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CIA Releases 321GB of Bin Laden's Digital Library (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, the Central Intelligence Agency posted a cache of files obtained from Osama Bin Laden's personal computer and other devices recovered from his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan by Navy SEALs during the raid in which he was killed on May 2, 2011. The 470,000 files, 321 gigabytes in all, include documents, images, videos, and audio recordings, including Al Qaeda propaganda and planning documents, home videos of Bin Laden's son Hazma, and "drafts" of propaganda videos. There is also a lot of digital junk among the files.
The CIA site presents a raft of warnings about the content of the downloads: "The material in this file collection may contain content that is offensive and/or emotionally disturbing. This material may not be suitable for all ages. Please view it with discretion. Prior to accessing this file collection, please understand that this material was seized from a terrorist organization. While the files underwent interagency review, there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed."
The CIA site presents a raft of warnings about the content of the downloads: "The material in this file collection may contain content that is offensive and/or emotionally disturbing. This material may not be suitable for all ages. Please view it with discretion. Prior to accessing this file collection, please understand that this material was seized from a terrorist organization. While the files underwent interagency review, there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed."
. . .there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed.
Sure. But I wouldn't be surprised if malware were added.
I don't have any problem with it, but it just seems like a weird thing to do.
Toss out a big, juicy net that fish can just not resist.
Have "Osama bin Laden, Director's Cut" phone home when downloaded and installed.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
what nasty thing they're doing that this is supposed to distract us from? I will never believe that our CIA does anything out of the goodness of their heart. If I saw one of them reach down to pet a puppy I'd have it checked by a bomb squad.
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Kinda crazy to sign off on allowing Iran to get nukes and pay them a few hundred billion dollars when the Iranian regime is working closely with al Qaeda, isn't it?
Those lies never get old, do they? As part of the deal, Iran stopped working on their nuclear program, and allowed extensive verification of this. How can you possibly spin this into 'allowing Iran to get nukes'? The money was not a payment, it was Iranian money that was frozen as part of the sanctions against Iran. Big difference.
And to trot out an old quote: You don't make peace with your friends. You make peace with your enemies.
Kinda crazy to sign off on allowing Iran to get nukes and pay them a few hundred billion dollars when the Iranian regime is working closely with al Qaeda, isn't it?
Except he didn't "sign off on allowing Iran to get nukes", nor did he pay them hundreds of billions of dollars. The Iran deal bars Iran from developing nuclear weapons. And the "payments" you refer to were millions, not billions, and were Iran's money to begin with, we had frozen those assets in 1979 and had never returned it, until ordered by international courts to do so, which coincidentally was about the same time as the nuclear deal.
When the CIA releases Al Qaeda propaganda it's perfectly fine.
If I were to even say something nice about the bastards then I'd be labelled a terrorist and find myself in a 0-star suite in Cuba wearing an orange jumpsuit. I thought that the CIA was supposed to be fighting the CIA, not becoming their web provider.
Re: "Why would they do this?" AC
.."
To track the ip of everyone who looks.
An easy way to collect the locations of interested bloggers, the media, press, journalists, independent journalists, students, historians.
Recall
"NSA likely targets anybody who's 'Tor-curious'"
https://www.cnet.com/g00/news/...
".. selection rules that potentially add to an NSA watch list anybody who has not only used, but visited online privacy-protection tools
Re "malware". The security services get the ip, the actual ip behind most of the consumer grade VPN products used by people looking the site.
Cooking gov, mil grade malware into the files is just going to push out quality gov malware onto a lot of people who might have very good anti virus.
Better to sort the ip lists of people who looked and then push malware down to the interesting people. Less for the better quality AV products to find globally.
Push too much malware out and it gets detected. The results also have to be understood by gov/mil/contractors in real time.
Malware tends to be held back for interesting people. Everyone gets tracked. 4 hops of their connections, friends get reviewed.
Lots of friends in the elite north east of the USA? Interesting they looked, but not that interesting.
Lots of friends and connections globally? Human review. Appropriate malware considered for the system found, AV the person updated for, type of person.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Who here would want to have their computer analyzed at some later date for an unrelated charge and have what amounts to recruiting material for a terrorist organization found on their laptop? Even if you could explain it away, that might well be only after spending heaploads in lawyer fees.
Sounds like one should not touch any of this release. Bad ju-ju.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.