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Anonymous Launches a WikiLeaks For Hackers

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-with-one-hundred-percent-fewer-rape-allegations dept.

siliconbits writes "Despite countless WikiLeaks copycats popping up since the secret-spilling site first dumped its cache of State Department cables last year, the new generation of leaking sites has produced few WikiLeaks-sized scoops. So instead of waiting for insider whistleblowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders might start the leaks flowing."

16 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why can't hackers just send their leaks to wikileaks?

    1. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Because it would probably be hard to be credible if you rely on sources that are a far cry from legal. And while whistleblowers are certainly breaking contracts by handing out sensitive information, it is usually not illegal to do so. The whistleblower might face civil charges (for breaking contract), but it usually does not stretch into the criminal area. It's a totally different case with a true 'outsider' hacker.

      The difference also carries over to someone publishing the information, afaik. I could well see how touching (and even more, publishing) information acquired by criminal means could be quite dangerous.

      Also, WikiLeaks usually takes care to verify the source and make sure that it's not fabricated. It's kinda hard with hackers who, by their very nature, won't disclose a lot about who they are and how they got the files.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why can't hackers just send their leaks to wikileaks?

      Wikileaks doesn't publish all data they receive. They only publish high quality data that has been vetted first. I don't think people like Anonymous want to take orders from Julian Assange -:) He's over 30!, and most people over thirty years of age are not trust-worthy (take this with a nudge and a wink if you will, but I'm over 30 and I know what I speak of).

      Also, with Wikileaks, you have to rely on people with morality and courage to leak documents (as oppose to having them deliberately stolen from outsiders). If the leaks are "hacked" or stolen, then nobody has to worry about sitting around and waiting for somebody to tell us the nasty things that government and industry are up to.

      Very few people have the morality and courage that somebody like Bradly Manning has. And few people want to risk being in an American jail for the rest of their lives (or a Chinese jail for that matter) just because they wanted to help expose corruption.

    3. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Informative

      Manning broke his NDA by relaying the information, afaik he didn't "hack" it, he had access to it due to his work area, of course he had to sign an NDA to keep it secret and he broke this NDA. Illegal... well, the US army certainly has a civil case against him, and due to the nature of the information it may even be a criminal one. I cannot see what law Wikileaks broke. I didn't read the Aussie legal code, but it would be the only country I know where publishing the info of foreign governments is a crime.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Being in the army makes this a special case - they have their own seperate legal system, with things like court martials and military tribunals. The normal legal princibles don't apply in there.

    5. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Correction - civilian law does apply to military personnel, but military law is like an overlay on top of civilian law.

      Example, a sailor who commits a robbery in Virginia Beach is apprehended by the police, and charged. He can and will be charged by the state of Virginia with whatever various and sundry crimes they can attach to that robbery, stand trial, and probably be sentenced. The Navy, meanwhile, will carry him as "UA", or an unauthorized absence. If and when our sailor gets out of jail, he should then report to his commanding officer - who will likely then file charges of being UA and/or desertion.

      In Manning's case, I'm fairly sure that the DOJ could make a number of civilian federal laws stick - but they aren't likely to go to that much trouble. Military law is quite adequate for the case.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    6. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by FoolishOwl · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is an important point. Part of what authenticates leaked information is the identity of the whistleblowers, their staus as insiders with privileged access to information, and their willingness to sacrifice in order to publish information. Much of this is lost with anonymous hacktivists. In paticular, when all that's known of the source of information is that it came from an anonymous source, it's harder to disprove the common defense that the leaked information was cooked up by a hostile rival.

    7. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by zill · · Score: 2

      In other words, GP is wrong. There's no such as thing as NDA and civil suits in military tribunals.

    8. Re:Wikileaks is wikileaks for hackers by xkuehn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Whistleblowers are often protected from civil lawsuits, too, by whistleblower-protection laws. (Governments don't hate true whistleblowers! That's just a myth that the neo-anarchist movement has invented to justify their hatred of governments.)

      They say they don't. You know, every whistleblower I've ever heard of had the system come after him.

      We had a prison warden here in ZA -- a few years ago -- who let some prisoners take a camera and film the widespread corruption. (Buying a loaded gun from a guard, that sort of thing.) He was fired.

      A little more recently, we had a teacher report fraudulent matric results (your final marks for high school). Got ignored, went to the media, government acts all outraged and launches investigations and all that stuff. Oh, the teacher just happened to get fired afterwards.

      Then there's Manning in the USA. Leaking information about, you know, serious and violent crimes.

      Please, feel free to provide some concrete examples of whistleblowers who were protected by the law. By the way -- I'm not an anarchist.

  2. Fools by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They are using .tk domains, just goes to show you what fools you're dealing with. Those domains won't last long.

    1. Re:Fools by metalmaster · · Score: 3, Informative
      I didnt read the .tk TOS, but the wiki alludes to content policing

      There are also content restrictions for free domains, banning sites containing sexual content, drug use, hate speech, firearms, and copyright infringement.

      Wikileaks may find itself violating all of those within a short time. Who knows.

  3. A good strategy for whistleblowers by Kanel · · Score: 2

    A whistleblower who wants to make certain documents of his/her employer public faces a problem:
    How do I stop the leak being traced back to me?
    This is especially relevant when you'r employed with the government, which in theory is very capable of tracing the origin of leaks, but every whistleblower runs this risk.
    But isn't it a great strategy to then tip off outsiders and make them retrieve and distribute the documents instead? letting the version number of old software at the office slip, or maybe a file path or two, could be enough. Maybe a USB stick could be "stolen" ? Even if your name gets implied, you can feign innocence in the court.

    1. Re:A good strategy for whistleblowers by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Informative

      Incidentially, this is common practice in the field of cartography. Map-making is big business, espicially in urban or suburban areas where maps need updating every few years. To prevent competitors copying their maps, publishers often include deliberate mistakes - usually an extra dead-end road or something of the type, so it wouldn't interfere with anyone trying to nagivate. As the extra road doesn't really exist, should it turn up in another publisher's book of maps it serves as definative proof of copying.

  4. This can be a tool to damage our freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well well, and I thought it could not get any worse.

    In this last month, we've seen "anonymous brazil" and "lulzsec brazil" branches trying to start up. They did a lot of DDoS on the federal government websites.

    The clinch? Some people are trying to pass a law that updates the criminal code to punish internet crimes, and one extremely important vote about it happened last week. Most of us are _against_ this criminal code update in the form it is currently being pushed, because the usual suspects included a lot of "screw the customer, screw the ISPs, let's get more money in the hands of the music and movie industries by criminalizing music/movie downloads AND get the ISPs to be our police for free!" through lobby. I should add this law would NOT be good for criminal hackers either (which is the one good thing about it), but since it was coopted to be a damage to society, even the party that controls the federal government right now was trying to get it cleaned up and pushing back against its current adoption.

    So, we have two supposedly hacker groups doing attacks in the government of a country in a way that makes it more LIKELY to pass legislation that is DAMAGING to civil liberty and internet use on that country (as well as to activities of criminal hackers), at the worst possible time. Coincidence? I think not. Whomever anoynmous brazil and lulzsec brazil are, they have been PAID WELL to do that. They've played anonymous and lulzsec for fools, too.

    Thank you very much, your bunch of naïve children. When you start handling weapons to attack government sites in a whim, you MUST be intelligent AND dilligent enough to not be used as tools by others, damn it! At the very least never do that before doing some throughout research on the local conditions, through a LARGE number of people you can trust to not be NARCs or worse! This is NOT fun, and NOT easy. But if you cannot be dilligent enough to do it, keep your DDoS on your own turf and never lend bots to anyone.

    1. Re:This can be a tool to damage our freedom by bky1701 · · Score: 2

      I find it absolutely amazing when morons like you blame activists for the government cracking down on activism. You're no better than the people who called sit-ins trespassing.

      How about instead of posting about how "*cry* they're taking away my freedoms because of lulzsec," you actually get off your lazy, apathetic ass and do something about the people trying to pass the unconstitutional laws you're complaining about? I've got a clue for you, since you've got none: they would pass whatever laws they do now eventually no matter what had happened, because of precisely people like you.

      Either standup or shut-up. Don't whine about those who do.

      --
      Great Intellect...
  5. Re:Wikileaks failed but did good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Julian Assange didn't do anything to Bradley Manning.

    Bradley Manning contacted Adrian Lamo, spilled the beans on everything he was doing and Adrian Lamo narced him out to Army counter-intelligence and FBI.

    Wikileaks did everything they could for Manning's protection - Manning fucked himself over by trusting Adrian Lamo.

    Quit being stupid.