While I don't agree with a lot of what is going on, this automatic assumption that any leak = good on the part of many I also disagree with.
Er, no. Every leak is damaging to those whose actions are exposed. That's pretty much the definition of a leak.
Freedom of the press, however, is always good. Even -especially- when the publisher in question is a douche.
Please don't confuse the two. Leakers quite often get punished. Ellsberg's life was ruined by the Nixon administration. A free press should never be punished or in any way intimidated by the state.
Why the hell is the COO of Canonical making news articles, doesn't he have a job to do? That's a serious conflict of interest in my opinion.
I find the suggestion that public figures and business leaders should have an opinion-ectomy on Day 1 completely absurd.
I realise that I'm in the minority on this, but I don't buy the whole 'never admit weakness' thing. If a football quarterback admits that his team's got a weak mid-field, he's not saying anything people don't already know. He's just being honest about the situation. Saying so won't make it weaker.
(Now if he starts telling secrets, like 'Joe's going in for surgery after Sunday's game...' well, that's a little different.)
Regardless he's completely wrong. He cites Mozilla doing smart business where Ubuntu isn't, catering to the advertising crowd. Well guess what's quickly being replaced by Chrome.
The guy simply doesn't have a clue. He cites Red Hat licensing being better then the company he works for. I really don't understand why Mark would put this guy in such a high position so he can then simply shit on the company.
I won't argue with you whether or not he's right (I agree that he's a bit clueless), but since when did offering a criticism become 'shitting on the company'?
I expect my managers and staff to stand up and say, 'we did this wrong,' or 'they're doing it better than us.' And I have no problem with them saying so in public. Pretending to speak for the company as a whole, pointless bitching and moaning or open subversion might get them a quick ticket out the door, but thoughtful inquiry, analysis and criticism? No problem. I'll be in the front row, applauding.
Well, there is "Top Secret". The cables that were leaked were all classified as "Secret" and "Confidential", so the classifiers must be doing something right.
Agreed.
Nonetheless, the point still stands that many of these cables would be absolutely uncontroversial with only one or two small edits. It wouldn't even be necessary to alter the content, just the phrasing.
An example: In one cable, the Secretary of Defence is quoted, saying that the Saudis are willing to fight Iran 'down to the last US soldier.' It would be sufficient to say 'the Secretary observed that the Saudis were reluctant to commit to sharing the burden of such an undertaking.' Perfectly clear, still true, but not controversial any longer.
Sharing secrets with more people MAY have a risk of more people knowing your secrets. Shocking.
Seriously though, adding a bunch of people/agencies that can see your data is bound to result in some turbulence trying to maintain similar security levels. I wonder if people can still print?
You know, one way to reduce the threat of leaks might be to stop classifying everything even remotely contentious (or honest) as Secret.
Seriously. It's a hell of a lot easier to protect and ring-fence 1000 documents that really, really need to be protected than it is to try the same thing with a quarter million of them.
One of the many services that WikiLeaks has rendered us is showing just how the knee-jerk tendency to designate everything Secret or Confidential doesn't serve any useful purpose.
Something you are missing is that another reason for not disclosing another country's difficulties or embarrassments is it helps nobody. Whereas if China knows that the US knows something that they would rather not have public then China "owes" the US. The exchange of such IOUs make for diplomacy.
I'm not missing it. I didn't claim there was no need for secrets, I'm saying that people within the power structures upon which secrecy is predicated inevitably abuse this secrecy in order to empower themselves and their cliques.
The problem, in short, is not binary. It's 'all secrets or none'. Even wikileaks recognises this in their willingness to expunge certain details from the leaked cables.
Regarding fears about negative impacts of the leaks themselves to US diplomacy, I'll let Secretary of Defense Robert Gates make the case:
“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.
“So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another.
“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’’
Lower the barrier of entry even further, and just throw up a torrent or ten of static files which can be hosted anywhere, without fear of compromising your own server.
If reliability and low-cost, high-performance service are important, I suggest that we all upload the data to Amazon's peerless cloud servers. If thousands of people do it, I'm sure that Amazon would be thrilled to be recognised as a strong supporter of humanity's fundamental right to communicate freely and without fear of coercion.
I mean, giving Wikileaks an ssh account (as they're asking for) is pretty stupid, security-wise.
Why? Provided you take reasonable security measures, there is nothing unusually insecure about this.
Just approach the problem the same way you would for any automated remote-access scenario (e.g. scripted backups):
Make sure that you limit the number of hosts that are allowed to even talk to the port in question;
Allow only the exact command to be executed, so they can't run arbitrary scripts;
Un-set the execute bit on all files;
Allow them access only via an entirely unprivileged and non-interactive account;
Give them access to a carefully segregated file system (so they can't, for example over-write/bin/bash);
Optionally, create a new virtual machine to host the data, one that is subject to strict firewall rules and has no network access to other infrastructure;
Half a dozen other steps that aren't immediately springing to mind as I sit here on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Yes, but shouldn't the original cables be on wikileaks already?
For this dataset, it seems that a decision has been made not to 'scoop' the news outlets. The cables appear simultaneously with their release from the media outlets disseminating the data.
If wikileaks have only released the cable publically isn't that kind of against their mandate? I thought they were trying to usher in an age of "scientific journalism" where original sources could be cited.
Yes, this is uncharacteristic of wikileaks. Assange's stated reason for this is that he is largely relying on the journalists to scrub the data of any details that might endanger individuals.
The result seems to be a somewhat awkward but workable compromise between the physical security of people implicated in these cables and free access to information. It addresses the concerns of those who claim that 'wikileaks endangers lives' without significantly compromising the flow of information.
Interestingly, it also ensures that wikileaks will remain in the headlines for weeks, if not months, to come. I somehow doubt this detail has escaped Assange, who has stated recently that it's not sufficient simply to publish the data; it must be publicised as well.
So why was it kept confidential in the first place? I think the US government and Google would only gain if they made it public.
Because a culture of secrecy breeds power and the ability to act with impunity. Careerist elements within any government prefer secrecy because it allows them to forego the often tedious act of being accountable for even the smallest decision. It's often justified as a Good Thing because the actors can circumvent bureaucratic red tape and work more efficiently. Ultimately, however, the end game is the same: A small elite minority within the permanent establishment begin to take privilege and influence for granted, and act independently of government policy.
This is not something unique to the US diplomatic corps. It happens in all organisations. And it is explicitly what freedom of information laws and regulations are designed to counteract. Absent this capability, it's left to whistleblowers and wikileaks to serve in this role.
Viewed in this light, we have to conclude that the attacks on wikileaks are primarily driven not by the state, but by certain of its constituents who might lose the leverage that a culture of secrecy has given them. That's why the counter-attack on wikileaks has been composed mostly of deft cuts at the the service's underpinnings rather than overt state action. A quiet word here and there, and anyone hosting material even related to wikileaks goes offline. A whisper in the ear of an ambitious (or susceptible) Swedish prosecutor and a nuisance case becomes an international manhunt.
Secrecy and a scarcity of information are crucial to the continuation of the cronyism about which so many slashdotters complain. It astounds me how many of these same people who rail at the unhealthy, shadowy bonds between corporations, lobbyists and the government are now scandalised that an organisation like wikileaks is struggling to diminish the power of these linkages.
On June 24 servers in China were virally infected, causing them to redirect computers attempting to reach Google pages to an unknown web site. These attacks made Google services unavailable to many Chinese users for approximately 24 hours, and caused the company to lose 20% of its traffic on that day.
Given that the NYT has been consulting with the State Department before publishing any cables, it's possible that they chose only to report on its contents, rather than to publish it.
See? Somebody didn't like what I said, and now I'm marked as flamebait! Frankly, I find that offensive, and I'm offended. Now anybody who reads that post will be biased against the wit, and just assume I'm being a jackass. If we could discuss this out of the sight of those pesky mods, we could converse as equals.
I'm genuinely sorry that others can't allow an opposing opinion to go unpunished. If it's any consolation, you did make me go back and double-check the facts, And that was enough to make me re-evaluate. Although I came out at the same conclusion, I thank you nonetheless.
Mods: Parent is right. Just because you disagree with what he's saying is no reason to assume that it's invalid in any way. Quick being so cowardly, hiding away the things that make you uncomfortable. That's no way to live.
And they can't just I dunno REFRAIN FROM POSTING IT ON FACEBOOK? Why is that so hard?
Because it's akin to asking prospective sports writers not to discuss the Black Socks scandal. It's like a company suggesting that prospective employees should refuse to discuss gaping, publicly acknowledged holes in their software, in spite of the blatant inapplicability of security through obscurity to the situation.
They are saying, in effect, 'How can we trust you not to discuss secret things if you don't follow the arbitrary -and in this case, illogical- ruleset that we choose to blindly impose because, in spite of volumes of evidence to the contrary, this is the way we know to be the right one.'
This particular instruction is a test of faith, nothing more.
Yes, this is a case of asking people to adhere to the rules. The problem is that, in this case, application of the rule serves no useful purpose other than to demonstrate the coercive force of the regime.
(And yes, there is a place for security through obscurity, but that only works when actual obscurity has been maintained.)
By openly discussing a very contentious issue, correcting (thank you) and, one hopes, enlightening one another through the free exchange of ideas and by remaining capable of accepting -and sharing- input from all sources.
If I were a prospective State Department employee, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation, and I would know less than I do now.
"We will only hire you if you demonstrate the ability to ignore overwhelming evidence that the world is not as we say it is."
No, they're saying they won't hire you if you re-post the information. Why doesn't that make sense?
Because it's in the New York fucking Times and the Guardian and Der Spiegel, for starters.
This is asking people to pretend that the single greatest upheaval in the diplomatic world in decades simply doesn't exist. It's not a job requirement; it's a test of faith for future regime cadres.
Nice quote. But what does it have to do with some guy telling buddies at his alma mater that if they want to work for the state department, it's a bad idea to post links to leaked classified documents?
Because they both demonstrate that placing absurd requirements on the public force people into falsehood in order to avoid self-incrimination.
Do you really think that an instruction not to talk about the single greatest event to affect US foreign policy this year is realistic? No, it's a test of faith, pure and simple, for future apparatchiks.
How is suggesting they don't expose themself to certain things which might have an impact on a future career move, threatening their "free speech rights"?
Because the very people who are ensuring that these warnings are transmitted are the ones who will be judging the future applicants. The problem, you see, is that, rather than showing a degree of pragmatism, they are attempting to work against the grain of a world that increasingly requires open communications and which features vastly more expansive (and porous) human networks. And they are doing so through threats and intimidation.
Worse, they're doing it through proxies, deploying their catspaws to coerce people and organisations without even pretending that it's formal policy, thus eschewing even the pretense of debate.
Tableau Software drops even mild, unincriminating references to the cables based on the bloviation of the Chair of the Homeland Security Committee, who abused his position by uttering these remarks. Whatever he may think, he is not in law enforcement. Amazon claims they were not coerced into dropping wikileaks, even though their precipitate action and their subsequent rationalisation are utterly inconsistent with their decision to host the far more incriminating Afghan and Iraq materials. That it happened the day after pronouncements by a politician is, we are told, purely coincidental.
I'll tell you why all this matters to those of us in the outside world:
Two days ago, the government changed in the country where I live, a struggling democracy in the developing world. The Prime Minister was overseas at the time. The Parliamentary Speaker abused his powers and closed parliament to the public and the press. The new cabinet includes people who are known to be guilty of criminal behaviour. One of them has been publicly expressing his opinion that what this country needs is a 'strong regime' - code for a dictatorship.
When the local media and others try to express their outrage at this democratically dangerous turn of events, we no longer have anyone to use as an example. The Minister can blandly reply that the world has changed, using security as a shibboleth to unravel democracy. And the small few who actually care about the practical benefits of a democratic state are bereft.
You might be inclined to say, "Sucks to be you," and to claim that you're not your brother's keeper. If you do, then you should recognise that any future claim to American exceptionalism is void.
You used to set an example for the rest of the world. Now, tragically, you still do.
Worse yet, floating the idea you can be barred from future jobs because you read something is ridiculous.
Worse, they're warning people away from the only body of information that could tell them anything useful about the practical aspects of their future job.
"We will only hire you if you demonstrate the ability to ignore overwhelming evidence that the world is not as we say it is."
(Actually, given the US Government's performance recently, that statement is starting to make sense....)
I really don't think they are really chasing him, despite the public outcry of politicians.
Well, perhaps not 'chasing', per se. But if you don't think he's under constant surveillance by more than one national intelligence operation, you're dangerously naïve
Slashdot Mirror
While I don't agree with a lot of what is going on, this automatic assumption that any leak = good on the part of many I also disagree with.
Er, no. Every leak is damaging to those whose actions are exposed. That's pretty much the definition of a leak.
Freedom of the press, however, is always good. Even -especially- when the publisher in question is a douche.
Please don't confuse the two. Leakers quite often get punished. Ellsberg's life was ruined by the Nixon administration. A free press should never be punished or in any way intimidated by the state.
My two most common mistakes:
Why the hell is the COO of Canonical making news articles, doesn't he have a job to do? That's a serious conflict of interest in my opinion.
I find the suggestion that public figures and business leaders should have an opinion-ectomy on Day 1 completely absurd.
I realise that I'm in the minority on this, but I don't buy the whole 'never admit weakness' thing. If a football quarterback admits that his team's got a weak mid-field, he's not saying anything people don't already know. He's just being honest about the situation. Saying so won't make it weaker.
(Now if he starts telling secrets, like 'Joe's going in for surgery after Sunday's game...' well, that's a little different.)
Regardless he's completely wrong. He cites Mozilla doing smart business where Ubuntu isn't, catering to the advertising crowd. Well guess what's quickly being replaced by Chrome.
The guy simply doesn't have a clue. He cites Red Hat licensing being better then the company he works for. I really don't understand why Mark would put this guy in such a high position so he can then simply shit on the company.
I won't argue with you whether or not he's right (I agree that he's a bit clueless), but since when did offering a criticism become 'shitting on the company'?
I expect my managers and staff to stand up and say, 'we did this wrong,' or 'they're doing it better than us.' And I have no problem with them saying so in public. Pretending to speak for the company as a whole, pointless bitching and moaning or open subversion might get them a quick ticket out the door, but thoughtful inquiry, analysis and criticism? No problem. I'll be in the front row, applauding.
Well, there is "Top Secret". The cables that were leaked were all classified as "Secret" and "Confidential", so the classifiers must be doing something right.
Agreed.
Nonetheless, the point still stands that many of these cables would be absolutely uncontroversial with only one or two small edits. It wouldn't even be necessary to alter the content, just the phrasing.
An example: In one cable, the Secretary of Defence is quoted, saying that the Saudis are willing to fight Iran 'down to the last US soldier.' It would be sufficient to say 'the Secretary observed that the Saudis were reluctant to commit to sharing the burden of such an undertaking.' Perfectly clear, still true, but not controversial any longer.
Forcing the government to admit it's illegal actions is the right thing to do.
It is the right thing to do, but Wikileaks hasn't done that.
No, you're right. WikiLeaks hasn't done that. They just distribute the information. What happens after that is up to you.
Sharing secrets with more people MAY have a risk of more people knowing your secrets. Shocking.
Seriously though, adding a bunch of people/agencies that can see your data is bound to result in some turbulence trying to maintain similar security levels. I wonder if people can still print?
You know, one way to reduce the threat of leaks might be to stop classifying everything even remotely contentious (or honest) as Secret.
Seriously. It's a hell of a lot easier to protect and ring-fence 1000 documents that really, really need to be protected than it is to try the same thing with a quarter million of them.
One of the many services that WikiLeaks has rendered us is showing just how the knee-jerk tendency to designate everything Secret or Confidential doesn't serve any useful purpose.
I'm not missing it. I didn't claim there was no need for secrets, I'm saying that people within the power structures upon which secrecy is predicated inevitably abuse this secrecy in order to empower themselves and their cliques.
The problem, in short, is not binary. It's 'all secrets or none'. Even wikileaks recognises this in their willingness to expunge certain details from the leaked cables.
Regarding fears about negative impacts of the leaks themselves to US diplomacy, I'll let Secretary of Defense Robert Gates make the case:
Lower the barrier of entry even further, and just throw up a torrent or ten of static files which can be hosted anywhere, without fear of compromising your own server.
If reliability and low-cost, high-performance service are important, I suggest that we all upload the data to Amazon's peerless cloud servers. If thousands of people do it, I'm sure that Amazon would be thrilled to be recognised as a strong supporter of humanity's fundamental right to communicate freely and without fear of coercion.
*blink*
... What?
If someone *cough* The US *cough* get into Wikileaks stuff, what's to keep them from just logging onto all these servers and erasing the copies too?
Set the immutable bit on all the files and/or refuse to run any rsync command that contains the --delete flag.
Keep a separate backup.
I mean, giving Wikileaks an ssh account (as they're asking for) is pretty stupid, security-wise.
Why? Provided you take reasonable security measures, there is nothing unusually insecure about this.
Just approach the problem the same way you would for any automated remote-access scenario (e.g. scripted backups):
The US may then benefit from attempting to crack the encrypted cables and releasing them all at once....
I suspect that the US already has them in unencrypted form. 8^)
Yes, but shouldn't the original cables be on wikileaks already?
For this dataset, it seems that a decision has been made not to 'scoop' the news outlets. The cables appear simultaneously with their release from the media outlets disseminating the data.
If wikileaks have only released the cable publically isn't that kind of against their mandate? I thought they were trying to usher in an age of "scientific journalism" where original sources could be cited.
Yes, this is uncharacteristic of wikileaks. Assange's stated reason for this is that he is largely relying on the journalists to scrub the data of any details that might endanger individuals.
The result seems to be a somewhat awkward but workable compromise between the physical security of people implicated in these cables and free access to information. It addresses the concerns of those who claim that 'wikileaks endangers lives' without significantly compromising the flow of information.
Interestingly, it also ensures that wikileaks will remain in the headlines for weeks, if not months, to come. I somehow doubt this detail has escaped Assange, who has stated recently that it's not sufficient simply to publish the data; it must be publicised as well.
So why was it kept confidential in the first place? I think the US government and Google would only gain if they made it public.
Because a culture of secrecy breeds power and the ability to act with impunity. Careerist elements within any government prefer secrecy because it allows them to forego the often tedious act of being accountable for even the smallest decision. It's often justified as a Good Thing because the actors can circumvent bureaucratic red tape and work more efficiently. Ultimately, however, the end game is the same: A small elite minority within the permanent establishment begin to take privilege and influence for granted, and act independently of government policy.
This is not something unique to the US diplomatic corps. It happens in all organisations. And it is explicitly what freedom of information laws and regulations are designed to counteract. Absent this capability, it's left to whistleblowers and wikileaks to serve in this role.
Viewed in this light, we have to conclude that the attacks on wikileaks are primarily driven not by the state, but by certain of its constituents who might lose the leverage that a culture of secrecy has given them. That's why the counter-attack on wikileaks has been composed mostly of deft cuts at the the service's underpinnings rather than overt state action. A quiet word here and there, and anyone hosting material even related to wikileaks goes offline. A whisper in the ear of an ambitious (or susceptible) Swedish prosecutor and a nuisance case becomes an international manhunt.
Secrecy and a scarcity of information are crucial to the continuation of the cronyism about which so many slashdotters complain. It astounds me how many of these same people who rail at the unhealthy, shadowy bonds between corporations, lobbyists and the government are now scandalised that an organisation like wikileaks is struggling to diminish the power of these linkages.
So far this is the only reference I can find:
On June 24 servers in China were virally infected, causing them to redirect computers attempting to reach Google pages to an unknown web site. These attacks made Google services unavailable to many Chinese users for approximately 24 hours, and caused the company to lose 20% of its traffic on that day.
Given that the NYT has been consulting with the State Department before publishing any cables, it's possible that they chose only to report on its contents, rather than to publish it.
I'm genuinely sorry that others can't allow an opposing opinion to go unpunished. If it's any consolation, you did make me go back and double-check the facts, And that was enough to make me re-evaluate. Although I came out at the same conclusion, I thank you nonetheless.
Mods: Parent is right. Just because you disagree with what he's saying is no reason to assume that it's invalid in any way. Quick being so cowardly, hiding away the things that make you uncomfortable. That's no way to live.
And they can't just I dunno REFRAIN FROM POSTING IT ON FACEBOOK? Why is that so hard?
Because it's akin to asking prospective sports writers not to discuss the Black Socks scandal. It's like a company suggesting that prospective employees should refuse to discuss gaping, publicly acknowledged holes in their software, in spite of the blatant inapplicability of security through obscurity to the situation.
They are saying, in effect, 'How can we trust you not to discuss secret things if you don't follow the arbitrary -and in this case, illogical- ruleset that we choose to blindly impose because, in spite of volumes of evidence to the contrary, this is the way we know to be the right one.'
This particular instruction is a test of faith, nothing more.
Yes, this is a case of asking people to adhere to the rules. The problem is that, in this case, application of the rule serves no useful purpose other than to demonstrate the coercive force of the regime.
(And yes, there is a place for security through obscurity, but that only works when actual obscurity has been maintained.)
By openly discussing a very contentious issue, correcting (thank you) and, one hopes, enlightening one another through the free exchange of ideas and by remaining capable of accepting -and sharing- input from all sources.
If I were a prospective State Department employee, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation, and I would know less than I do now.
"We will only hire you if you demonstrate the ability to ignore overwhelming evidence that the world is not as we say it is."
No, they're saying they won't hire you if you re-post the information. Why doesn't that make sense?
Because it's in the New York fucking Times and the Guardian and Der Spiegel, for starters.
This is asking people to pretend that the single greatest upheaval in the diplomatic world in decades simply doesn't exist. It's not a job requirement; it's a test of faith for future regime cadres.
Nice quote. But what does it have to do with some guy telling buddies at his alma mater that if they want to work for the state department, it's a bad idea to post links to leaked classified documents?
Because they both demonstrate that placing absurd requirements on the public force people into falsehood in order to avoid self-incrimination.
Do you really think that an instruction not to talk about the single greatest event to affect US foreign policy this year is realistic? No, it's a test of faith, pure and simple, for future apparatchiks.
Because the very people who are ensuring that these warnings are transmitted are the ones who will be judging the future applicants. The problem, you see, is that, rather than showing a degree of pragmatism, they are attempting to work against the grain of a world that increasingly requires open communications and which features vastly more expansive (and porous) human networks. And they are doing so through threats and intimidation.
Worse, they're doing it through proxies, deploying their catspaws to coerce people and organisations without even pretending that it's formal policy, thus eschewing even the pretense of debate.
Tableau Software drops even mild, unincriminating references to the cables based on the bloviation of the Chair of the Homeland Security Committee, who abused his position by uttering these remarks. Whatever he may think, he is not in law enforcement. Amazon claims they were not coerced into dropping wikileaks, even though their precipitate action and their subsequent rationalisation are utterly inconsistent with their decision to host the far more incriminating Afghan and Iraq materials. That it happened the day after pronouncements by a politician is, we are told, purely coincidental.
I'll tell you why all this matters to those of us in the outside world:
Two days ago, the government changed in the country where I live, a struggling democracy in the developing world. The Prime Minister was overseas at the time. The Parliamentary Speaker abused his powers and closed parliament to the public and the press. The new cabinet includes people who are known to be guilty of criminal behaviour. One of them has been publicly expressing his opinion that what this country needs is a 'strong regime' - code for a dictatorship.
When the local media and others try to express their outrage at this democratically dangerous turn of events, we no longer have anyone to use as an example. The Minister can blandly reply that the world has changed, using security as a shibboleth to unravel democracy. And the small few who actually care about the practical benefits of a democratic state are bereft.
You might be inclined to say, "Sucks to be you," and to claim that you're not your brother's keeper. If you do, then you should recognise that any future claim to American exceptionalism is void.
You used to set an example for the rest of the world. Now, tragically, you still do.
Worse, they're warning people away from the only body of information that could tell them anything useful about the practical aspects of their future job.
"We will only hire you if you demonstrate the ability to ignore overwhelming evidence that the world is not as we say it is."
(Actually, given the US Government's performance recently, that statement is starting to make sense....)
Who's ready for a good old fashioned lynching?
You guys go ahead. We're a little busy right now, coercing data services here in the US to stop spreading the truth about our diplomatic corps.
Best,
The US Govt.
The response to Tableau Software's cowardice, at least, is obvious:
Everybody and their dog should take an account on their system and repost the data. Someone call Anonymous.
Fuck off, mod-commander.
LOL. Genius! 8^)
Well, perhaps not 'chasing', per se. But if you don't think he's under constant surveillance by more than one national intelligence operation, you're dangerously naïve