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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.
No, why? They're desperate to know what's out there, so it's best to provoke a dump.. You know, adding a little laxative to the mix.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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?
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"
Au contraire, my dear Watson. Providing raw material is exactly the service news providers should be doing in the first place. Let other reporters and bloggers sift through this publicly available raw data to point out interesting stuff. There's no reason reporters should be entitled to exclusive access to raw material, and the rest of the world would have to accept what reporters say without a way of controlling that.
That was exactly the problem with Wikileak's initial redacted release of Cablegate. It was only after they've released the whole data unredacted that real reporting could begin (and can still take place).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Considering this news...
They must have thought Christmas had come early - he was foreign, gay *and* a being labelled as a potential terrorist.
That's not going to help the feds/governments in the long term though. The more they rough up the journalists, treat them like enemies and make their lives generally more difficult - the more they are likely to be treated in the same manner. Why go to all the trouble of being polite, redacting sensetive bits and playing by the book when you know that the next time you go through an airport, your pants are coming down and you better hope you got some lube in...
When one team starts playing hardball, the other team often starts doing the same - and the journalists will probably see these sorts of infractions nothing short of a badge of honour - but on the flipside, the potential trouble/egg-on-face for the governments just went up and up.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The "security apparatus" isn't the real problem here. They're just the symptom, the manifestation of a deep fear that permeates societies... and may I add, irrational fears at that. Why irrational? Because the number of casualties from traffic accidents is of many orders of magnitude higher than those of terror attacks. But nobody seriously intends to forbid cars and people from driving. Yet when it comes to "terrism", regular people just kind of shut off their rational thinking and go into total obedience mode (to the almighty State). This tells more about human nature than we ever wanted to know, doesn't it?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
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!"
I don't understand why they don't take legal action.
Because unfortunately there's no law to say you can't behave like an asswipe. The detention was legal enough within the letter of the law (the less said about the spirit of it, the better), and he was released after the stipulated maximum amount of time. As for destruction of equipment, I'm sure there is some precedent making that legal.
There's only one way to get around a government's thuggery and intimidation, and that is to blow them wide open.
Regardless of which side you fall on, 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.
Don't you mean Yakety Sax?
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
Sorry, We're British -- No Miranda Rights!
But they have taken legal action.
Letter from Miranda's attorneys
Even if you don't agree with Miranda's position, the letter is still worth reading, as it lays out the facts in meticulous detail.
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.
The solution here will not be solved with technology. The parlor tricks were fun when the law was unclear; but now that the law is clearly compromised, real action, in the real world, must be taken.
The people have been patient with the courts, with the law in general, as it has sorted through the general maze that is technology, and its effects on society. They need not be patient in areas where the law has already been clearly stated, for over two hundred years, in plain text, and in a copy that many people, even outside this country, own, and can easily reference. "Congress shall make no law..." and here we are, with secret courts, unable to face our accusers, dealing with gerrymandered accusations, and proof positive that the highest laws themselves have been violated. What more, one of our Founding Fathers did say, supposedly, "I prefer a hundred guilty men go free, than one innocent man be imprisoned."
So, what happened to that America? I signed up for that America, not this one. Did someone mislead me? Was I lied to? Was there a bait and switch in the womb of my mother? Having been born in this country, with full citizenship, rights and privileges, why have I been denied, since my birth, these plainly written guarantees? I've been taxed, I know this much...who represents me? What are their names? How have they voted in the last six months, so that I know they are truly representing me, and my closely-held values, as well as this country's written values, in our national capital?
I am John Hurt.
Spider Jerusalem
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
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.
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.
He was detained, not arrested, under section 7 of the Terrorism Act.
Part of the point of this is that not having been arrested, he did not have the rights of a suspect who has been arrested.
However he was _required_ to answer all questions, no matter how irrelevant to a case, asked by the police.
Also remember he wasn't entering the UK. He was transiting from Germany to Brazil. So, relevance to a crime?
this was about intimidation, pure and simple.
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
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.
All the Snowden data is stored in a safe place outside the UK (and the US of course) according to the people at The Guardian. This is standard procedure for all sensitive information and this was also the case with the exclusive parts of the Wikileaks material. They told the intelligence agents this but they didn't care and proceeded to destroy only the local storage media. So stupid!
The data is out there. It cannot be removed or contained in any way. This is how it is in this day and age, and this is a good thing. Information still wants to be free.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
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