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!”
That they are after him !!
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
You mean like what Bradley Manning did, right?
Not to be cynical, but Government could still say that the Guardian destroyed the drives, and it was all a big misunderstanding. It's like in the bad movies where the corrupt police officer orders you at point blank to injure yourself and later claims that it was you who did it to yourself and he couldn't prevent it.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
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."
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!"
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.
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.
NSA employee here. Seriously, he's into some fucked up shit. And I say that as a fan of scat, piss, incest, and fisting.
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 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.
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.
Spider Jerusalem
This one is about as accurate as an NSA report to Congress.
It seems to be the same method used in Australia over a book called Axis of Deceit.
..."also had their hard drives cleansed around early September 2004, several months after the amended book had gone on sale."
Destroy the drive in front of the gov 'now' or the gov will take the drive.
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22library%2Fprspub%2FN16J6%22
".... office to cleanse the offending material from our computers. They transferred the data to a hard disk then gave us the option of having it taken away or destroyed in front of us. We chose the second option, then watched them do it with a special little disk-breaking hammer. They graciously followed up this service with a customer satisfaction form.12"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
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.
Hmmm.... the stealth drones are coming for you now, dude!
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
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.
That's quite an allegation. Do we have any reason to believe that Miranda was transporting anything of the kind?
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Us IT people have plenty of experience of hard disks dying on us. The fascists have to destroy every single copy to win. Their stupid gag orders won't work if they have to gag everyone.
These morons are creating the next generation of terrorists with their stupidity.
These CIA/NSA agencies are the next generation of terrorists. Who inspires more terror? A random fool on slashdot singing about fucking dogs or a major world government that spys on everyone, forces information from people with secret gag orders and threats, abducts and kills people in foreign countries, tortures, and then pathologically lies about the whole thing.
It was obvious the US had gone rouge when it was caught running CIA torture flights though Europe. It only got worse since then.
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.
These morons are creating the next generation of terrorists with their stupidity.
Well ... yeah.
If we don't create a new wave of terrorists, how will we justify stealing more civil liberties, and the ever inflating defense budget?
This signature is false.
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.
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.
More importantly, they are also (and more hopefully) stimulating the next generation of activists.
All your ghosts are just false positives.
What are these info leak wars and what do they have to do with Messier objects? Hogwash. pfft. :)
Actually, the NRA exists to promote the rights of gun manufacturers to have huge profits. And huge profits means selling more guns to more people. Since any limitation on this means less guns sold/lower profits, the NRA is against all gun control (no matter how reasonable it may be). They claim to be for gun owners' rights because that gets gun owners behind them and it makes them look like a "for the people" organization and not a "for big business" organization. In other words, it's a PR spin tactic.
If we need to rely on the NRA to protect us from the US Government then the situation is worse than I thought (and I already think it's very bad).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Not filtering out the names of the traitors who spy for the US is good, now they can be properly imprisoned or executed.
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.
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.
Thanks for straightening me out; I'm not from the US, so your insights
will be more or less the guiding light for me.
To you too:
Thanks for straightening me out; I'm not from the US, so your insights
will be more or less the guiding light for me.
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.