The Guardian and the Wikileaks Encryption Key

rtfa-troll writes "Bruce Schneier has a good article explaining how the Guardian released the encryption key for the WikiLeaks cables and destroyed the main protection against the release of informers' personal information. The comments in Schneier's blog fill in details of how exactly WikiLeaks' secondary file security protections were also bypassed. Now the Guardian has an article that Assange risks arrest by Australia over the latest leaks, which include information about an Australian intelligence officer. They even say, 'We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk,' and go on to state that 'The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone,' something which seems clearly debunked in the analysis on Schneier's blog."

Comments

Links & hints to the data

[mcantsin]

http://cryptome.org/z/z.7z (368MB) pwd: ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay# http://pastebin.com/SBq9Xpsr http://cryptome.org/xyz/x.gpg.torrent (Returns xyz_x.gpg, 409MB. No passphrase yet) http://cryptome.org/xyz/y.gpg.torrent (Returns xyz_y.gpg, 88MB. No passphrase yet) http://cryptome.org/xyz/y-docs.gpg.torrent (Returns xyz_y-docs.gpg, 8MB. No passphrase yet) http://cryptome.org/xyz/z.gpg.torrent (Returns xyz_z.gpg, 368MB. Passphrase below) "xyz_z.gpg" and "z.gpg" appear to be identical and both decrypt to "z.7z." The decrypted file is "z.7z," 368MB, which unzips to "cables.csv," about 1.7GB in size, dated 4/12/2010.

Re:Links & hints to the data

[FoolishOwl]

Including the point-blank firing of weapons into the heads of toddlers.

I'm guessing you meant this:

WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says

Bradley Manning did the right thing.

Re:Links & hints to the data

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

No "few bad apples".

An airstrike was called in, to try and destroy evidence of the scene.

These are beginning to emerge as "business as usual" occurrences from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, in history, we revile the Wehrmacht of Nazis for this same activity.

Re:Links & hints to the data

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

They accepted the risks when they engaged in the covert operations to begin with. People who uncover secrets are not responsible for deaths -- killers are.

If your ex will kill you if he/she knows where you live, and I know your ex will do that, and I tell your ex where you live, I am *not* blameless

If you got in bed with a psycho, deliberately betrayed him/her without his/her knowledge, and then broke up and went into hiding--but they didn't know you did anything--then me telling your ex that it was you, and what you did, is karma. Don't get me wrong, it's also me being an asshole, unless I'm friends with your ex and care more about him/her than you, but you did something wrong, you knew you did, you knew they'd be mad, and whatever your reason, it's on your damn head.

You're painting "Psycho ex" as something inevitable, a force of nature. Don't. Don't make them something mythical. They exist, and they exist because people were assholes to them and fucked up their lives. Surprise surprise, when you do the same, you get reamed for it. Similarly, don't consider tyrants and other corrupt assholes to be a force of nature, just because you can't do anything about them. Every single one of the situations in the world has a history, even if you don't care, even if you had nothing to do with it, even if you can't change it, now or ever.

Re:Links & hints to the data

[bhcompy]

"1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information..."

1,300 accessories to murder, I'd say.

Re:Links & hints to the data

[AliasMarlowe]

I love how all the small-government types - the ones who think that the notions of commonwealth are somehow equivalent to boogieman socialism - get all righteously pro-State, when it comes to WikiLeaks. It is a curious kind of cognitive dissonance.

It is a cognitive dissonance which forms part of a larger pattern. There is even a freely downloadable book on the topic, written by a psychology professor.

Re:Links & hints to the data

[hxnwix]

"1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information..."

1,300 accessories to murder, I'd say.

Let's put that in context:

The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."

Removing the context as you did such that Assange apparently confessed to murder strikes me as rather dishonest. Assange has made real mistakes; focus on those unless your intent is merely to discredit his critics.

DER SPIEGEL has a much better writeup

[SmilingBoy]

The Schneier article is very speculative and doesn't have many facts.

DER SPIEGEL has a much better and more detailed account: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783778,00.html

Re:DER SPIEGEL has a much better writeup

[rtfa-troll]

The Spiegel article is referenced by Schneier so it's there for people to read. However, in one, but the most crucial, aspect the Spiegel article is wrong. It accepts the statement that the Guardian believed password was temporary at face value.

In a statement the Guardian rejected the accusations from Wikileaks, explaining that the paper had been told the password was temporary and would be deleted within hours. "No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files," the statement said. "That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."

What's new in Schneier's article is that that is pretty clearly debunked. This was a standard GPG/PGP archive which had already been distributed. There was absolutely no reason to hand out the correct password and doing so is a clear breach of IT security norms (never give your password to anybody) for no good reason.

Clarification

[I(rispee_I(reme]

This is not the Wikileaks insurance file, which remains encrypted.

This is a different file, that the Guardian was privy to, and was then mirrored.
The password to this other file was published in a book.

I only mention this because the previous /. post on this topic had a lot of replies with the mentality that wikileaks has surrendered its insurance. Such is not the case.