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Wikileaks Releases A Massive "Insurance" File That No One Can Open
An anonymous reader writes "Anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks just released a treasure trove of files, that at least for now, you can't read. The group, which has been assisting ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden after he leaked top-secret documents to the media, posted links for about 400 gigabytes of files on their Facebook page Saturday, and asked their fans to download and mirror them elsewhere."
If the NSA suspects that certain of their internal documents occur in the insurance files, can't they use these as cribs to break the encryption?
How does one determine the viability of cribs for data of a certain size? E.g. if one is cracking 400GB of data encrypted with a 4096 bit RSA key, how helpful is a 4GB crib?
.: Semper Absurda
Napoleon declared to his troops that a field marshal’s baton was tucked into every soldier’s knapsack, a powerful signal to people conditioned to accept personal limits on their careers as dictated by the class system. So, is this the modern equivalent with a thousand fingers resting upon the decode button in an attempt to deflect the wrath of the NSA onto others?
It's more likely that they've released the key for this file to the people they want insurance from. "See what we've got? All we need to do is release the key and everyone will know." They release these keys to a small set of folks around the world so they can publish the key if they need to. I bet that initial distribution list includes a senator and a head fo the CIA or something like that.
The last insurance file was spoiled by a news agency that screwed up handling the private key, and so wikileaks mitigated danger by making the leak obvious so that anyone on it could protect themselves.
It's basically an "oh shit, someone spilled blood in the water and the sharks are on their way, sound the alarm so people can get the hell out of the water."
And personally, I think it was an inside job from an intelligence agency that wished to ruin wikileaks by painting it as reckless, probably figuring that even leaking it to the news under seal was damaging enough that there was nothing more to be lost smearing wikileaks.
Gay rights is not a good litmus test of human rights. I find womens rights to be a better gauge. And if he isn't gay, why should he use that as a metric for human rights? In the US, if we are better to our gays, and worse to our (something else), does that make us any better?
Learn to love Alaska
But the government has worked hard to make sure it doesn't happen. Because "responsible disclosure" would require the governments involved to work with and support wikileaks, and they don't want to be seen to have done that.
Learn to love Alaska
True enough, but it's simply publicizing something that likely happened a long time ago. How many people think that Wikileaks kept the file on a laptop in somebody's house? It's always been distributed (at least Wikileaks would be dumber than a politician not to do that).
They've just made it a public spectacle. That's all.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Have they security vetted everyone who does their redaction for them? If not, then what's the point in doing the redaction other than public relations theatre?
The idea (I think) is that these files will be released in time, but releasing them all at once, but encrypted, is to discourage governments from arresting or killing the high-ups of WikiLeaks. The info will come out, just like it did last time (wasn't the last insurance file the bulk of cables that was eventually released?), but this is a mechanism for doing that while protecting themselves.
In this case I believe Snowden holds the final encryption key, not Wikileaks.
He has stated he doesn't want to harm the US, and hopes the people or congress steps in and stops the NSA abuse without having to release the most damning evidence. Its not attention whoring, its a pretty good understanding of human nature. The whole discussion would be yesterdays news had he released it all at once. Amazingly, for a young man, he understands that short sharp shocks are easily put to bed by demonizing the source and burying the issue, and a drum beat of news has more effect.
You can see this going on today.
After a few political hacks attempting to cast him as a traitor were met with an equal amount of push-back calling him a hero, the administration abruptly changed tactics.
1) They stopped talking about Snowden.
2) They have started trying to prove that the spying is actually good for America. (Essentially owning the spying in the hopes the public will go along.)
3) They rushed to close embassies on the slimmest of evidence and are hoping desperately that there will in fact be some actual attacks.
So far the terrorists don't seem willing to play along. (In fact I believe the so-called intercepted "conference call" was made up of whole cloth, or was simply the terrorists "playing" the NSA. Since when to terrorists hold conference calls?. The attacks were supposed to happen last week, yet nothing at all is happening that wasn't already in progress in Egypt and Syria).
So its about time for a couple more of Snowden's Shoes to drop.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You act like they are treated as slaves. I attended the wedding of my brother-in-law to his now-husband just 4 weeks ago, right here in the good ol' United States. I don't recall either of them being tied up with chains (although, he did wear a rainbow feather boa at one point...).
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I don't give a fuck how many women Bill Clinton and Anthony Wiener have sex with. As long as it's between two consenting adults, it's not my problem. It would only becomes my problem if they started asking for government benefits because of their sex lives.
...but one downside (to Snowden/Wikileaks) of them giving interested government parties the key is then they will know exactly what can be used against them, and can then mitigate against the damage. Right now, the government is just being caught in a snare of lies; each subsequent release of information exposes the prior release's damage control efforts.
so if I down loaded this in the uk, I could be sent to prison for not giving the authorities the password that I don't have... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_lawt