Slashdot Mirror
Info Leak Wars To Get Messier
jfruh writes "As we discussed this weekend, David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, was detained while transporting encrypted data on the Snowden affair from Berlin; all his electronics were seized. Over at the Guardian offices, British police destroyed more of the newspaper's hard drives. Privacy blogger Dan Tynan sees where this one is going: reporters like Greenwald are going to stop even bothering to be circumspect with their revelations. Sorting through the contents of such infocaches to redact sensitive information just gives the government time to track you down. Eventually, the information will just be dumped online, warts and all, as soon as someone who wants the information public gets ahold of it."
'Nuff said.
means that it will be harder to decipher what is going on. I realize all reporters have a bias, but they at least go through most of the material and point out the notable items. Now whomever is interested will need to go through the data dumps for the interesting stuff. That will make the "reporting" less effective.
"To stop the terrorists."
Do it and do it now. The news doesn't need censorship.
A-Gonna Fall...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When you say all the info will be dumped online, do you mean the shocking articles leaked by Snowden, or my porn browsing history?
They are going to be cataloged by French astronomers?
That they are after him !!
The British police did not destroy the newspaper's hard drives. They just watched and took notes and photos while the paper's people destroyed the hard drives. This in no way justifies the actions of the British government, which are completely reprehensible.
I agree with Dan Tynan. Future leaks will be dumped without regard for how much they might hurt individuals or groups only peripherally involved. In a surveillance culture, that may be the only way whistleblowers can continue to do what is right.
And? If the government has nothing to hide, as they've repeatedly claimed, then what's the problem?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
They must not understand the concept of a digital backup copy. You can take digital files of even gigantic sizes and copy them within minutes. They'd need to destroy every single copy at the same time before someone made another copy. No intimidation tactic is going to work at this point. There are copies around the world of what Snowden took with him.
You take all of the files and dump them on ThePirateBay, Wikileaks, or wherever, and the government can't stop it. No amount of threats or harassment can prevent people from getting the information once it is out in the open. It would be like trying to return used paint to the bucket or gluing together a smashed window pane. A useless exercise.
The government lost the information war. They are going to need to refocus on something else to win. Martial law. Election stealing. Murdering people. Extortion. At that point you're no longer looking at democracy and civilization but totalitarianism and military rule. We already lock up every marijuana user. Why not start locking up "terror violators" or some other nonsense 'crime'?
This is the breaking point. Will people vote in politicians who will stop the wars (terror, drugs, guns, privacy)? Or are we going to get another Bush/Obama clone?
Who says his electronics were destroyed? Do you have a source for that assertion?
Seized does not mean destroyed.
Depends on who's doing the publishing, and why.
Most journalists, contrary to current propaganda, are averagely patriotic people who don't act purely out of malice against their country, or even its government. They do what they do because they think it's right. To maintain that belief, they need to satisfy themselves that what they're publishing won't seriously damage their country's legitimate interests, or harm innocent people.
I'd say a more likely outcome is that less of the leaking will be done by established news organisations - the kind that have a longstanding reputation and permanent physical presence in any country - and more will be done by people like Wikileaks, who are more secretive, more spread out, and altogether a harder target for this kind of retaliation.
Because the whole, unvarnished truth is boring. Note the backpedal by The Guardian in "back doors in Facebook and google". Knowing that there really are rules and good people trying to do their best for the world doesn't sell papers.
Geebus, the factual errors on these summaries are becoming eye-watering!
The Guardian destroyed the laptop and the hard drive rather than turn them over. Shit, the title of the article has that in it:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london
I consider it a brave act of defiance on the part of the Guardian, good for them. It won't affect the fact that there's probably stashed copies of this stuff everywhere but the British Authorities wanted the actual hardware, so rather than give it to them they used an angle grinder themselves.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Put it out there, let some people get outed and killed, they are collaborator scum anyway. Sure it sounds harsh and it is, but until the security apparatus suffers some major political damage and loses some people they think of as friends they will never appreciate the harm all there secrets are doing. They have proven this over and over again.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Considering this news...
Miranda's property was seized not destroyed. And he wants it back.
.."threat" of legal action? I get these every other day.
and if you are proposing The Guardian (or similar) simply offer up the dump for "crowdsourcing"-type journalism, I would suggest they then would be:
(a:) failing in their jobs as journalists
(b:) refer you to their "Sara Palin Email" fiasco.
Dont get me wrong, I praise them (Graun) otherwise, mainly for being the only reliable media source to both care and push the story. However, I fail to see exactly why they bowed down to (IMO) entirely resistible pressure here; merely stating that the act of destroying was "symbolic" remains BS - symbolic works *both ways*, chaps.
this is the way of the electronic revolution, where once again (like in the village), whatever you do is "public", and you better behave the way you are "supposed" to. the only fun part of the story is watching the watchers spazz out as they look through their panopticon and discover a big eyeball blinking at them.
"Lost time is not found again."
Are the new "Moon landing Hoaxers," 9/11 "Truthers" and Holocaust deniers all rolled up into one. Your cognitive bias requires you to believe in some monolithic evil government conspiracy, from the same government that couldn't dry clean Monica Lewinski's dress. Lame. If Greenwald and Snowden have what they claim, lay it the duck out or shut the fuck up. My bet is they can't and they're laying out only the worst sounding bits and withholding the rest to mislead everyone.
Could be that's what they really want. Escalation, more power, more budget, more relevance at least in their own eyes. Why else would they target reporters and their partners?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
I call bovine excrement on the picture.
'The remains of a computer that held files leaked by Edward Snowden to the Guardian and destroyed at the behest of the UK government. Photograph: Roger Tooth"
These parts obviously have nothing to do with each other. I see a destroyed PCI-e Videocard, and somthing that may be a small all-in-one desktop motherboard? Two destroyed laptop motherboards that look like they MIGHT be Apple parts but do NOT appear to be Macbook Air motherboards. And then a Macbook Air (?)
Is there any repair tech here that can identify these boards?
But no matter what.. WHERE IS THE STORAGE PEOPLE? There is othing in the picture that holds data... like flash memory or harddrives.
Except for the laptop which seems to be unharmed....
Messier 91?
Basically, escalation such as this will move from Write Once (with backup) to Write Many with Encryption.
Many encrypted copies on many devices, many burner phones, copied with many public devices by many people.
Information just wants to be free - it's how we designed the Internet in the first place.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Info Leak Wars cannot get Messier because Charles Messier had been dead for a couple centuries by now.
It belongs to everyone.
We are at war.
Casualties don't matter, only the outcome.
Post it in a big torrent at every tracker on the planet.
Unleash the fucking fury.
Terrorism doesn't exist.
Sever heads.
The real culprits of 9/11? (We all KNOW this isn't over, yet.)
never any mod points when you need them. This actually did make me laugh out loud.
M64?
Yakety Sax
Its more likely that their recent moves have been carefully considered. They move. They watch how the opposition moves. Then they go for the kill.
They dont have to understand differential equations to be cunning. And they practice cunning every day. Even on each other. Its foolish to call
them stupid or ignorant.
The motherboards to either size are MacBook Pros; here's a picture showing the same board in a MacBook Pro teardown.
http://9to5mac.com/2012/06/13/ifixit-tears-down-the-new-retina-macbook-pro-calls-it-least-repairable-laptop-ever/macbook-pro-teardown/
The U-shaped divot is a cutout for one of the two fan assemblies.
The green board isn't an Apple board. The red one is only an Apple board if someone stole a prototype, which is unlikley.
BTW: The article makes it pretty clear that the tech doing the destruction was a guardian employee, and that the act was done as a symbolic gesture.
Seriously wondering why I don't hear anyone insisting the governments to justify themselves.. i.e. if we're going to need all this surveillance to 'catch the terrorists' show us how much terrorism really is going on, how many you caught, etc. But at the same time, show us your policy that mitigates the harboring of hatred towards 'us' that creates extremist/terrorist ideals.
Show me how to catch these guys is almost impossible with warrants, adversarial courts and due process.
Make the case.
So far, I am far from convinced that any of this is necessary.
Fuck the NSA. Fuck the USA. Fuck the UK. Fuck all these fascist pigs.
Fuck them. Fuck their families. Fuck their dogs.
Blow them up in their cars. Blow them up on the street. Blow up their datacenters.
Fuck this human waste.
Greenwald's partner publicly acknowledged he was acting as a mule, ferrying encrypted information between Greenwald amd Poitras. He is fair game. And this is a fight. Greenwald's indignancy is uncalled for. And his 'I'll get even' vengeance only diminishes his credibility. He is one of the most important journalists of our time. He's in a brass knuckle fight with ruthless enemies. He needs to remain of sober thought, calm and simply continue to give his enemies enough rope to hang themselves. He should also take Snowden's advice: the story is unbridled government surveillance of its own citizens, secret courts, secret orders... The story is not Snowden, not Snowden's girlfriend, not Snowden's dad, not Greenwald's husband. The government wants to burn news cycles on these human interest stories because it takes people's attention away from the fact they are acting above the law and undermining our core democratic principles that has allowed our civil society to flourish.
The US Government and the NSA, the UK government, Etc. are behaving badly and of course they are used to getting things their way. What I mean is that in public relations you have clients that understand that when the truth comes out, not matter how awful the best thing to do is to get out in front of the story with the actual real truth. Then you have clients who run from the truth, that is a bad client.
Telling more lies, half lies, lies of omission, threatening witnesses and reporters who are covering the story, Etc only make it worse.. Indeed that is what is happening here.. The government clearly isn't accepting that but until they do, there story will grow and grow and those telling the story will get stronger, gain more respect from the publics, Etc.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I just can't imagine the scene where the decision was made for the Met to detain David Miranda was made without "send in the clowns" playing as the backing track.
Or they were neither stupid nor just sending a message. Consider that they could have snatched him off the street (black hood and trip to a camp) either vanishing him or leaving him the victim of a gay-bashing murder. My guess is they wanted to get him before he left the airport for some reason - and given 5's penchant for lawyers (and institutional memory) they knew the legal implications (they will lose in court). Factor in Greenwald's admitted ignorance of encryption and I can imagine a scenario where the arrest and seizure was worthwhile.
Despite what the majority of posters on /. "believe" effective security is extremely difficult. (HINT: gut instincts are the enemy of effective security)
The Wikileaks insurance policy is only as effective as the deadman key release strategy
Consider that NSA/CIA et al probably don't know for certain what Snowden had - so regardless of whether the information release is stopped - simply knowing who has it, and what it is, may be a major victory. Look at how effective targeting key members of Wikileaks has been in stopping more significant uploads to them.
All I see is "The fire is burning so lets pour on more gas and fan the flames!" No one has thought about how damaging this stuff could be to not just one nation but to all involved.
It is unfortunate that the U.S. has had it's reputation put into the blender and become a hated nation by those in the world (including those in it's own country- from what I can gather from these posts). Many citizens in the U.S. are divided on how to secure the country (including members of Congress).
But to somehow think that just releasing all of this information which was basically stolen from secured locations is a good thing is ludicrous. Whistle-blower or not what Snowden did could potentially harm the U.S. and/or it's allies (according to various news sources and the sound bytes given by Snowden himself). Judging from what has been said in the news I cannot imagine that any European countries (government-wise) would want any of this information released. From what I've read in various articles this is a global problem (not just the UK or the U.S.). The thing is every country as its own secret organization or section that does things that no one wants to know about or should know about. They're secret for a reason. Go read up on the Cold War. Because of operatives on both sides we didn't have a nuclear war.
If citizens are pissed about how the government is behaving then vote the damn people in your district/province out of office. Hell run for office yourself using a grassroots movement. Chanting "Burn Baby Burn!" helps no one. Thinking that somehow forcing the government's hand is a good thing is idiocy at the least and complete lunacy at best. Citizens in the western world need to get off their lazy asses and take control of their government the proper way, not by calling for what is all intents and purposes anarchy, but by becoming active in the political realm. It could be as much as complaining to your local rep. If you're in the US and think that Corporations control every Congressman you're sadly mistaken. I've seen several that are definitely not bought by companies. The more vocal, prominent ones might be...but those guys don't run everything. They just tend to be louder than the rest. It takes the group to make decisions and the group at the moment is completely divided on what to do. Hopefully this means people are calling their representatives.
Spider Jerusalem
This one is about as accurate as an NSA report to Congress.
The Guardian could have said "No" and taken the government to court, but it didn't. They're a bunch of wankers.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I really wonder if the British authorities really understand what they are doing. They detained a person who is very important to a reporter who just happens to have the keys to gigabytes of intelligence secrets belonging to their closest ally, an ally they really do not want to get too angry at them. This reporter can fuck both of them over by letting go some juicy bits. Blackmail against a superpower and a former superpower is a dangerous game but for the moment, the good guys hold all the cards. Do they, does the American intelligence community, really understand that they are playing with fire?
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
That's quite an allegation. Do we have any reason to believe that Miranda was transporting anything of the kind?
This article is worthless. Big picture of an older white father figure type dragging a brown attractive young man with thick lips, who is apparently gay. Whatever actual issues are being discussed in and around this issue are inescapably eclipsed by so much cognitive bias you're better off calling rush limbaugh to agree/disagree on whatever irrelevance he's getting paid more in a day than you make in a year to get you to pay attention to.
If you're watching it, it's for you.
Another solution is to publish the entire content, but encrypted. This gives reporters with the decryption key to sift through and publish only the parts they want. Meanwhile the government cannot destroy the many copies of the encrypted archive.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
The 0.00001% of Americans who are violent nutjobs might stop drinking Coors Lite long enough to shoot a transformer on a pole somewhere. The vast majority will keep on watching TV. Change will happen when the infrastructure crumbles because reality doesn't listen to the media, or corporations, or their purchased governments.
There is outrage by politicians, but cops and the lettered agencies are (literally) ripping hard disks apart. Thank God for copies! On destruction, people hear the news and publish widely across the 'net. Nothing disinfects like sunshine.
Or to put it another way, if he wasn't a journalist then wtf did they detain him for 9 hours for?
There would be no point unless he was acting in the capacity as a journalist.
Lets see, his partner Mr. Greenwald (the one actually reporting on Snowden) thinks :-
Intimidating the 'enemy' seems to be the point.
Yea, but once it all comes out, and we read it ... we realize there isn't anything amazing or unknown in it, and the whole big deal was actually nothing new.
Interesting whitewash.
The details in the released cables was one of the triggers that sparked the Tunisian revolution. Maybe not new or important to you, but I imagine the Tunisians would beg to differ.
...you wasted more of your time venting about it. Not to mentioned getting trolled badly. Job accomplished ^_^
Of course the real reason you're saying this is because the more we know, the more we know the entire military-surviellance state is based on unjustifiable power grabs for the sake of grabbing power.
They're going to start cataloguing all the leaks and give them Messier numbers? Then instead of the "Miranda incident" they can just refer to "scandal M744", and instead of "that time they destroyed the Guardian's computers" they can just say "just like M810".
Hey, that's not such a bad idea. At the rate these illegal abuses are mounting up, it's difficult to keep track without some kind of list...
Since easiest thing to sell, IS FEAR - ask any life insurance salesman: Fear sells, & get contracts for HUGE sums (get it now?)
* Sad to say it almost - as it says pretty rotten things about humanity itself...
(IF only more folks were motivated like say, Nikola Tesla was - we'd be 200-300++ yrs. more advanced in technologies of most all kinds by now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_5_hJTJpRc )
Most are motivated by "their GOD, the Holy Dollar" instead (immediate concerns), but the shame of that? Is you can't take it with you when you kick the bucket...
APK
P.S.=> The world can be an UGLY place with a lot of "hidden ulterior motives" you're told 1 thing is the reason for, but mostly, it's usually ALL about "the benjamins" (unfortunately)... apk
They had evidence. They just couldn't use it in a court of law, because they had to admit that everything that Snowden stole was true. They were flushing him out in the hope they would get something that could stick without having to reveal any "secrets" and indeed to intimidate him.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I don't really trust journalists either, they will distort facts for a story.
I'd rather have the raw information without any alterations by anyone. Torrent the lot and let the world read it. Lets see how the fascist police state likes that.
Poor taste is getting all hysterical about 9-11 (good lord, what was that all about...), claiming she can't collaborate with people, and then declaring she's "going off the Internet."
Does she not know how to install GPG or something? She could've been a force to help get people into using GPG/PGP and whatnot (plus people have pointed out there's services like Kolab), but instead she just Left The Reservation.
Just because someone has been a hero doesn't grant *you* a magical shield to run around deflecting criticism of their actions.
Please help metamoderate.
The Guardian could have said "No" and taken the government to court, but it didn't. They're a bunch of wankers.
And you're a fucking moron. Thank god you're not in charge of anything important.
They did it because they did not want the government to have a copy of the data. You know, protecting sources and not giving the government a chance top prepare and all that. Like not giving the government a chance to pass injunctions restricting publication of certain facts.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
As we discussed this weekend, David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, was detained while transporting encrypted data on the Snowden affair from Berlin
This is pure speculation; there is no evidence that he was in fact "transporting encrypted data" or any information whatsoever related to the "Snowden affair".
Are the gloves coming off? The potential actions possible by the US government. Statements by Obama indicate he believes he has the authority to kill those connected to terrorism. The US and GB could move to kill everyone connected to their problem. Occupy the Guardian offices both in the US and GB with the more causilties the better. Neither the US or GB governments seem to see legal restrictions as any check on their powers. Lets hope that Greenwald and the Guardian are not naive and have prepared for such a possibilty because if the haven't they may pay with their lives.
Does not mean you have a valid case.
It's is just another sound bite.
The NRA exists solely to promote the right of mostly-rural middle-aged white men to own ridiculously large gun collections, and to lobby for the right to hunt endangered species wherever they see fit. All the Defenders of the Constitution banner-waving is just a convenient PR tool.
These wannabe Minutemen and Defenders of Truth, Justice, and the American Way also happen to be ardent Law 'n Order enthusiasts and blindly patriotic.
If it ever came down to popular insurrection against the government, most of these clowns will either be cowering in their basements counting their bullets or actively supporting the government in the fight against the Un-Amurkin Atheist Commie Radicals.
Trying to have sympathy for the NRA is something akin to trying to find a humane side to Pol Pot.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
wolves are less viscous
Oh my! If wolves are less viscous, I think that makes them much more terrifying than hyenas. I don't like the idea of fluid(ish) animals sneaking up on me.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Nearly? Nope: to the fucking minute of 9 hours. Worst episode of Countdown ever.
Someone brought up the point that - if the NSA has proper safeguards in place, wouldn't they already know the document Snowden accessed and is leaking? This response makes me suspect the NSA does not in fact have effective safeguards for auditing that standards and procedures are followed by their contractors.
Release some info, imply that they (in this case the NSA) are doing worse, let them deny it, then release more info that exposes them (in this case the NSA) for the lying sociopaths they really are.
What are these info leak wars and what do they have to do with Messier objects? Hogwash. pfft. :)
Not filtering out the names of the traitors who spy for the US is good, now they can be properly imprisoned or executed.
FTFA:
The Guardian's lawyers believed the government might either seek an injunction under the law of confidence, a catch-all statute that covers any unauthorised possession of confidential material, or start criminal proceedings under the Official Secrets Act.
Either brought with it the risk that the Guardian's reporting would be frozen everywhere and that the newspaper would be forced to hand over material.
So by destroying just the London based copies of the material they ensured that they could keep reporting about it from other countries.
You could easily be in a position of gaining financially from a business or property sale or a divorce where large $s are at stake.
If a malicious person can corrupt a government worker or that worker himself sees a way to get a big payday, your data may be compromised. It is not just the NSA that is spying at this point. Do you really think in various government agencies, only the NSA uses hacker tools?
When something involving large $s is at stake, do you use email, a cell phone or your other computer connections? A government worker finding that a big payday can be leveraged for his benefit from his official work, may choose to use that or a hacker tool to invade your deal and make off with a "bonus." You only have to succeed once or twice in this way to live in the South of France the rest of your life.
This is why this must be stopped by a variety of means. Government must treat email like it treats USPS postal mail. Email users must start using encrypted email. OS suppliers must supply hardened OSs.
Failure to change will result in a total tyranny by governments and the people who HAVE ACCESS to the governments sources of data. At that you force the whole population to be paranoid. Welcome to the Stassi run US Government (& others, thanks UK). This will inevitably result in people being afraid to talk in public because of cameras and microphones, even more than now.
AC is spot on.
You should read it some time. Its only power is to make the Govt pay basic compensation WHILST your head is still being stomped on.
Oh and the Govt can simply pass a new law to ignore it and any rulings under it. Heck, they don't even need to debate it in Parliament thanks to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act.
Welcome to Police State Britain.
Should there be a method to store data in such a way that they cant take it out without bringing down the entire internet?
Oh yeah, dood, you are sooooo right......! ! ! !
I mean, such people never do anything for profit or sheer meanness and to exercise their ultimate power!
So, how many hours of TV and movies do you watch daily?????
Know the history behind the CIA, NSA and DIA? It sure don't sound like it, sonny!
Me thinks you should crack open a book, instead of wasting all that precious time on Tom Clancy bilge and flotsam!
"Security apparatus" has never been what they are about, douchetard!
Precisely Ignore all the yammering and simply observer the flow of events. It's not encouraging... Not that the words are either I suppose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAcNFQGKWPs&feature=youtu.be
Bittorrent would solve the multiple back-up issue as long as the torrent was popular enough but it wouldn't solve the upload/download speed problem (for multi-GB torrents/files where your local bandwidth is the bottleneck).
The problem is that you have to trust everyone connected to the torrent not to allow an outside party to connect and gather the IPs of everyone sharing the torrent. Don't forget that the main advantage of this plan, multiple back-ups, only works with a large number of participants in the torrent which raises the exposure...
I can only see this working if it reaches critical mass, otherwise the early adopters face some pretty serious investigation...
Right, forget the man who sets himself on fire in the street, the following riots, the Tunisian president visiting him in the hospital two weeks later, followed by ouster of said 23 year president two weeks after that. Forget THAT, it was the news on the Internet that their president sucked (they had no idea!!1).
So? These things you typed out so laboriously, are obviously the other triggers.
Let me link the relevant part from the link I posted.
I stated, "The details in the released cables was one of the triggers that sparked the Tunisian revolution." Nothing you said contradicts what I posted.