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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."
Do it and do it now. The news doesn't need censorship.
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."
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
But even Groklaw has shut down due to the mere fact it is impossible to communicate in private, and Groklaw never did a single illegal thing as far as I can tell.
We think that making multiple copies cached around the world will keep the information public, but that is probably not correct. Look at the "practice run" the authorities are carrying out with Child Porn and a training exercise of how to combat access to any information, even when you don't control where that information is stored.
Having Snowden's windfall on a million drives all decrypted and open for all to see wouldn't help, because anyone accessing it at any time from any computer on the net could and would be instantly tracked, and forced to have a computer bashing party in their own basement.
We are on the tipping point of losing ALL freedoms. Anyone who sees this as anything but the beginning of end of freedom is an utter fool. The frog in the water and the heat is on.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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!"
Ever read David Brin's "Earth?"
That happens, but getting there is ugly.
Imagine the vault of secrets burst open. Every dirty deal, every evil plot, every political murder and wicked deed done in the name of power and wealth.
Now imagine the lengths to which the perpetrators of those deeds would go to hold on to the kind of wealth and power that rests atop the United States.
If your blood didn't just freeze, you have no imagination.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Seized or destroyed makes little difference when your livelihood depends on it. You need replacement equipment now. Not in a week. Not in a month. Today. Or you can't make money. And with so many professions needing a computer... whether it's seized or destroyed you're still at the computer shop the next day buying a new one. And when you get your old one back... it's useless.
The difference between the two is pretty minor. This is also why you, like me and many others, should keep multiple off-site backups, not in banks, not at a friend's house, but buried under a tree in a public park or something... so you can always quickly recover.
Because whether it's the government that steals your shit, or a burglar... you're just as fucked.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
... Or are we going to get another Bush/Obama clone?
This, this right here, is a huge part of the problem. The office of President is NOT the only office that matters here. I've watched election after election where people fuss and fume over the president, but literally seem to pick at random for every Senator and Congressman. People have GOT to start paying attention to the people who are supposed to represent them, not just the President.
They detained him for exactly the reason you kidnap the action hero's wife/girlfriend/mother: people are a lot more likely to break if you threaten someone they care about than if you threaten them directly. Added bonus: not technically a journalist, not technically protected by whatever media shields are available in the UK.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
"Stolen data"? Did the cops have any evidence to support this claim? If they did, they had recourse under "normal" laws. If they didn't, the only crime that was committed was by the cops.
Oh please. The whole reason they are slowly ratcheting this stuff up is that they are on the outlook for any 'heroes.' They go ahead, perform some obvious vile acts, on the public, to see who comes running to save the sheep. Then they mark or dispatch whoever shows up.
You're dealing with predators, something akin to hyenas...they hunt in large packs, and believe that they have strength in numbers. What more, they're intelligent. They're looking for lions...they've found that if they trap a lion away from the pride, they can taunt and kill a lion at their pleasure. But they also know that if a pride is in the area, and they stumble onto one, they'll get shredded.
So, that is the current state of affairs -> the sheep have chosen hyenas as their shepherds, and the hyenas are wisely looking to destroy anyone else before showing their true colors to the sheep. And the hyena, for all the jocularity surrounding it, is a very dangerous predator...arguably more so than a lion. Let's put it this way: their females are so androgenized, that their clits resemble the male's penis. They're kind of the wolves of the Africa, from my understanding, except wolves are less viscous.
The sad part is, this whole scenario has happened before. Every few decades, the world, if the history books are anything to go by, tries this crap; and it always fails. A government decides "Now is an excellent time to censor our people's freedom of speech / go into a national security lock-down mode" -> the home economy, which was suffering at the beginning of the lockdown, gets worse during the lockdown; corruption multiplies, as external observation / safeties / checks and balances are viewed with suspicion, resulting in needed reports being thrown out, or delivered too late; and the people become increasingly unhappy, which impacts both productivity, as well as security / etc. On the whole, it's bad: a temporary market correction is turned into a decades-long depression.
The government forgets that it is here to serve the people -> that is its reason for existence. It can make mistakes, fess up to them, and survive; it's better if it does that, and shows that it is indeed working to go in the right direction now as well. But nowadays, it's just people desperate to hold onto power that long since fled them; a game of bluff, played with themselves, because there might still be one person out there who does not know that they've been lied to.
I am John Hurt.
The above, of course, is the kind of rabid response that the over-reaching actions of the government and it's agents are causing.
These morons are creating the next generation of terrorists with their stupidity.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Lets see ... because they made it public they had the data? thats we fucking stupid on their part.
Next we're going to hear something even stupider, like they ONLY had a copy on the laptop that was seized or some bullshit.
You have to be a moron to talk about having the data BEFORE its in the hands of the public. That means the first time its mentioned is when its front page news fully published in a large paper. Front page could be the front page of a website too for that matter.
You do not say 'we've got this data the government wants and we're going to tell you about it after we travel through a few countries and airports full of security who searches your shit!'
They were fucking stupid, thats why its a problem for them. They deserved to be caught for their stupidity. Might as well have carried a pound of crack cocaine along with it in their knapsack. That would have been far smarter.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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.
What is the point of that distinction? Does it matter at *all* whether the government agents destroyed the drives themselves, or coerced the owners of the drives to do it?
It reminds me of a bully using a weaker child's hand to hit that child: "You're hitting yourself. Why do you keep hitting yourself?"
The bully could punch the child directly (and likely cause more physical pain), but chooses to get the child to hit itself, because it isn't just about control, it is about humiliation and control, in order to try to stamp out any chance of resistance.
The paper's people were forced to destroy their own equipment for the same reasons, and it distresses me no end that UK government officials are using schoolyard bullying tactics in this situation.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
No one was "abducted"
Under the legal definition, he absolutely was abducted. Kidnapping is a subset of abduction, and because police used the threat of force their actions would also qualify under that clause.
The key difference is that it was done under color of law.
When the police abduct people, it gets names like "detaining" and "questioning". If a citizen does it, it become "abducting" and "kidnapping", even if they are released after a few hours. The actions are identical.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
That's quite an allegation. Do we have any reason to believe that Miranda was transporting anything of the kind?
What scares me more is that even if all that came out into the open, there's a better than good chance that the American public will ignore it and just keep on keeping on. The actions of some of our leaders and (corporate and political) have become so brazen, that in any other country or maybe even any other era of American history, heads would be rolling (and in France, literally). Instead, the public has been giving the "meh" heard round the world. :(
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
If they had evidence they would have arrested him.
As it was they held him for nearly the full allowed time without charges (which basically never happens).
And they took all his stuff.
And, according to Glenn Greenwald, they didn't ask any questions about terrorism.
This was intimidation, pure and simple.
It all depends on your perspective. I firmly believe that while this was legal, it was an illegitimate use of power. Abduction is just as accurate detaining, depending on what you consider legitimate authority.
Good-bye
It is incredibly poor taste for you to speak out against PJ like this. She has done more then her fair share, leave her be.
Good-bye
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.
Yes, this is a good question.
So far the UK government is claiming that GCHQ wouldn't dream of doing anything as evil as the NSA and that everything they do is all above board and legal like.
Were evidence to materialise to the contrary it would be very embarrassing for the government, especially people like William Hague who's been assuring us that he knows exactly what goes on and we have nothing to worry about.
I'd say there's a possibility that the government, or organs of the government, are worried this evidence may exist and would like to know what it could show were it to be released.
Exactly, he was detained and had less rights than people who were arrested, doesn't that strike you as odd, how can rights be taken away from you, isn't that the whole point of them being rights, that the exist regardless of any particular situation.
So now the cops can detail you and remove rights that you have but not arrest you and therefore have no burden of proof required in order for that person to have as much protection.
That's fucked up right there.....It's just a tool of intimidation, not of justice and it seems to be getting used in ACTUAL intimidation instead of the pursuit of justice too.....awesome!!
No they don't.
Does the 1st amendment say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. But the cops can shoot you for being atheists, or if they don't like what you write, because some bootlicking twatass on the internet says they have blanket immunity"?
No they didn't. Miranda committed none of the actions mentioned here.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/1
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That might actually the goal here for governments and their secret services: provoke Greenwald et al to leak everything unredacted, then make a huge stink about how irresponsible these activists are for spilling state secrets, and hope that the whole thing blows over quickly. The activists on the other hand are best served by leaking the information piecemeal in a responsible matter, so that they keep the issue on the agenda, keep their cards under the table in case they can catch the government on a lie, and retain their credibility as activists rather than hacky thrill-seekers.
/. poster suggested that detaining Miranda might even have been done in hopes of grabbing the encryption key to the Snowden files, so that the state can orchestrate an "irresponsible leak" themselves in case they can't provoke Greenwald or Snowden to do so. I'm ot sure what to believe here, but if this turns out to be true, it would not surprise me. Not one little bit.
Some
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Detained without charges, yes, and questioned without an attorney, his property seized without a court order. We've already spent almost a whole millennium trying to get rid of that bullshit, and we thought we had succeeded. We had due process, we had habeas corpus. Now we have laws that allow some people to ignore those things, and those laws do not make the abduction legitimate.
There was some speculation that by destroying the HDDs they were forcing the Guardian to communicate over the internet, which of course they have a full wiretap on. Bugging a newspaper's offices could cause an even bigger shitstorm, but this way they just carry on doing what they have been doing for years.
One would hope that the Guardian journalists know how to use VPNs to communicate securely, but I suppose GHCQ figured it was worth a try.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC