gesture --No

[Burz]

There are networks that can handle extensive yanking (site censorship) and still deliver large files: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1896338&cid=34448224

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[RegTooLate]

Not picking on you specifically, but pay pal is so shady they are like the godaddy of internet paying. The freeze was bound to happen.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Anonymous Coward]

Take it up with your credit card company. Paypal did not provide the service you asked for. *MANY* credit card companies have dispute resolution. It is printed out on the back of your bill.

Detailed intructions please

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to donate a couple of seedbox i have in argentina (currenly seeding the cable torrent)

Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[cowwoc2001]

It's (relatively) easy to target democracies, especially the US. Ask yourself who really benefits from this.

Real journalists would spend more time reporting on the various failed-states and dictatorships around the world. You know, the ones with a "Ministry of Information" and "Ministry of Vice and Virtue". It might not be as easy but it would make the world a better place. WikiLeaks in its current state comes across as a cheap attack against the US by some guy with an ego trip. If you really wanted to further Democracy you would get more countries on-board, not take down the ones who have already made it.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[Mysteray]

Had you ever looked at their site before cablegate? They do, in fact, take stuff from all over the world as you suggest.

They just got a huge bolus from the US all at once. People are starting to sit up and take notice. It's easy to get the impression that its all about this one thing.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[sydneyfong]

What good is a "democracy" that wage unnecessary wars, lies to its people, censors information, and acts as if it has jurisdiction all over the world?

Why should the world aspire to become such a "democracy"? On a lot of measures, these so called "non-democratic" countries are actually a lot more civil.

Cowards? Who would you fear more, the USA, who controls the whole world, or some puny authoritarian state, which you can escape by simply moving to some "free" country?

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[shutdown -p now]

Let me tell you this, as someone hailing from a not-so-free country: these kinds of leaks would have much less effect in non-free societies than they do now in the free West. For a very simple reason: in the West, the freedom of press may be imperfect, but by and large it still exists. You can disseminate that information far and wide. Just look at the list of newspapers which published the stories based on the leaks!

From there we come to another important point: in democratic countries, the people care, and that translates into votes. Since elections are (again, by and large) free and fair, the politicians have to mind that. Even aside from elections, there are some expectations of courteous behavior from politicians - and we already saw some resignations stemming from all those leaks.

In a country like China or Russia? Puh-lease. For starters, no major newspaper would even publish it, so most people wouldn't know. The Net? If you publish within the country, it would be classified as "extremist material" and servers taken down quickly. Even outside the country, they can simply block you - yeah, you can use proxies etc, but vast majority of people simply won't know it's out there.

And even if they do, then what? Elections are rigged anyway. Candidates are hand-picked by those in power, so there is no real choice.

There is already heaps and heaps of information on various people in positions of power and importance in Russia, up to and including the president, that are enough to earn them several life sentences each if they were properly pursued by police and courts. That information is out there today, and has been out there for a while. And it's much more direct than what's in those leaked cables - we aren't talking about lying to electorate. We're talking about stuff such as important politicians running over someone with their car - a manslaughter! - and getting away with it unscathed. We're talking about massive financial fraud, which reflects on every single citizen. We're talking about direct connections to organized crime, and in some cases directly to violent crimes such as murders.

And yet no-one has done anything about it so far.

So, no. If you want to further democracy via transparency, you got to have democracy to begin with. Wikileaks works great in the West, and I'm glad that they are focusing their efforts where they can actually be useful. For other places, you need something else.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[cowwoc2001]

What good is a "democracy" that wage unnecessary wars, lies to its people, censors information, and acts as if it has jurisdiction all over the world?

Why should the world aspire to become such a "democracy"? On a lot of measures, these so called "non-democratic" countries are actually a lot more civil.

Cowards? Who would you fear more, the USA, who controls the whole world, or some puny authoritarian state, which you can escape by simply moving to some "free" country?

Last time I checked you cannot simply flee authoritarian states. I get the fact that the US makes mistakes. I just question the benefit of attacking the US (an easy target) when there are bigger fish to fry that do a lot more harm around the world.

Take out all the dictatorships before you focus all this negative energy on Democracies.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[sydneyfong]

Take out all the dictatorships before you focus all this negative energy on Democracies.

The problem is, you still think "Democracies" are automatically better.

On a lot of fronts, the USA is doing a lot more harm than many "lesser" authoritarian states. Does being a democracy make it immune to criticism for those things? You've been drinking too much kool-aid.

I can agree with you that generally democracies have better governance and tend to respect human rights more. But just because a country is a "Democracy" does not mean it is incapable of infringing upon the rights of human beings on a massive scale.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[cowwoc2001]

Name me a single Democracy that does more harm than a Dictatorship.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[t_ban]

Let me tell you this, as someone hailing from a not-so-free country: these kinds of leaks would have much less effect in non-free societies than they do now in the free West. For a very simple reason: in the West, the freedom of press may be imperfect, but by and large it still exists. You can disseminate that information far and wide. Just look at the list of newspapers which published the stories based on the leaks!

the freedom of speech and the press is a fiction that the western corporates/governments have to maintain, because that is an essential element of this whole democracy and free-country illusion that allows them to exploit their citizens largely with their complicity.

but when anyone is naive enough to take it for real, and exercise those freedoms without regard for the status quo, then they come out in their true colours.

russia and china do not need to maintain the illusion. they follow a different exploitation model.

Re:Journalists, WikiLeaks run by cowards

[shutdown -p now]

A simple matter of fact is that Western newspapers did print numerous stories detailing the contents of leaked cables. In Russia, their respective editors would already be in jail. In China, they'd probably be against the wall by now.

yesh yesh there is the reason for secrets

[unity100]

and, who decides what should be secrets ? the ruling government of the private interests in power !!!! yesh !!!

that is the way to freedom indeed !!! allow secrets and allow censorship because of those secrets, BUT, let the elected representatives sponsored by PRIVATE interests decide what should be secrets !!!!!!!

you are not 1884 material, you are more 1300s material. you would happily live in a place where catholic church had inquisition.

Re:yesh yesh there is the reason for secrets

[zakeria]

Did your mommy write that for you!

First off these so called secrets/cables! are words of between two parties, they are not supposed to be seen by those that are not intended.. This has NOTHING to do with freedom! Can you even define what freedom is? Can you even comprehend the effects of say North Korea knowing that it does not have China backing it and that China would rather see NK become governed by the South? That is what causes MORE secrets and make country's such as NK MORE paranoid and secretive!

It's just nosy little shits and shit stirs like you that THINK they know what freedom is when really all you know is la-la goodie two shoes bullshit!

If you want freedom for everybody go fight for it with the troops and the governments that helped most of the world get and keep freedom!

Please paste Wikileaks key fingerprints here

[Burz]

...for comparison.

Or if you have the same as I've got below, please reply with a 'Yea'.

Here is the fingerprint of the ssh key I (eventually) got from the posted address:

2048 72:16:b8:6a:e4:02:6f:69:ac:b4:7a:6a:9e:00:f1:b0

Re:Please paste Wikileaks key fingerprints here

[Burz]

I got the key from a foreign proxy and it matches the one I got earlier. ...... Anyone else??

Why arent they using a darknet in the first place?

[MikShapi]

I have my doubts on whether they're doing a nett-positive thing to the world, but from a purely technical angle - why are they using the web?
Darknets have been around for a while. Good'ol Freenet comes to mind, and may be much better suited. That way they wouldn't have to have a target a-la Assange at all.

Use a distribution mechanism that, while it takes a bit more effort to get to work, allows untraceable unattackable, unaccountable distribution of the content.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue them in small claims court. They either need to make good on your deal with them to give money to who you asked to give it to, or give it back to you.

I'd add 500 bucks in for your time and frustration in dealing with their deliberate breach of contract.

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[Burz]

Because they thought Tor was good enough.

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[Burz]

Use a distribution mechanism that, while it takes a bit more effort to get to work, allows untraceable unattackable, unaccountable distribution of the content.

See this post: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1896338&cid=34448224

google has mirrored it too ...

[MadMaverick9]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BJGI0pmYUaYJ:cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/04/09BRUSSELS536.html+site:cablegate.wikileaks.org+cables+netherlands&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TImP-cw6Rh4J:cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/09/09TRIPOLI771.html+site:cablegate.wikileaks.org+cables&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk

This is Google's cache of http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/04/09BRUSSELS536.html. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 2 Dec 2010 01:00:25 GMT.

I wonder now - when will the US Govt. go after Google and demand Google clean up its cache. Since Google is "hosting" (uh ... caching) the leaked cables.

David Brin

[yoshi_mon]

I really don't mind the future that David has outlined. But what has to happen is the social and governmental changes that come with the loss of personal privacy.

Re:Internet in prison

[naasking]

Generally because mass murderers aren't so smart. If they were smart, they'd get themselves elected and start a war.

Julian Assangenitsyn

[Max_W]

So you thought Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn , Andrei Sakharov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Sakharov and other Samizdat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat authors were a joke. Gave them Nobel prizes. Now, when you have got your first real samizdat author, you know how it feels.

WikiLeaks virus next?

[naasking]

I expect a WikiLeaks download worm any day now. Some hacker somewhere is going to get so pissed off at the government's response to this, I expect a worm which downloads and seeds the WikiLeaks to every computer it can spread to. Any downloads on a computer can be claimed as having been downloaded by the virus. Perfect plausible deniability, and the WikiLeaks data will never die.

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[jjohnson]

Because the point is public release, not invulnerable release.

Moreover, there's a strong Streisand Effect going on here. The more effort everyone puts into blocking the dump and screwing with the site, the more the site, the leaks, and the whole project are kept in the media. It'll be impossible to stomp it all out, but Assange and WL are getting a ton of free publicity for the project out of it.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother. Just chargeback using your credit card, then cancel your PayPal account.

Tor hidden service anyone?

[hydrofix]

I am still wondering why don't they publish the data as a hidden Tor service. This way the potential attackers would have hard time finding their IP address to attack.Cables are also small in size, so the limited bandwidth of the Tor network (usually around 2-20 kB/s) is not a problem.

Re: Feudalism, etc

[benjamindees]

I think you're doing yourself a disservice to dismiss feudalism as necessarily leading to inequality or inherently unjust, especially considering the state of modern production technologies and their impact on the working class. For all it's faults, feudalism provides an individualistic economic system realistically capable of providing for all members of a society even in the absence of large-scale trade and finance.

While I agree with your sentiment, and most of your analysis, I'm not sure that we agree on root causes, ie. conspiracy of the elite. A democracy dominated by a working middle class is such an historical aberration that it's important to recognize alternate, more fundamental, explanations for it's decline.

Human work can be separated into two types: productive work and make-work. These should need no definition. Productive work is that which produces capital. Make-work is that which limits the destruction of capital. For most of human civilization, make-work has dominated. In fact, make-work could historically be considered to be the "sine qua non" of human civilization. There has nearly always been a glut of worthless people in all societies who need busy-work to keep them from destroying the tiny bit of progress eeked-out by the rest.

Make-workers gravitate towards low-skilled government-subsidized work such as construction and social services, security and government industries. They built the pyramids. They conquered Europe several times over. They built thousands of miles of transportation infrastructure, mostly by hand. But they consumed many times more resources than they ever saved or produced. They are paid more than they would in a productive position relative to their skills, yet cost less to society than they would if left to their own devices.

The important distinction is that make-workers have very little real political power, aside from their willingness to stop doing busy-work and start destroying things instead. To counter this, societies have developed simple mechanisms for eliminating make-workers who cannot be controlled: wars and prisons. Those who display a tendency to cause destruction are sent to prison. When the prisons fill up or become burdensome, prisoners are sent to war. If they come back with more resources than they left with, they are greeted as heroes. If not, they are ridiculed and minimalized.

In my view, middle-class democratic worker's paradises arise only for a short time, as the consumption of newly discovered resources enables make-workers to become productive workers temporarily. They then gain a modicum of political influence, proportional to the value of their work in exploiting the resource as quickly as possible. When the resource is consumed, work loses value, make-work again dominates, and democracy subsides.

The United States arose to exploit the natural resources of the Americas. Workers here had an extremely good deal, and lots of political power, up until the exact moment at which those resources were economically depleted. That was probably more than 20 years ago. It's time to recognize this fact, move on, and establish more efficient modes of production, rather than trying to re-erect a democratic worker's paradise without the resources to support one.

Re:I'd host it if....

[gedw99]

It would be good is a virtualBox VM all set-up and secure with the private replication key was made available.
With setting instructions. This would make it much easier for people to host a mirror, knowing it was secure.

Also it could be optimised to the bare minimum needed to do the serving and replication and nothing else.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Anonymous Coward]

I just cancelled my PayPal account, in future my money will go elsewhere.

I have been disgusted by PayPal's actions with respect to WikiLeaks and your post reminded me that I have a PayPal account.

The reason given was Other: WikiLeaks.

The problem with corporations (and why corporate citizenship is a frightening concept) is that corporations, by their very nature, have not sense of citizenship or loyalty. Corporations will never stand in support of such important things as our bill of rights, freedom of speech, etc. unless they feel it helps their bottom line.

If attacking a company's bottom line is the only way to make them behave as good citizens, then so be it.

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[MikShapi]

That's closer to an answer to my original question.

If it can be released truly anonymously and in a technically-unstoppable way, why (short of feeding JA's need for drama at the expense of personal risk etc) does anyone need WL's entire public front?

Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier for them to operate when there's nothing targetable?

I assure you the Guardian and Der Spiegel would pay the same amount of attention to those cables and comparable material if they had to sit down someone to manually un-translate it from Swahili, let alone obtain them through a more technically involved process.

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[jjohnson]

Part of having a public front is credibility. If a bunch of bloggers said "Hey, we just got this dump of documents that looks like 20 years of diplomatic cables", it wouldn't get nearly as much attention in the media. WL has spent years building up its cred as an outlet of actually leaked documents. If those same bloggers approached Der Spiegel, they might not even get in the door. At this point, Assange can probably get their chief editor on the phone to discuss the next dump (which is apparently from a major American bank).

As a secondary effect, I imagine that the high profile of WL now serves to draw more attention from leakers, rather than less, so a high public profile actually fosters "business" for them. Cryptome has been going for more than a decade, but WL is who Brad Manning approached.

So yes, being this public causes problems, but it also opens up other doors. If Assange is killed tomorrow, everyone will think the U.S. did it. At this point, being visibly public is probably safer for Assange.

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[MikShapi]

I tend to disagree.
If the story is there, not only will said bloggers get through the door, the door will get through them (in a bid to get there before the competing door).

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[Wordplay]

Assuming that he donated via credit card, the OP may want to consider very carefully whether it's wise to call his bank and inform them he used his credit in that way...especially if it's issued by Citibank. Right or not, they can close the account for any reason.

Get together with some friends ...

[Alain Williams]

Each put £50 into the pot and then you can afford to rent your own server just for wikileaks. The point is that if/when it gets attacked by your government you don't really care if it is forcibly taken down by someone else. This is much better than putting a machine that in some way earns you money or something. You may want to check with the hosting provider first -- if you like them!

Re: Feudalism, etc

[Klinky]

Nice prose full of fluff that let's you try to blame the lower classes for their circumstances. The people who built the Pyramids were not paid, build them or die. Conscripted soldiers were not paid, fight or die. Infrastructure and paying the people cost us more money than that infrastructure produced? Even though citizens and businesses rely on this infrastructure every single day? How about all the "make-workers" in middle or upper management? How about whole companies setup just to stifle competition and leech(patent trolls). How about people in corporations/government to lobby & be buddy buddy with each other to lock out competition? How about an entire industry that was setup to make imaginary financial derivatives that had absolutely no value to them and plummeting the economy into the worst recession/depression since The Great Depression? There is a lot of spinning tires going on at all levels. Usually the people on the bottom are the ones who are actually physically doing the labor and "being productive", those above are usually whipping boys making sure the cattle is getting more productive each year. Rarely are the people at the bottom there because they have tenancies to want to blow people up overseas or stealing from people, more likely it's to survive and they do not have many resources around them to succeed.

Those who go to war & those who do crime usually have something in common: they're poor. The military & crime may offer them the quickest way out of their circumstances. Usually going to war means doing the bidding of rich men. Also I am not sure when was that last time we released our prisoners to go to war? I am not aware of us emptying any of our prisons to send inmates over to Iraq...

Usually middle-class workers "paradise" goes away because "the elite"/Corporatocracy sees that people are getting a bigger piece of the pie and devises ways to extract that piece to make their own piece bigger. This is partially a folly of "growth based" economies where nothing is ever enough. Find, exploit, consume, move on. Or what's been more popular as of late "Fraud, exploit, consume, move on". Most companies in positions are power are not there because they got there honestly. Exploitation, fraud, bribes, wars..etc... It's dirty power and nothing worth looking up to.

Please do define, what resources the middle-class exploited & depleted in the US that caused the downfall of the US middle class? I would suggest the move towards globalism has done more to harm the middle-class, but then again Globalism has brought us cheap plastic stuff from china, that was cheap because it's exploiting the Chinese people. Thought it's been bigger for corporations who can legally pay people slave wages.

How would you suggest we change our modes of production to be more efficient? Can you give some examples? Is that a euphemism for something else? Pointless fluff? Can you give some hard examples where the US can reinvent itself with "modern more efficient modes of production", yeesh sounds like I read that off a PowerPoint presentation.

Who is doing DDoS?

[bradley13]

I cannot imagine that the spam-kings care about Wikileaks. What organizations definitely do care and who have the resources? I hope that the net-experts out there are tracing the DDoS. If they are being run by governments, this needs to be proven and announced.

The new age.

[hebertrich]

Well well .. like every day now , we hear new idiocies coming out the US government.
While everyone takes a look at the cables , the USG , is saying , still classified and their employes and
people that want a job with the USG can't read them .. LOL
That was the funny part of the post.

The multiplication by the hundreds of mirrors ( list at cryptome is unbeleivably extensive ) the downloading of insurance
files and the mirroring of the old site with 11000 or so document is going on strong. I know , i got them all.
In fact if anything good is coming out of this is the involvement of the population in politics.It's waking up .
We were used to as citizens to see through a mesh fence , where we the casual observers see only through one small
square totally unaware of the bigger picture. Now we're getting sights of more and more of those squares and can see a way
better image. The more we see , the more we want to see. It's normal . We are thirsty for understanding and definitely want to see actions being taken or want to take action by ourselves. We dont need big government to tell us " you dont need to know what we do on your behalf " that's bullshit. The Government must be accountable to the people.Otherwise there is no democracy.
Just disguised dictatorship.What we see , what we hear is changing people. We're for the publication or we're against. But i don't know of anyone who is well educated that says otherwise than it's a good thing.Cause frankly , it can't be.
If there hadn't been leaks , the photos of torture that we saw from Irak and Guantanamo Bay and other places , the USA would still be torturing detainees. If there hadn't been leaks and the system would be air tight , a lot of criminal activity would still go on in the USG and it's arms. Oh granted , it still goes on, but as the public gets better and better informed , those activities are becoming less and less likely to happen. Accountability saved a many detainee from being tortured , against conventions the US signed btw.

Like i saw on twitter a short while ago :
  " It's not wrong to lie, cheat, steal, corrupt, and torture. It's wrong to let people know about it."

Go multiply the mirrors the sites and start some of your own in your countries . Go on and multiply.
Read what they dont want you to.Seek knowledge and enlightenment. Information and ideas need to be free.
Let the information be free so that we may one day , in a distant future , live in peace.
Let those who try to convince you that the right thing to be is an ignorant make their calls without echos.
Let their voices die down in the void of mediocrity of cheats and liars.
They want to cheat you of your right to know.Cheat you of the accountability the government has to be kept under.
Leave them shout in anger without replies. Remember : Never argue with an imbecile , they bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Long live free information.This is the guiding light. This is the new age. Jump on the bandwagon or stay behind .
It's your choice.

For those that can't mirror, you can still help!

[chipwich]

I know I'm preaching to the choir, here, but human-nature says that most people (even Slashdotters) are watching this unfold without realizing they can be a part of it.

The WL episode is showing us that our own politicians would readily abandon core values of democracy in order to avoid embarrassment. It also clearly demonstrates that we live in a world where our personal communications can readily be disrupted at the whim of private corporations under pressure from these same politicians.

Democracy can only thrive with the uninhibited exchange of communications between individuals. If you want to help ensure democracy, do any of the following:


1) Run a TOR server ( http://www.torproject.org/ ). This is software that helps provide freedom and privacy by encrypting and distributing network communications. If you don't want to run TOR on your machine, rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) and do it on someone else's box.


2) Support the EFF ( http://www.eff.org/ ). This organization understands technology and knows that in the digital age, information is power.


3) Support open-source distributed alternatives to web-based software-as-a-service. EveryDNS, Paypal, Twitter, Amazon's EC2, and even our beloved Google are points of vulnerability in democracy since their fundamental obligation is to shareholders instead of to an innate code of ethics. How would you find information if Google bowed to Government pressure? The only thing that will ensure corporations stay in line is the existence of alternatives such as a distributed search engine (http://yacy.de/ ).


4) Support open-source software by using it, contributing time or money to its development, and requesting that our Governments make policies to use it. The world would be a very different place if the power of public-key-encryption was kept solely in Government and Corporate hands. Only Free and Open Source Software ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software ) ensures that all members of society who use information technology are on the same footing.


5) Let others know what is at stake, spread the word. Democracy takes active participation, and this takes patience and explanation so that nontechnical Constituents have the understanding that you possess.


Our communications technology is only a tool and can be used to both facilitate democracy and better the world, or to enslave humankind. We are witnessing the first infowar of the digital age, and the powers that be will use it to push hard for bans on encryption, crackdown on peer-to-peer communication, and other information tools.

Will you watch silently and let information technology turn into a tool of repression, or will you take a stand while you still can? The race is on, do something!

...ability to have frank, private conversations

[Joce640k]

The government doesn't seem to think we should have that right so why should we let them have it?

Re:For those that can't mirror, you can still help

[chipwich]

btw, if you agree with the sentiments I expressed, please spread them beyond our geek-realm to the rest of the Interwebs...

For example, you can upvote it here on reddit

or copy it wholesale, edit into oblivion, and post somewhere else. Let everyone realize that they can play a role in spreading digital Democracy.

Re: Feudalism, etc

[TapeCutter]

Excllent rebuttal! One minor nit pick, unlike the people who built the hoover dam the people who built the pyramids were treated with respect and hansomly rewarded. The idea that they were ill treated slaves came from 19th century historians that couldn't imagine any other way of getting people to work their arse off.

Google should help !

[MetalAngel]

afterall it's mission is:
to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Re:Google should help !

[MadMaverick9]

they already do!

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:213.251.145.96+cables&hl=en&prmd=iv&ei=lur8TPztDoWyuAPutqXMCg&start=90&sa=N&filter=0

Google has picked up the ip address "213.251.145.96" already and cables are "hosted" ... ooopppsss ... cached on Google already.

http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=site%3A213.251.145.96+clinton&btnG=Search

Now I am really beginning to wonder how long it will take for the US Govt. to send a request to Google to cleanup their cache.

Re: Feudalism, etc

[PopeRatzo]

. A democracy dominated by a working middle class

When was that ever the case in the US? The closest we came was the post-WWII period up until the election of Ronald Reagan. But then there was such fear in the ruling class that minorities, young people and women were gaining power through their growing wealth that the only way to prevent it was to decimate the entire middle class.

Re: Feudalism, etc

[benjamindees]

Usually the people on the bottom are the ones who are actually physically doing the labor and "being productive"

Doing physical labor has fuck-all to do with being productive. That's the entire point. But, yes, make-work is endemic to the US managerial class as well. In fact, they appear to be specially selected for their ability to do, and create, the most make-work possible.

I am not aware of us emptying any of our prisons to send inmates over to Iraq...

Then you haven't been paying attention. It's fairly common in the US for petty criminals to be told "join the military or go to jail" during times of war. But, nowadays, prisoners cost less than soldiers, so it isn't as common as it once was.

Please do define, what resources the middle-class exploited & depleted in the US that caused the downfall of the US middle class? I would suggest the move towards globalism has done more to harm the middle-class

It's nearly every resource: topsoil, metal ores, forests, oil. We're rapidly working on depleting the coal, fresh water, phosphates, fisheries. It doesn't matter whether you want to call it "globalism" or not, but the fact remains that workers in other countries can now exploit their natural resources more effectively than we can, so they have more work opportunities than we do.

Can you give some hard examples where the US can reinvent itself

Sure, here are some ways to make the US economy less of a total joke, in no particular order:

• Instate moderate across-the-board import tariffs.
• Eliminate the FED. Peg the dollar to some amount of hydrogen or electricity.
• Create a global dollar-based electronic micropayment system.
• Eliminate the IRS. Tax consumption, not production or innovation.
• Stop subsidizing the auto manufacturers. No one needs any more of their hideous over-priced junk.
• Same goes for banks or any other business that fails.
• Stop subsidizing loans for higher-ed.
• Subsidize exercise and healthy eating instead of prescription drugs and healthcare.
• Reduce the maximum workweek until unemployment is at frictional levels. Task the Dept. of Labor with managing this, or create a new independent agency.
• Tax fossil fuel usage, heavily. Use the proceeds to subsidize nuclear power plant construction.
• Tax nuclear power (on an energy basis). Distribute half the proceeds as basic income. Use the rest to subsidize the production of renewable energy tech.
• Mandate telecommuting as an option for any job that doesn't have to be performed on-site.
• Tax reproduction as a negative externality. Heavily tax or outlaw reproduction beyond replacement.
• Severely limit permanent immigration. Expel illegal immigrants. Automate the fruit-picking jobs.
• Give every household a reprap or open-design CNC machine that can make consumer goods and parts from recycled scrap. Mandate recycling.
• Put energy production in every house/backyard: solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, biodiesel, biogas, co-generation; it doesn't matter what. Mandate efficiency and renewability.
• Put an aquaponic greenhouse in every backyard.

Re:give keys?

[laederkeps]

You control your server, so if you're paranoid take some precautions. Set up an account (or better yet, an accout on a new VM) specifically for this with limited permissions and access. If you're really paranoid, you obviously won't be doing this at all.

Wait, let me get this straight. A non-paranoid server admin would allow someone else access to an existing account? Wow.
And here I was, thinking least-possible-privileges was supposed to be rule #1 for a non-insane server admin!

Re: Feudalism, etc

[superdude72]

Human work can be separated into two types: productive work and make-work.

Not really. People who take care of the aged and infirm add little if anything to capital, but they add to quality of life. What they do is not "useless," unless you define everything in terms of economic efficiency. And what's the point of creating more and more wealth if the end result is that people still have to worry about being put out on an ice floe the moment their cost outweighs their benefit? Do we manage the economy to serve the people, or the people to serve the economy?

Workers here had an extremely good deal, and lots of political power, up until the exact moment at which those resources were economically depleted. That was probably more than 20 years ago. It's time to recognize this fact, move on, and establish more efficient modes of production, rather than trying to re-erect a democratic worker's paradise without the resources to support one.

Except we *do* have the resources to support one. We have more resources at our disposal than we've ever had. The problem is in how they're distributed.

Depends which side of the news you're on.

[delire]

I think the cables have all reflected very well on the US, as expected, and confirmed that it's a responsible decent world power.

Hehe, crazy.. Here in the EU there's a lot of talk about cables that point to the US being underhanded, at best, with allies.

I guess you're on the CNN side of the Atlantic.

Make it simpler.

[BrokenHalo]

There is indeed a legitimate need for secrecy in some dealings with foreign nations. Where that crosses a line into territory where whistles need to be blown is an area hard to define, but it's a bit scary to imagine a situation where there is a body of people who feel it necessary to expose every unspoken thought, regardless of one's actions or best intentions.

Further complicating this issue is a de facto personality cult being built around Julian Assange. Given that he is facing criminal charges (on a totally unrelated and as yet unproven matter), the interests of Wikileaks would probably be better served if he were to step aside before he gets thrown into the slammer, and let others in the organisation get on with the job.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[bill_mcgonigle]

If they've received a "national security letter", a lawyer is just going to be a waste of money on your part. PayPal owners need to stand up for what's right or nothing will happen.

Re:give keys?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You control your server, so if you're paranoid take some precautions. Set up an account (or better yet, an accout on a new VM) specifically for this with limited permissions and access. If you're really paranoid, you obviously won't be doing this at all.

Nah, if you were really paranoid you'd setup up an account on a cloud computing service and pay for it with a prepaid credit card and admin it through a tor relay from a coffee shop you don't usually use.

Re: Feudalism, etc

[benjamindees]

People who take care of the aged and infirm add little if anything to capital, but they add to quality of life.

The "service economy" is one of the most blatant examples of economic fallacy in existence. People trading low-skill work with each other absolutely is, at best, a zero-sum game. It makes no one but middle-men better off and is in fact completely pointless if not destructive.

The point of creating more and more wealth is so that the *wealth* can take care of people instead of being consumed by people whose sole "raison d'etre" is to do pointless make-work.

We have more resources at our disposal than we've ever had. The problem is in how they're distributed.

The problem is that they are distributed at all instead of still existing as a virgin monolithic mass waiting to be exploited by workers under the delusion that they contribute anything of value whatsoever to the process of resource depletion other than speed.

Assange isn't the target, his supporters are.

[elucido]

Anyone who was stupid enough to download the Insurance file, or who sends money or support to WIkileaks, will be Gangstalked like this guy, will be COINTELPRO'd.

This is something you absolutely do not want.

Re:Assange isn't the target, his supporters are.

[Doc Ruby]

That person's claims have absolutely nothing to do with Wikileaks, and are not proven to be more than claims.

Show me some evidence of anyone downloading anything from Wikileaks being hassled at all. Or quit making "absolute" claims about consequences that you're just making up.

If you support Assange expect to be Gangstalked.

[elucido]

Don't know what Gangstalking it? Google it.

Don't be surprised if you face COINTELPRO.

[elucido]

If the government considered Wikileaks a terrorist organization or if they decide to take down the supporters, the first people they'll harass are the people who give Wikileaks money and who download the Insurance file.

Joel Bryan Harris is an example. He pissed off a bank executive and they put him on some COINTELPRO list with the help of INFRAGUARD or whatever they are calling it now. Once you are on that list you can't ever get off. And you have no human rights.

Julian Assange is protecting himself with that Insurance file. He is not protecting his supporters and the government knows this. Governments and corporations around the world are targeting his finances. When they find out who donated and paypal will probably tell them, what do you think will happen?

The Feds know who donated and who downloaded.

[elucido]

If you donated the Insurance file, you are going to end up being the collateral damage. The FBI, NSA, CIA are absolutely ruthless and when he pissess off the RUSSIANS it can turn deadly.

My advice is anyone who has donated, change your name. If you downloaded then expect to be put under government surveillance. Expect the government to see you as a member of Julian Assanges terrorist network.

The are going to target his supporters.

[elucido]

This is why the Feds warned their own with that email. It looks like cyberwar is about to be declared. If that happens everyone who supports Julian Assange in any way will be put under COINTELPRO style surveillance. This means they'll have to deal with the gangstalking, the character assassinations, the entrapment, the loss of their jobs, friends they knew their entire life who wont talk to them, etc.

Think about it. If you are keeping Wikileaks strong by donating money and an operation is launched to cut off the money supply by blocking paypal, it means they have the list of names and credit information of all the supporters. The NSA has the list of names of all who downloaded the insurance file. The government also has the list of IP addresses of all who went to the site and who made stupid comments on Slashdot, Facebook or anywhere else.

Once those list of IP addresses is turned into a list of names they will be put into a special government database for Julian Assange supporters. From here the government will launch a COINTELPRO just like they did to the new left, the communists, the black panthers, weathermen underground, etc.

Don't say you weren't warned. They did it to Joel Harris.

Re:The are going to target his supporters.

[PopeRatzo]

If that happens everyone who supports Julian Assange in any way will be put under COINTELPRO style surveillance. This means they'll have to deal with the gangstalking, the character assassinations, the entrapment, the loss of their jobs, friends they knew their entire life who wont talk to them, etc.

If they go after a group of people like that it would be like admitting defeat. It's one thing to target Joel Harris, but it's another thing to target every sysadmin who puts up a mirror to the Wikileaks dump or a torrent that contains the whole enchilada.

We always suspected that the Internet would change everything, but I didn't think it would happen this way. All because the technology of the Internet got away from corporate powers before they had a chance to lock it down.

This may be our one chance to save the future. I know it sounds dramatic, like a bad "computer games" type movie, but it may be real. I can imagine thousands of members of the Nerd Herd enabling the distribution of all the information we need to bring down the shadow government. Maybe they won't literally be wearing Guy Fawkes masks, but they might as well be.

Remember, remember, the last weeks of November, 2010.

Currently fits on a DVD

[billstewart]

They've only released a fraction of the files - there's a lot of assessment, categorization, and possibly redaction they need to do, which is going to take time. But for now, it fits on a DVD, and they could be mailing them out to major press outlets, random volunteers, etc.

Yes, the content will grow over time, but they can still release it as "Volume 1", "Volume 2", etc., maybe come out with the Director's Cut on Bue-Ray later on, with a bonus "Making of WIkileaks" track...

Re:Why arent they using a darknet in the first pla

[cpghost]

If Assange is killed tomorrow, everyone will think the U.S. did it. At this point, being visibly public is probably safer for Assange.

If he is killed tomorrow, not everyone will think the U.S. did it: it could just as well have been other governments who are embarrassed too by the leaks. Let's not forget it: Assange has made a lot of enemies, very powerful enemies with the full resources of governments. Unless he's a Bin Laden who could escape detection and assassination, he's essentially dead man walking by now. And another point is: as long as WL didn't release the whole dump, the risk for Assange is even greater now, as some -- not very bright -- governments may decide to set an example by killing him, in order to deter others in his group to release the rest. If at all, Julian would be safer, if he had released all documents at once, IMHO. His piecewise release policy is putting him at risk.

Re:Unix doesn't have Nth-power malware going after

[cpghost]

Yet, free Unix variants continue to have security flaws in their kernels and user mode applications.

But as long as they don't kldload/insmod closed proprietary blobs (nVidia et al.) into the kernel, and keep a very tight policy of open ports + auditing of the code (OpenBSD, TrustedBSD, SE-Linux come to mind), they should be as safe as it gets. Sure, they need good sysadmins too: that's not something for your average Linux home user (though some of them are very smart w.r.t. security).

Assange has not been charged

[elucido]

He has not been charged with rape. He claims hes being charged with rape. He claims the US government is behind it. He claims that it's a smear campaign. He claims the DDOS attack came from a state actor.

What I'm saying is either Julian Assange and Joel Harris both have mental illness, or they both have had similar experiences.

Re:Assange has not been charged

[Doc Ruby]

No, you are lying. The Swedish government has issued a warrant to detain Assange to be questioned for allegations of rape, which is what Assange has said. The distinction between that and being arrested for charges of rape is really no more meaningful than the difference between the Swedish and English words used to describe it.

Assange does claim the US government is behind it, which is a perfectly reasonable claim, especially considering the extrajudicial (and possibly illegal) actions the US government took against Wikileaks, shutting it down repeatedly.

But whether Harris is imagining his persecution has absolutely nothing to do with whether Assange is, or with anything else for that matter. It's totally irrelevant.

So you're lying about Assange, and you're not making any sense about Harris. But since even being confronted with that reality isn't shutting you up, it's clear that you are mentally ill. And I will not be dignifying your craziness anymore.

Goodbye.

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[wallydallas]

Thanks for the info. I'm guessing calling the support staff again would not help much. The conversation might go like this Me: "It seems paypal is holding my donation to wiki leaks, who can't access the funds. Is this because you received a "National Security Letter" Pay Pal staff: We are unable to respond

Re:I donated dec 3rd via paypal, now pay pal has i

[bill_mcgonigle]

Pay Pal staff: We are unable to respond

Even that may land them at Gitmo. See also: DynDNS's BS blog post about dropping WikiLeaks' domain registration. They had the wisdom to at least post detectable BS.

Re:give keys?

[Thing 1]

pubic key

Sorry, not ridged enough...

Re: Feudalism, etc

[Klinky]

I am not quite convinced that resources being lost is the reason for the drop of the middle-class though. We have smaller wages, but that's being subsidized by cheaper goods from china, meanwhile corporations and those at the top have enriched themselves greatly. This doesn't mean I don't believe that consumerism and massive consumption as a whole is a good idea.

Your jump between prisoners going to war is a pretty big leap. Yeah, that may have happened in the past, but it certainly doesn't happen now & I think it's a bit worse to draft someone against their will, than to give someone convicted of a crime an alternative option.

Your list isn't terrible. Though it would probably take a unicorn being elected in the most 'progressive' European nation for it to happen.

It might be a new concept for you ...

[Ignatius]

... but people have other means of relating to the world and establishing trust than by keyboard. (hint: posting as AC is not a good start)

Re:Internet in prison

[easyTree]

What ELSE do you call a private group dedicated to breaking laws and changing the political direction of a country that they are not citizens of?

The US Department of State?

Re: Feudalism, etc

[TapeCutter]

I originally got the info from a documentry many moons ago but the first random google hit I skimmed tells a similar tale.

Maybe this is not such a bad thing?

[VirtualJWN]

Assange (A_ _ H _ _ _?) may actually be doing our country and government a favor here. that may expalin the lack of a nice "part" in the hair on his pointy little head! Supposedly a "vast amount" of the data released seems to implicate "sources" for the intelligence community. Apparently and "most alarming", this will undoubtedly hasten their (the sources) untimely demise. "Sources" for intelligence are basically "bad guys" who are paid to help the "good guys" (i.e. USA and Australia), so essentially in 1960's language, they "bad guy informants" are the "narcs". Presumably, these "narcs" have already outlived their usefulness by providing Intel or otherwise "helping the good fight". So now that the "narcs" who ratted out their buddies are out there in plain sight, the problem of eliminating them takes care of itself. The "other bad guys" that the narcs ratted out take the "narcs" out, and problem solved! Perhaps that was the whole idea, if so, good job America!!! The Intel community didn't release the information, some pointy headed Frenchman (or Frenchman like person) did. And when all is said and done, he will get a "fatwa" and end of story. Sound about right? BTW - this didn't even cost John Q. Public (1) .50 Cal cartridge. Just let the patsy media cover it. and Al Jazeera" "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Re:Just what the new establishment wants.

[operagost]

Note to mods: no, the word "overrated" is not a synonym for "I disagree".

Where are "edu" mirrors?

[the_subscriber]

Almost 750 mirrors of Wikileaks, and yet only one with "edu" in the name, to stand for the freedom of speech and right to communicate freely? We should ask representatives of our universities what happened with the support for freedom of speech, independence of Academia, and other pillars of education...