WikiLeaks Launches New Platform, Privacy Study

itwbennett writes "WikiLeaks has launched a new submissions platform, along with a study of the global trade in surveillance products. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told press conference attendees in London that all the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Gmail users in the crowd were 'screwed.' 'The reality is intelligence contractors are selling right now to countries across the world mass surveillance systems for all of those products,' Assange said."

Comments

...some days later...

[betterunixthanunix]

New allegations surface that Julian Assange was sacrificing babies to Satan while raping women in Sweden! More at 10...

Re:...some days later...

[Gibgezr]

"there really are two completely random women, and he has admitted to having sex with them. What was he thinking?" Really? I wish there was a mod selection for "written by a nerd with no apparent connection to reality".

Re:...some days later...

[martin-boundary]

What has always bothered me about that, besides the obvious conspiracy theories, is that he effectively allowed that accusation to take form.

You're an idiot. That's not how character assassination works. The reason it works is that the enemies sit down and review an existing profile of the victim, and then twist some convenient detail they find into something bad. That works with anybody, because the details of the "bad" can always be different and always tailored to the one individual.

So you've got it entirely backwards. It's not that he should have been careful to protect himself against a rape allegation, it's that some allegation was tailored to fit him, and here it just happened to be rape. If he had been a eunuch, it could have been a gambling allegation, or maybe that he stole money from someone who they could convince or pay to say that, or any number of other things.

CIA, FBI counter with "Nu-uhh"

[elrous0]

In response to questions about privacy concerns, various government intelligence organizations from around the world, along with industry representative from Google, Apple, et. al. assembled at the first annual "Nope, Nothing to See Here" Privacy and Security Conference in London. "We are very pleased to report that there is nothing to these silly rumors. We've examined the concerns and determined that there is no need to worry," announced conference chair Janet Napolitano. The conference closed several minutes later, with industry representatives congratulating each other on dealing with all the privacy concerns in their products. "See, I told you there was no need to worry," said Apple CEO Tim Cook, shaking hands with Google CEO Larry Page.

Whatever Julian

[darien.train]

No matter how many acts of journalism this guys commits I will never see him as a journalist. I have to like someone personally first and also make sure they have a flawless record using a standard that I set and reserve only for him. Until this impossible standard is met I will bash in any way I can regardless of logic and back calls for his extrajudicial murder.

It's really the only sensible path Very Serious People can take.

Re:Whatever Julian

[ackthpt]

No matter how many acts of journalism this guys commits I will never see him as a journalist. I have to like someone personally first and also make sure they have a flawless record using a standard that I set and reserve only for him. Until this impossible standard is met I will bash in any way I can regardless of logic and back calls for his extrajudicial murder.

It's really the only sensible path Very Serious People can take.

He's a facilitator. He made vast amounts of information available. He doesn't claim to the the journo or editor - that's the audience he's feeding to - assuming they'll do their job proper. You're always free to sift through the documents yourself, to stimulate your own personal outrage or mistrust of various world leaders, govenment functionaries, paper shufflers, rubber-stampers and pencil-pushers. Don't condemn the man for his journalistic shortcomings.

Re:Whatever Julian

[Anonymous Coward]

for profit journalism has been corrupted so badly by the money and trying to make really rich people even richer that I no longer see them as journalists.

Re:Whatever Julian

[darien.train]

I think your snark detector is broken.

JA describes himself (accurately IMO) as a publisher which is an act of journalism one engages in without being an actual journalist. It's a more general term.

Whenever I look around at our current field of "respected" journalists and then back at JA I don't know how one can come to the conclusion that he's the evil one.

Re:Whatever Julian

[poetmatt]

The reality of the 21st century is that *everyone* can be a journalist, whether you consider them one or not. You can define it any way you want, but anyone can be a part of the press: reporting, feedback, facilitating, etc. Good/factual/relevant journalist? That's up to one's own interpretation.

So what you call it, isn't really relevant. The laws haven't been updated to respect this, but with technology it's held true for quite some time.

"all the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Gmail users"

[ickleberry]

Running one's own email & XMPP server FTW and most of the privacy-invading features of Android can be disabled

Also no my life hasn't turned to shit, I don't spend 6 hours every evening trying to manage these things while wearing a tinfoil hat. Yes sometimes changes need to be made when SSL certificates expire (although I prefer self-signed for a lot of this stuff, as Governments can compel CA's to issue false certs I consider them of little value) or what recently happened was the guy who wrote my mail server stopped developing it and IMAP was always just around the corner so I finally had to install a "proper" email server which had a bit of a learning curve but it's not terribly unweildly either.

Re:"all the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Gmail users"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is kind of the problem with privacy.

I think it's important and people need to be taking action now before it is too late to go back.. however I _personally_ don't feel the impact from invasions of my privacy.

I don't have any medical issues I'd like to keep secret, I don't have any embarrassing purchases, I don't care if people know how much money I have or my current location (well, I wouldn't want my location public to anyone who wants it for personal safety reasons.. but government/law enforcement.. no problem), don't care if people know what I do for a living, etc...

In other words: I'm boring and know it! All that said, I think that if I did have any of that, I have the right to keep it private and so does everyone else.

It's hard to explain to someone why protecting our right to privacy is important, because most people fall in the same boat as I do when it comes to their personal privacy. People willingly post the most relevant info about themselves on social media sites already, so it's a hard sell.

Re:"all the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Gmail users"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are exactly the kind of person that oppressive governments want, boring, complacent, not a threat to the status quo. But the instant you try to make waves, to make any changes for the better, that's when they will come for you.

The continuing increases in surveillance, loss of privacy, militarization of the police, increased use of "non-lethal" weapons for crowd control, erosion of people's rights, corporate dominance over governments, union busting, dismantling public education, etc., etc., are all just symptoms of the coming world-wide fascist state.

But as long is it doesn't directly interfere with the worker-drones ability to make a little money at a menial job, then go home and drink beer while watching mindless entertainment... well, so be it, they weren't using those rights anyway.

Re:"all the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Gmail users"

[GameboyRMH]

From your first sentence I thought you were going to point out that the problem with privacy is that you have to be a computer security expert to achieve it.

Ridiculous is the state of our society

[unity100]

When non government organizations end up doing the tasks governments should be doing, but not doing, and end up getting prosecuted for it.

Re:EFF off

[betterunixthanunix]

Yeah, it's not like Assange was involved with the Cypherpunks or ever wrote any encryption software.

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

Human Rights

[betterunixthanunix]

From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

You have the right to privacy; that right is not predicated on being a political dissident. The fact that these companies are undermining that right is what Assange is referring to when he says that you have been screwed.

Re:EFF off

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing Assange is accomplishing that the EFF (from my perspective anyway) has failed to do is get people talking about these issues. Not geeks on slashdot, but your every day guy. To seriously fight back against erroding privacy, you need a huge mass of people to take a stand, and the problem has always been that most people just don't care.

He may be an attention seeking asshole, but I think we kinda need that.

Re:EFF off

[betterunixthanunix]

Software is never going to completely defend your privacy

Irrelevant; the point is to make it expensive to engage in mass surveillance, not to make it impossible.

the privacy of the millions upon millions of ordinary users who have never heard of your super-awesome encryption software

Yet the number of Tor users has been growing steadily over the past few years, and every time an authoritarian government tries to block Tor more people become interested in it.

Only the 'legalware' of challenging government (and non-governmental) intrusion in the courts can ultimately defend your rights.

Thus explaining this:

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

And no, I think it's absurd that writing encryption software entitles you to lead the struggle vs survelliance.

You claimed that Julian Assange had no right to speak about online privacy because he had no experience with it. That is plainly false given his involvement with the cypherpunks movement and his involvement with a deniable encryption system. Now you are claiming that is not enough? Somehow, I think you are just an anti-Assange/anti-Wikileaks shill.

Re:~** Screwed **~

[oldredlion]

Yes, now they will know that I messaged my girlfriend to grab some coffee on her way home. I'm definitely screwed!

Over here in the UK we've got a little bit of a scandal going on, about listening in to other people's voice messages. That came about because people were accessing official sources (eg PNC, DVLA) and getting phone numbers and such like.

Thing is, if they don't need to go the official route - they just go via some app installed on people's phones, or through their email system - then there is little chance that normal people will be able to stop it.

The more of us techie people that knows it is going on and spreads the word, the more chance that normal people will take note and maybe take some precautions.

4th amendment

[betterunixthanunix]

From the constitution of the United States:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

American citizens have a right to privacy and are supposed to be free from broad, non-specific searches (e.g. like the NSA wiretapping program). The fact that we have strayed from our founding principles is another story entirely; the right has not been official revoked so much as simply ignored.

So, what to use instead?

[Dripdry]

Alright, we've gotten the "I troll against whatever /. is saying today" and some insightfuls out of the way... Next step: What do we use instead of gmail et al? Suggestions anyone?

Re:They have to have the capability

[betterunixthanunix]

Funny how law enforcement officers were able to do their jobs before mass surveillance technologies became available. You know, back in the days where privacy was guaranteed by the technical limitations of law enforcement? Before wiretapping, before CALEA, before the crypto wars, back when privacy rights were actually respected in free societies, the police were still able to do their jobs.

Law enforcement agencies are more powerful today than at any other point in human history. Why are we not talking about reducing that power?

Alternative view

[betterunixthanunix]

Facebook has become the world's biggest distraction, and people living under authoritarian governments are so distracted by Facebook and similar sites that they have stopped paying attention to politics. Additionally, authoritarian governments have already started using publicly available information on Facebook to track down dissidents for prosecution. Facebook has little reason to fight against any government demands for information, especially in the United States.

I would place Facebook near the bottom of the list of sites that have made useful contributions to human rights or democracy. It is possible that 4chan has done more than Facebook to spread democracy and freedom.