There's Been a Leak At WikiLeaks

adeelarshad82 writes "German paper Der Freitag claims it has uncovered a batch of online unredacted diplomatic cables that came from WikiLeaks. Editor Steffen Kraft said he found a 'password protected csv file' that contained a 1.73GB cache of diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks. Its pages contained 'named or otherwise identifiable "informers" and "suspected intelligence agents" from Israel, Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan.'"

Comments

Password protected CSV?

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Is that based on the honor system?

Re:Password protected CSV?

[gnick]

For the first line of the file, enter:

This,file,is,protected,DO,NOT,read,next,line

Important bit not in summary

[ipX]

From the PCmag article:

In light of the sensitive nature of the information, Der Frietag has not published these documents, nor provided proof of their existence, but Der Spiegel, another German paper, has chimed in to confirm that they're real.

Re:Brad Manning == George W. Bush.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scooter Libby got away with treason, why shouldn't Manning?

Yawn

[drobety]

Der Freitag is associated with Daniel Domscheit-Berg (DDB) and the OpenLeaks project. I find it curious that Der Freitag "discovered the file on the internet" right when DDB has been making an ass of himself by deleting thousands of documents leaked by whistleblowers, and at a notable point of his campaign to discredit Wikileaks.

Re:Yawn

[eyenot]

Yeah, but wow, this guy's such a douche idiot fucking twat. And as somebody else here pointed out, now he's endangered all of those peoples' lives with no apparent rhyme or reason to his actions except

1. he hates wikileaks

2. he's a complete and utter moron

Re:Yawn

[dkleinsc]

There's another option:
3. He's an intelligence agent for either a government or business assigned to spy on Wikileaks, and then given the order to discredit them and take them out of commission without creating any martyrs. As a side effect, he might be setting up Openleaks to be a honeypot making it nice and easy to catch those trying to leak to the public.

Re:Yawn

[MoldySpore]

You beat me to it. Was just writing to point this out as well. The fact that it was "discovered on the internet" seems pretty shady to me. Way too convenient timing for this to happen considering it's associated with OpenLeaks and that douche DDB. OpenLeaks is a joke and only trying to ride the coattails of Wikileaks while at the same time beating it in the head with a brick to try and take it down. Seems rather counter productive. If your true goal as a leaking site is to leak stuff to show corruption or to help inform the uninformed, then having MORE leaks is good, not the other way around.

Identity fraud

[tepples]

You are one of many who has repeated the misconception that "information wants to be free" was intended to include information that can be used only to commit fraud using the identity of another.

Re:Identity fraud

[Skidborg]

So information to commit identity fraud should be kept private, but information that can probably get a person and their family killed should be passed around for all the world to see? Glad you have your priorities straight.

Re:Identity fraud

[cheekyjohnson]

So some people have priorities that say that they should have innocent people killed.

Possibly. But his statement was rather vague. He didn't list any reasons why someone would want to leak critical information about random people (or why someone was leaking the information that could get someone killed, for that matter). Someone could, for instance, believe that even though they could endanger the lives of the few by leaking the information in question, they could improve the lives of many other people (or at least expose corruption). For the "greater good" or something such as that.

You may disagree with that mentality, of course. And I'd say it's a false dilemma to say, "You either have to support leaking all information or leaking none at all." I don't believe the intention of leaking this information is to kill people, even if it puts them in danger.

Would you care to enlighten me by explaining your way of thinking?

Yes. I don't believe in absolute morals (nor do I believe that many people believing something makes the belief true). I suppose absolute morals could exist, but I have thus far seen no convincing evidence to prove it.

Re:Where's MegaLeaks?

[rednip]

Isn't it time for someone to simply leak every bit of every document they can get their hands on?

That guy is in jail already.

Re:oh fuck off.

[smelch]

I love your black and white world where since we tortured, we always tortured, and every piece of information collected was put to use for that. The point the OP was making was that those things are not true, most of them are just trying to stop the people who are torturing, murdering and terrorizing the people in their communities. But it's so easy for you to judge them, having never even begun to approach their situation.

Re:WikiLeaks is great and all, but naming names?

[LWATCDR]

That is just it. Wikileaks is not in any way unbiased or frankly professional. Wikileaks was never a good thing. It is like a guy that goes around punching people in the face. When he punches a bully you don't like it is great. When he punches you or your buddy it sucks.

There is a good reason why diplomatic cables are usually kept secret.

From Wikileaks @twitter

[Pop69]

"There has been no 'leak at WikiLeaks'. The issue relates to a mainstream media partner and a malicious individual."

Re:From Wikileaks @twitter

[bendodge]

Source Links:
https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/108261633859649536
https://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/108251897961517056

Re:oh fuck off.

[DrgnDancer]

Except that's mostly not what happens. Sure, there's a few assholes out there who take advantage, there always are. Most of these people are simply reporting things like "I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure Ali down the street is planting all those bombs that are killing your soldiers and my neighbors indiscriminately." You see, mostly US soldiers aren't out to randomly and indiscriminately arrest and torture people. Yes, yes, bad shit happened, people abused their positions, it was all over the news and I'm not defending it. There's no excuse for the scum bags that use a war as an excuse for thrill murders, or treat prisoners like dogs. Unhappily they exist, happily they aren't nearly as common as you seem to think.

I spent a year in Iraq. We dealt with these informers regularly. We verified and double checked everything they told us, because that's our responsibility. We caught some people trying to to settle scores or cause trouble. We also caught people with the information we were given. People that did some truly horrifying things. Not just to our guys, to their neighbors and countrymen. At the time I was over there, the bombs killed civilians as often or even more often than they killed soldiers. These days the balance has shifted even farther. The majority of casualties for these types of attacks are civilians.

Some links to further info (in German)

[drolli]

According to what i understand: The leak is confirmed (1) independently and also by one of the WL partners (4), which claimes it was in relation to Daniel Domscheids Bergs (DDB) return of this data and a human error on the side of wikileaks which resulted in a password and the data being published. It has been known to insiders for some time, claims a known german tech Journalist who wrote (3) in a comment to (1), direct link to his commen (6). Several of these suggest that the handling of the data which was returned by DDB to Wikileaks and the uncontrolled release of the data an password were the reasons for DDB to destroy the remaining WL data instead of returning it. Other sources claim he is wrong.

(1) http://netzpolitik.org/2011/leck-bei-wikileaks-bestatigt/

(2) https://netzpolitik.org/2011/leck-bei-wikileaks/

(3) http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/34/34398/1.html

(4) http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,782923,00.html

(5) http://www.golem.de/1108/85993.html

(6) http://netzpolitik.org/2011/leck-bei-wikileaks-bestatigt/#comment-434548

Re:WikiLeaks is great and all, but naming names?

[Ltap]

You must be joking. The whole summary is that this was 'leaked' from WikiLeaks -- hence, that it was an 'original' that had not yet been redacted.

Logic Fail

[igreaterthanu]

Manning didn't get away with treason, why should Scooter Libby?

Re:WikiLeaks is great and all, but naming names?

[Ihmhi]

WikiLeaks came under fire for refusing to redact names of civilian volunteers in Iraq and Afghanistan, leading to the volunteers getting death threats. Assange told a reporter that if people want names redacted, they'd have to pay for it.

You don't see Amnesty International leak civilian names while exposing tyranny and human rights violations around the globe.

Stop this shit.

Only flat-out fucking retards will believe you. Wikileaks has said again and again that they filter everything through a "no-harm" policy by removing any identifying features prior to release. They explicitly do everything they can to prevent harm.

Loads of people bring up the claim that they name names with regards to informants or undercover folks, but I've yet to see legitimate shit on the Wikileaks site that is exactly like that.

Disinformation aside, if there are any such examples of an informant being outed in such a manner (and subsequently receiving threats), I'd like to see them. I don't mind being proven wrong (in fact, it's rather refreshing - that's how we meatbags learn), but every time Wikileaks come up on Slashdot or anywhere else we have half-assed attempts to discredit them without putting out any actual evidence from reputable sources.

Arab Spring

[microbox]

There is a good reason why diplomatic cables are usually kept secret.

One must weigh the cost of keeping secrets against the cost of exposing corruption.

Would you prefer a world where wikileaks never existed, and the Arab Spring never happened?