However the stuff he released wasn't stuff we already knew was going on anyways. The stuff that he leaked, was more embarrassing in the fact that it got leaked out then the content. However the real problem is the fact it included the names of the people. Where say Lt. Joe Smith, bombed a house of innocent civilians that his intelligence told him it was a terrorist stronghold. So now the family of those civilians may go on a vendetta against Lt. Joe Smith. Or the fact that Joe Smith was part of some regiment. They went to the next town where they would have had support they now have resistance, because the information may make them seem like a rogue unit, vs. and unfortunate accident of war.
This wasn't whistle blowing material. If say the US was using chemical weapons to devastate a town. Where the US is in violation of war crimes and showed a policy of knowing about and supporting such crimes, that is whistle blowing material. What he did was just stupid and deserves to be locked up for.
I agree with you. The only time where leaking makes sense is to protect our lives. To protect civilian lives. Leaking the names of intelligence sources is exactly what puts civilian lives at the most risk as intelligence sources are civilians. I think in the case of Lt. Joe Smith that's not a civilian so leaking his name is bad but not quite evil like leaking the name of spies or intelligence sources who aren't trained for combat, who may not even know they are helping the US government, who may not even know that they are spies until they read some leaked document.
A spy does not get treated as a prisoner of war. A spy has no human rights. A spy if captured faces being tortured to death, having their entire family tortured to death, and the worst of the worst abuses from governments around the world. Any leak which subjects any human being to that treatment is the leak of a traitor. The whole argument for leaking is based on the premise of stopping such treatment from occurring.
There was also the little part of a us contractor paying for boy sex slaves as bribe to a afghanistan warlord.
The majority of it wasn't particularly offensive, but there were a few malignant little gems in there.
That sort of activities taken by government which put civilian lives at risk should be revealed to civilians if civilians have the power to put an end to it. A lot of the stuff in Cablegate were government matters which had nothing or little to do with torture and abuse of civilians.
There are two problems, the first problem being if you do leak as a whistleblower to protect civilians you gotta leak in a way which doesn't help any rival government. The other problem is even if you leak those things it doesn't mean there is anything that can be accomplished by leaking to the public rather than to law enforcement.
It is certainly not the business of a private to determine what type of classified information should or should not be distributed.
A long time ago, it was expected that all military personnel should follow orders, rules and regulations, and that they would not be held accountable for their actions while doing so.
Then, as a species, we grew up a little, and a number of events including Nuremberg helped us to realise that this was not a healthy attitude.
Now, in 2012 many people still believe it is "right" to lie about and cover up the killing of innocent people. I hope, as a species, we will continue to grow and to understand that this is unacceptable. When it comes to the murder of non-military personnel, being part of such a cover-up should be regarded as an abuse of human rights (it is, after all, a conspiracy to hide a crime against humanity) and military personnel *should* have whistleblower rights, in a limited range of circumstances.
Russ
Cablegate wasn't about saving lives. Cablegate put the lives of innocent people at risk. What if some other government could study the information leaked in Cablegate and deduce the identities of intelligence sources and of spies?
So if some horrible atrocity occurs we should never find out because the few generals decided so?
I would rather the military suffer some disturbance of order than there be no check at on them.
No that's not the situation. The Cablegate leak didn't reveal abuses. The Cablegate leak didn't protect civilians. The Cablegate leak embarrassed governments around the world but that doesn't make civilians any safer.
Governments will now go to even more extreme methods and abuses on civilians because of this leak. Cablegate itself may have leaked intelligence sources and the identities of civilians. Can we agree that this was wrong and by doing this act Bradley Manning was a traitor?
On the other hand, corruption, incompetence and sheer lawlessness due to lack of oversight also severely undermine the necessary order and discipline an effective military needs. It is certainly not the business of the military to withhold information of that nature from their political masters.
He didn't leak anything which changed any of the problems if you're talking about the Cablegate leak. That makes things worse for civilians.
Allowing actions like this, even in the spirit of whistleblowing, would severely undermine the necessary order and discipline an effective military needs. It is certainly not the business of a private to determine what type of classified information should or should not be distributed.
The type of information leaked does matter. In this case his leak probably put lives at risk. It saved no lives. It solved no crimes. It prevented no human rights abuses. In fact it may be causing them.
The Cablegate leak as far as I know was of minimal value to the cause of protecting human rights or of protecting civilians from governments.
All the hardcore authoritarian fascists want him dead, I wonder if they'll get their wish. If so, I wonder if Adrian Lamo will feel any guilt at all for ending this guy's life for no fucking reason (attention? "Remember me? I'm still around, everyone!")
Right. Because it's Adrian's fault that Manning chose to distribute documents which he was clearly not authorized to distribute. Whether you think it's right or wrong for him to have distributed them, it's not like anyone can be under the illusion that Manning's actions would have been considered legal. He alone is responsible for what happens to him.
In specific the Cablegate leak was absolutely irresponsible and could have put lives at risk. It saved no lives.
Well, we do know some of it because plenty is admitted by both sides.
Assange and the government admit that Wikileaks got hold of a ton of classified documents and published them on the internet.
Everybody understands that the publication of those documents embarrassed the USA, many of its allies and foreign governments. Those who think realize that this kind of action erodes the trust that is the basis for sincere negotiations between countries. If you can't trust that the USA or any other country can keep what you tell them in confidence quiet, it means you won't tell them anything sensitive.
And that means there will be more friction between governments and more suspicion.
Who exactly stands to gain from divide and conquer against the US and it's allies? I don't see how I personally gain or lose from the Cablegate scandal in particular but I do see why certain information should never be leaked and that diplomatic information, intelligence sources, war plans and operations should never be leaked. I don't see anything in the Cablegate leak that protects human rights or protects civilians and if anything it may have put innocent civilians at risk.
So once again who gains and why would Julian Assange choose to leak that in particular? What is the value of the leak to the general public?
if you're living in a democracy, anyone and everyone who can inform the electorate.
otherwise there is no accountability.
people can't call for enforcement of human rights in a particular case if they don't know they're being violated.
People won't call for legal duties to be created if they don't hear about the events which indicate a need for them.
it doesn't matter if they're all corrupt as long as they're corrupt in different ways with different goals.
If you genuinely think simply not caring about rape, torture or genocide is a good enough reason to get you off the hook (or that there is no hook)for doing nothing to prevent it even when it is within your power to prevent it and that doing noting says nothing about the kind of person you are then we subscribe to different enough worldviews that there's likely little overlap in our moralities.
for reference to some recent news, for example, the idea that carers or staff who knew that saville was raping children yet did nothing, told nobody and let it continue are in no way in the wrong under your moral system.
Basically there is no accountability on a lot of different issues at this time. Law enforcement is the only logical group you can go to and if they don't do anything about it then you can only keep your mouth shut. If law enforcement supports it then perhaps it's not wrong and you just don't have enough information to know why?
It's not a matter of how much you care. It's a matter of your level of responsibility and knowledge of events. If you don't have responsibility for any of it, if you're not in control of it, if you go to law enforcement and they are okay with it, there isn't anything more you can be expected to do as a civilian. If you try to do more you could wind up as enemy of the state and treated as a terrorist.
It's not peoples moral systems you should have the problem with. If these things are allowed to happen then you gotta have the problem with the people who are in charge of these activities. They have God like power over everyone else and should have God like responsibility. You can't expect the powerless civilian to stop rape and torture anymore than you should expect the abused child in a neglectful household to be able to stop the abuse. A child is basically defenseless and can't really do anything if their parents decide to abuse them or abuse each other.
No, I'm saying you've misunderstood the thread. Robert Hansen was a double-agent for the *other side*. He didn't get a security clearance because he was a Soviet spy we'd turned. He got a clearance because he was a Soviet spy we hadn't uncovered.
Sheesh, this stuff is basic to every bloody spy novel out there.
And how exactly is it that we couldn't have uncovered him? How did he get so high up without being properly checked? If you look at his story he was a walk-in and there were so many obvious signs or red flags with him that he had to be suspected so how did he last for so long?
I completely agree that what manning did was wrong but not totally. his fuckup was leaking everything, including a lot of material he'd never even looked at.
on the other hand had he only leaked a small amount about the worst abuses, limited material he was familiar with without much significant additional info then morally he'd be in the clear.
As you said, responsible disclosure would only likely have ended without it doing anything but get him fired and get his life destroyed professionally
You do realise that your first 2 paragraphs are essentially laying out a very good justification for leaking things anon if you feel you really must right?
Leak Anonymously to whom? Everyone is corrupt. The media is far more corrupt than law enforcement or government. Also I think with issues like these it's just not something one person should make a decision on. I suppose if a group of employees got together and leaked something to law enforcement then there should be an investigation but I still don't see what is gained by going to the media. The media can at best alert law enforcement but cannot really do anything about anything.
So if I see your daughter/sister/son getting raped in a back ally I have no moral duty to call the police or help? you'd have no problem with me as a person if I just laughed and ignored it? you'd go for a beer with me and it wouldn't bother you?
Moral duties do not exist. Whether I'd want you to help my daughter/sister/son from getting raped or not, if you don't help them I cannot hold you morally responsible for what you didn't do. I don't know what went on in your mind as to why you didn't do it. I don't know what your circumstances were or what risks you might be taking. I don't expect you to be the hero or take on the job of saving random people so no I don't believe in moral duty or obligation.
I think it would be nice if people decide to do that and it would encourage others to do the same thing but I don't consider it a duty. I don't have a duty to complete strangers against my will. I choose to take on a duty or not. The concept of a moral duty is someone else putting expectations and duties upon me that I haven't volunteered for or chosen to put on myself which gives them control over my actions and I don't agree with that at all period. There are legal duties so it could be a situation where if I can do something and I don't do something I could be sued or held legally responsible yes and this could be enforced by enough penalties that I'd be more likely to do something to save someone else. I would say forget about moral duty entirely, it doesn't exist. Focus exclusively on legal duties because legal duties can be enforced and made to exist through that enforcement. Just as moral and human rights don't really exist, but human rights in specific could be made to exist if a military and law enforcement decide to put enough resources to defend it.
As to the have a beer question. I would have a beer with you even if you ignored it and I'd ask you why you didn't try to help and try to learn your perspective as to why you didn't help. If you simply were honest and say you didn't care I could accept that but I'd make you pay for your own beer of course rather than buy you a beer. No I don't expect people to care, I expect people to protect themselves.
it has little or nothing to do with activism. beyond a certain point it's simply about being a decent human being.
Genocide, rape, torture. you have a moral duty to prevent or disclose some things no matter whether you're a cybersecurity professional or a professional clown and no matter who your employer is.
Disclose to who? There is no one to disclose it to if you work for the most powerful government in the world which can do those same things to you. The other problem is okay if you decide to do that do you ever expect to hold a job again in your life? Do you expect to avoid prison? You might not even survive such an experience.
If there is genocide, rape and torture going on by your employer you can report it to the FBI but there is no guarantee that reporting it will do anything but get you fired and get your life destroyed professionally. The best case scenario that anyone should hope for is to never be in the position where they have to see genocides, rapes, torture. I highly doubt these things are happening but if they are I don't think you can put the blame morally or otherwise on the lowest level employees of the organization who just got their jobs and in this case we'd be talking about exactly the sort of employees who would be the low level types.
The final consideration is the difference between legal duty and moral duty. Moral duties don't exist, that's something you're inventing for your argument. Legal duties do exist and in this case the government has the legal authority to kill, to kidnap, to do a lot of different things to those they deem the enemy. Whether Bradley Manning is guilty or not the US government has the authority to put an American citizen in that situation. So if it's legal then your legal duties go up against your moral duties. My personal opinion is no matter what the situation is, whether there is genocide or torture or rape, whether you feel you have a moral duty to do something about it or not, doing something about it doesn't necessarily mean doing what Bradley Manning is accused of doing. Doing something about it could mean resigning, quit your job, contact Senators and Congressmen who have the ability to do something about it, and contact law enforcement, but what you should not do is put lives at risk by leaking classified information to the general public.
If you take an oath, and you swore under that oath, and you sign a contract, all of that is done for a reason. The secrets you have to keep in many cases are secrets which if exposed would put many lives at risk, many of them would be innocent lives and it could even include your own.So I don't support leaking as the answer to corruption because I perceive leaking as potentially tipping off the enemy or rival and a problem such as genocide and torture which may have affected a small amount of people due to your actions could now affect a much larger pool of people.
I think you got it a bit wrong. To be a good hacker you learn to bend the rules without breaking them. You learn to work the legal system and laws to your advantage. You learn that while computers and operating systems do have rules, those rules can be bent.
That is not the same as breaking the rules. A rule breaker is an outlaw and wont last very long before they break one rule too many. A rule bender is someone who knows how to get things done by knowing how things work so well that they figure out the cheat codes.
What the heck do you suppose a "geek", someone who by their very nature has issues with authority, probably has personal issues around justice, and has tendencies towards just about every "ism" that your average government puts people on watchlists for, is going to do when they see/hear/read something that they think is wrong????
Speaking of geeks tending towards "isms"... even Robert Oppenheimer was being closely watched for his "communist" tendencies, but the real spy Klaus Fuchs went undetected for way too long.
You would think any geek in these positions would be watched intensely so how exactly am I supposed to believe that a geek could get past FBI counter intelligence? I don't believe it's possible to fool counter intelligence.
So if counter intelligence did their job and somehow the information didn't reach the right people it was a problem with information flow and information sharing. The government has so much information on every single one of us that I don't see how they can be taken by surprise.
...had a Top Secret / SCI (secure, compartmentalized information) clearance.
They crawled up his ass with the Hubble telescope, looked for people he knows, then went and crawled up the ass of *those* people to find out who *they* know that might know Manning. They hooked him up to a polygraph. They checked, re-checked, cross-checked and followed every single link, social media page, every parking ticket, every word on his school records.
And yet, when Manning encountered something that he knew for a confirmed fact that what he was seeing/hearing/reading was against the law, he tried to do the right thing, but got shot down by his chain of command. Feeling as though he had no other choice, he allegedly turned the info over to Wikileaks.
What the heck do you suppose a "geek", someone who by their very nature has issues with authority, probably has personal issues around justice, and has tendencies towards just about every "ism" that your average government puts people on watchlists for, is going to do when they see/hear/read something that they think is wrong????
Nabbing geeks off the street to "hack the planet" is fine and dandy for movies about the end of the world, but it doesn't work so well in real life.
If the government story on Bradley Manning is correct... Bradley Manning was a political activist pretending to be a soldier in the US military. If it's incorrect then he may have been the scapegoat.
Either way it's clear from his behavior that he didn't really belong in the military and not because of his sexuality but because of his emotional instability. His personality type and psychology doesn't seem very stable so why was he given a security clearance if he's nutty?
The author obviously doesn't know very much about government security practice, even though their handbook is available online for anybody who can Google.
The assumption that there are no qualified, committed, and skilled professionals in the industry who are not geeks (quasi social outcasts) is totally false. There are a lot of us out there that don't look, smell or act like such employees who are willing and able to do this job. If you show up looking like this stereotype and fail the drug test what do you think HR is going to do? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I think the real story *should* be that if you really want a job and you don't like to show up during office hours, dressed for work, with combed hair, demonstrating basic social graces and you refuse to give up illegal drug use, your membership in Anonymous and all the other nasty things "Geek Culture" brings to the table, Just go look someplace else for a job. Somehow, I don't think there are very many private companies who will put up with you as a security professional.
Those are a lot of unnecessary assumptions. Being a geek has nothing to do with being a vigilante. Being a hacker has nothing to do with being a vigilante. Being a vigilante has to do with ideology. Being ideological is the enemy of trustworthiness because ideology can change or be influenced very easily.
The two biggest indicators that someone isn't going to be trustworthy have to do with their motivations to be untrustworthy.
Drugs. A drug addiction can quickly lead someone into going broke. Broke junkies will do almost anything to keep the drugs coming. Stealing from the company and selling company secrets is certainly a possibility. Note that this doesn't say drug use, it says drug addiction. I've never known anyone that would say, "Sure, I'll sell out my company for a dime bag." Unfortunately, there's no way to distinguish between the two without getting accused of being a junkie yourself by whoever is gunning for your job.
Debt. A lot of debt can make someone a higher risk because they're more desperate for money. But this is highly situational..someone with a lot of debt that is just waiting for it to fall off their record is a lot more trustworthy than someone that needs money by the end of the month or they're going to be evicted. Drug addictions, gambling, and poor money management in general can all be responsible for this.
Are there any other motivations people have for selling a company out? Revenge, maybe, but that can easily be solved by treating people with respect and not keeping them 'in the know' about what happens if they get fired. By the time they want revenge, they won't have the power to take it.
The big problem with these consideration is that it is merely a glance at someone's life and isn't indicative of the real person. They might answer yes to drug use, ten years ago in college. Whereas someone else might have just stepped out of the bathroom where they shot up a dose of heroin and then told you to their face that they'd never even seen any drugs in their whole lives. Someone with a lot of debt might have been in medical debt, someone with a little debt might be just be on a winning spree from the local casino.
Sex, Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. These are the motivations people have to sell the company out. Coercion can also mean Contraband/Drugs. In general any addiction can be used to socially engineer a target into doing anything which is why addiction itself is the enemy of trust.
I know, there's that myth floating about that a police register is some sort of "letter of recommendation", but actually, it not only tells me that the person at the very least didn't mind playing on the "wrong" team, but he was also not good enough not to get caught. I do NOT want that person on my team!
Actually, what you want to hire as government is that average-good hacker, not the top level one. Why, you may ask? Well, with the former you can be certain that he's playing for the good team. The other one could just be smart enough to be a bad apple AND get away with it.
I agree with your perspective. Why would anyone want a failed hacker on their team? As far as being smart enough to be the bad apple and get away with it, I doubt that. How would they know what technology the government has or how the government network even works since that is probably classified? It's very unlikely unless they are government sponsored in which case they would be a mole not a hacker.
Sounds like a way to get some Black Hats working directly for the DOD and Homeland Security. Hiring Black Hats is good only when you know they are a Black Hat, and that usually requires they get arrested first. If they are a sketchy unscroupoulous looking person then stay away. They already have to be on the lookout for the Normal Looking Black Hat Anon that's slipped into the organization they shouldn't be putting people that are clearly a risk in.
That is what counter intelligence is there for. Do you really think a black hat is going to get past FBI counter intelligence? I don't think so.
What is more likely to happen is white hats who get frustrated with life and government and who in an act of rage and instability decide to act like a black hat. That scenario can be prevented if the psychology of the individual is known in advance.
I have worked for the Federal Government for some time now (6-7 years). Below is a brief detail of my hiring/firing history. 1 - Apply for intern job (summer 2004), a month (month!) later, go on an interview, be told that I "got the job". Two months (!) later, I start. The first 50 hours are entirely paperwork. I work 20 hours/week for a year after this. 2 - Due to the conditions on my hire, I was only allowed to be employed for 12 months. The plan is to fire me on a Friday, and hire me on Monday (more paperwork). Somebody gets sick, or lazy, or something (never found out). I end up unemployed for a month. My supervisor gives me a bonus (equal to a weeks pay... $240), as an apology. 3 - I get my degree, and get hired on as a full time employee. I start the process early, but it takes three months (during which I work full time at less than half of the full time rate). 4 - I take a temporary assignment. This takes 9 months to set up. It is a two month assignment. 5 - I take another temporary assignment. We don't fill out the paperwork, as it is a lateral for the same pay on the other side of the building. 6 - I find new employment (June 2010). A position is opened up with my name on it. I start mid-January 2011.
Among my group, one of them took over a year to hire (and had to jump through a "temporary hire" hoop in order to wait out a hiring freeze), one of them took 9 months to hire (full time federal), one of them took nine months to hire (full time post-doc contractor), and one of them took 4 months to hire (contractor). I don't know what it looks like in the private sector, but this is INSANE. In a previous federal job, we had two applicants find other employment while we were in the process of hiring them (restarting the 6-9 month process!).
Want to talk waste/fraud/abuse? Have an engineer work 70 hour weeks for 6 months while you try to promote the person who will do the job. This has happened twice in my observation (the first person got promoted out). Fucking disaster.
While you are correct that it is difficult to fire someone (I've seen it done twice), it is also very hard to hire them. It is double-hard to hire people when you tell them that it will be 6 months before they start. You tell that to graduating seniors, and they walk away from the recruiting station.
Seriously, what the fuck? "Legal niceties" is another term for these rules are in place because we don't want to get fucked over again by someone we trusted. They're there for a reason.
I hate this mindset. Rules are there for a reason, yes, but what is that reason? Maybe it's an ironclad principal of human nature ("people with credit problems are easily bribed"); maybe it originates from a once-applicable idea that is now obsolete ("homosexuals are easily blackmailed"); maybe it originated from prudish mindsets or political agendas that never had any validity to begin with ("marijuana smokers are less trustworthy"); maybe it was meant to appease stakeholders whose concerns or opinions no longer hold sway ("art students are more likely to be communist sympathizers"); maybe you're more desperate than before ("sh*t we need a lot of custom code... isn't there some non-critical stuff that we can let non-cleared programmers work on?").
Rules are not so eternal as you seem to think... they are but one of many structural elements in complex human systems, and an organization that is poor at reevaluating and changing rules is doomed to ossification.
BTW, if you RTFA, you'd see that's he's specifically talking about people with AD(H)D, autism, OCD, and perhaps soft drug use. He's also talking about redesigning clearances and pushing back on overweighted HR/legal interests, not outright circumvention of existing rules. (And if he's seen the HR departments that I've seen, he knows they frequently block any meaningful evaluation of a candidate's technical proficiencies and prefer to judge people on their ability to smile, deliver a firm handshake, and make smalltalk with a stranger. Part of it is legal... can't ask that candidate to write a SQL statement like he or she will have to do every damn day on the job because we don't know for sure that it isn't some subtle proxy test to discriminate on race.)
Marijuana has little to do with it I think. I think having addictions in general makes a person less trust-worthy. I don't trust an addict. Would you?
On the other hand an occasional smoker is not an addict.
How this crap gets modded insightful, I do not know. "We" may *debrief* double agents or "converted" terrorists, but "we" don't tend to give them security clearances, and "we" therefore don't tend to make them privy to new sensitive information except under very carefully controlled circumstances. Because "we" are not "gibbering fuckwits without a braincell".
study some history. people who follow the "proper chain" tend to just get ignored and shitlisted. What happened after mai lai? the only reason it saw the light of day was that someone ditched the chain and wrote letters to every senior person he could think of. even then how many people actually went to jail?
If you want to be a political activist then why try to be a security pro? You can't be both at the same time. Activism and Cybersecurity do not mix. Why is it difficult to keep work in one sphere and your personal opinions in another?
In my whole professional career(some of it actually required NATO clearance...for blueprints that propably had already been known been known to Teh Enemi for 30 years) I was more than once severely tempted to leak stuff to the national press. Never did, tho. I fully understand what thought process Manning followed when he leaked stuff. We let the fools run stuff and let them cover up their shortcomings with secrecy.
Bradley Manning if what he is accused of is true had put politics before country. If you work in defense of the country, you cannot put politics before country.
Slashdot Mirror
However the stuff he released wasn't stuff we already knew was going on anyways. The stuff that he leaked, was more embarrassing in the fact that it got leaked out then the content. However the real problem is the fact it included the names of the people. Where say Lt. Joe Smith, bombed a house of innocent civilians that his intelligence told him it was a terrorist stronghold. So now the family of those civilians may go on a vendetta against Lt. Joe Smith. Or the fact that Joe Smith was part of some regiment. They went to the next town where they would have had support they now have resistance, because the information may make them seem like a rogue unit, vs. and unfortunate accident of war.
This wasn't whistle blowing material. If say the US was using chemical weapons to devastate a town. Where the US is in violation of war crimes and showed a policy of knowing about and supporting such crimes, that is whistle blowing material. What he did was just stupid and deserves to be locked up for.
I agree with you. The only time where leaking makes sense is to protect our lives. To protect civilian lives. Leaking the names of intelligence sources is exactly what puts civilian lives at the most risk as intelligence sources are civilians. I think in the case of Lt. Joe Smith that's not a civilian so leaking his name is bad but not quite evil like leaking the name of spies or intelligence sources who aren't trained for combat, who may not even know they are helping the US government, who may not even know that they are spies until they read some leaked document.
A spy does not get treated as a prisoner of war. A spy has no human rights. A spy if captured faces being tortured to death, having their entire family tortured to death, and the worst of the worst abuses from governments around the world. Any leak which subjects any human being to that treatment is the leak of a traitor. The whole argument for leaking is based on the premise of stopping such treatment from occurring.
THe collateral murder video and its coverup.
There was also the little part of a us contractor paying for boy sex slaves as bribe to a afghanistan warlord.
The majority of it wasn't particularly offensive, but there were a few malignant little gems in there.
That sort of activities taken by government which put civilian lives at risk should be revealed to civilians if civilians have the power to put an end to it. A lot of the stuff in Cablegate were government matters which had nothing or little to do with torture and abuse of civilians.
There are two problems, the first problem being if you do leak as a whistleblower to protect civilians you gotta leak in a way which doesn't help any rival government. The other problem is even if you leak those things it doesn't mean there is anything that can be accomplished by leaking to the public rather than to law enforcement.
A long time ago, it was expected that all military personnel should follow orders, rules and regulations, and that they would not be held accountable for their actions while doing so.
Then, as a species, we grew up a little, and a number of events including Nuremberg helped us to realise that this was not a healthy attitude.
Now, in 2012 many people still believe it is "right" to lie about and cover up the killing of innocent people. I hope, as a species, we will continue to grow and to understand that this is unacceptable. When it comes to the murder of non-military personnel, being part of such a cover-up should be regarded as an abuse of human rights (it is, after all, a conspiracy to hide a crime against humanity) and military personnel *should* have whistleblower rights, in a limited range of circumstances.
Russ
Cablegate wasn't about saving lives. Cablegate put the lives of innocent people at risk. What if some other government could study the information leaked in Cablegate and deduce the identities of intelligence sources and of spies?
So if some horrible atrocity occurs we should never find out because the few generals decided so?
I would rather the military suffer some disturbance of order than there be no check at on them.
No that's not the situation. The Cablegate leak didn't reveal abuses. The Cablegate leak didn't protect civilians. The Cablegate leak embarrassed governments around the world but that doesn't make civilians any safer.
Governments will now go to even more extreme methods and abuses on civilians because of this leak. Cablegate itself may have leaked intelligence sources and the identities of civilians. Can we agree that this was wrong and by doing this act Bradley Manning was a traitor?
On the other hand, corruption, incompetence and sheer lawlessness due to lack of oversight also severely undermine the necessary order and discipline an effective military needs. It is certainly not the business of the military to withhold information of that nature from their political masters.
He didn't leak anything which changed any of the problems if you're talking about the Cablegate leak. That makes things worse for civilians.
Allowing actions like this, even in the spirit of whistleblowing, would severely undermine the necessary order and discipline an effective military needs. It is certainly not the business of a private to determine what type of classified information should or should not be distributed.
The type of information leaked does matter. In this case his leak probably put lives at risk. It saved no lives. It solved no crimes. It prevented no human rights abuses. In fact it may be causing them.
The Cablegate leak as far as I know was of minimal value to the cause of protecting human rights or of protecting civilians from governments.
All the hardcore authoritarian fascists want him dead, I wonder if they'll get their wish. If so, I wonder if Adrian Lamo will feel any guilt at all for ending this guy's life for no fucking reason (attention? "Remember me? I'm still around, everyone!")
Right. Because it's Adrian's fault that Manning chose to distribute documents which he was clearly not authorized to distribute. Whether you think it's right or wrong for him to have distributed them, it's not like anyone can be under the illusion that Manning's actions would have been considered legal. He alone is responsible for what happens to him.
In specific the Cablegate leak was absolutely irresponsible and could have put lives at risk. It saved no lives.
I thought he was only worth 200 million?
Well, we do know some of it because plenty is admitted by both sides.
Assange and the government admit that Wikileaks got hold of a ton of classified documents and published them on the internet.
Everybody understands that the publication of those documents embarrassed the USA, many of its allies and foreign governments. Those who think realize that this kind of action erodes the trust that is the basis for sincere negotiations between countries. If you can't trust that the USA or any other country can keep what you tell them in confidence quiet, it means you won't tell them anything sensitive.
And that means there will be more friction between governments and more suspicion.
Who exactly stands to gain from divide and conquer against the US and it's allies? I don't see how I personally gain or lose from the Cablegate scandal in particular but I do see why certain information should never be leaked and that diplomatic information, intelligence sources, war plans and operations should never be leaked. I don't see anything in the Cablegate leak that protects human rights or protects civilians and if anything it may have put innocent civilians at risk.
So once again who gains and why would Julian Assange choose to leak that in particular? What is the value of the leak to the general public?
"Leak Anonymously to whom?"
if you're living in a democracy, anyone and everyone who can inform the electorate.
otherwise there is no accountability.
people can't call for enforcement of human rights in a particular case if they don't know they're being violated.
People won't call for legal duties to be created if they don't hear about the events which indicate a need for them.
it doesn't matter if they're all corrupt as long as they're corrupt in different ways with different goals.
If you genuinely think simply not caring about rape, torture or genocide is a good enough reason to get you off the hook (or that there is no hook)for doing nothing to prevent it even when it is within your power to prevent it and that doing noting says nothing about the kind of person you are then we subscribe to different enough worldviews that there's likely little overlap in our moralities.
for reference to some recent news, for example, the idea that carers or staff who knew that saville was raping children yet did nothing, told nobody and let it continue are in no way in the wrong under your moral system.
Basically there is no accountability on a lot of different issues at this time. Law enforcement is the only logical group you can go to and if they don't do anything about it then you can only keep your mouth shut. If law enforcement supports it then perhaps it's not wrong and you just don't have enough information to know why?
It's not a matter of how much you care. It's a matter of your level of responsibility and knowledge of events. If you don't have responsibility for any of it, if you're not in control of it, if you go to law enforcement and they are okay with it, there isn't anything more you can be expected to do as a civilian. If you try to do more you could wind up as enemy of the state and treated as a terrorist.
It's not peoples moral systems you should have the problem with. If these things are allowed to happen then you gotta have the problem with the people who are in charge of these activities. They have God like power over everyone else and should have God like responsibility. You can't expect the powerless civilian to stop rape and torture anymore than you should expect the abused child in a neglectful household to be able to stop the abuse. A child is basically defenseless and can't really do anything if their parents decide to abuse them or abuse each other.
No, I'm saying you've misunderstood the thread. Robert Hansen was a double-agent for the *other side*. He didn't get a security clearance because he was a Soviet spy we'd turned. He got a clearance because he was a Soviet spy we hadn't uncovered.
Sheesh, this stuff is basic to every bloody spy novel out there.
And how exactly is it that we couldn't have uncovered him? How did he get so high up without being properly checked?
If you look at his story he was a walk-in and there were so many obvious signs or red flags with him that he had to be suspected so how did he last for so long?
I completely agree that what manning did was wrong but not totally. his fuckup was leaking everything, including a lot of material he'd never even looked at.
on the other hand had he only leaked a small amount about the worst abuses, limited material he was familiar with without much significant additional info then morally he'd be in the clear.
As you said, responsible disclosure would only likely have ended without it doing anything but get him fired and get his life destroyed professionally
You do realise that your first 2 paragraphs are essentially laying out a very good justification for leaking things anon if you feel you really must right?
Leak Anonymously to whom? Everyone is corrupt. The media is far more corrupt than law enforcement or government. Also I think with issues like these it's just not something one person should make a decision on. I suppose if a group of employees got together and leaked something to law enforcement then there should be an investigation but I still don't see what is gained by going to the media. The media can at best alert law enforcement but cannot really do anything about anything.
So if I see your daughter/sister/son getting raped in a back ally I have no moral duty to call the police or help? you'd have no problem with me as a person if I just laughed and ignored it? you'd go for a beer with me and it wouldn't bother you?
Moral duties do not exist. Whether I'd want you to help my daughter/sister/son from getting raped or not, if you don't help them I cannot hold you morally responsible for what you didn't do. I don't know what went on in your mind as to why you didn't do it. I don't know what your circumstances were or what risks you might be taking. I don't expect you to be the hero or take on the job of saving random people so no I don't believe in moral duty or obligation.
I think it would be nice if people decide to do that and it would encourage others to do the same thing but I don't consider it a duty. I don't have a duty to complete strangers against my will. I choose to take on a duty or not. The concept of a moral duty is someone else putting expectations and duties upon me that I haven't volunteered for or chosen to put on myself which gives them control over my actions and I don't agree with that at all period. There are legal duties so it could be a situation where if I can do something and I don't do something I could be sued or held legally responsible yes and this could be enforced by enough penalties that I'd be more likely to do something to save someone else. I would say forget about moral duty entirely, it doesn't exist. Focus exclusively on legal duties because legal duties can be enforced and made to exist through that enforcement. Just as moral and human rights don't really exist, but human rights in specific could be made to exist if a military and law enforcement decide to put enough resources to defend it.
As to the have a beer question. I would have a beer with you even if you ignored it and I'd ask you why you didn't try to help and try to learn your perspective as to why you didn't help. If you simply were honest and say you didn't care I could accept that but I'd make you pay for your own beer of course rather than buy you a beer. No I don't expect people to care, I expect people to protect themselves.
it has little or nothing to do with activism. beyond a certain point it's simply about being a decent human being.
Genocide, rape, torture. you have a moral duty to prevent or disclose some things no matter whether you're a cybersecurity professional or a professional clown and no matter who your employer is.
Disclose to who? There is no one to disclose it to if you work for the most powerful government in the world which can do those same things to you. The other problem is okay if you decide to do that do you ever expect to hold a job again in your life? Do you expect to avoid prison? You might not even survive such an experience.
If there is genocide, rape and torture going on by your employer you can report it to the FBI but there is no guarantee that reporting it will do anything but get you fired and get your life destroyed professionally. The best case scenario that anyone should hope for is to never be in the position where they have to see genocides, rapes, torture. I highly doubt these things are happening but if they are I don't think you can put the blame morally or otherwise on the lowest level employees of the organization who just got their jobs and in this case we'd be talking about exactly the sort of employees who would be the low level types.
The final consideration is the difference between legal duty and moral duty. Moral duties don't exist, that's something you're inventing for your argument. Legal duties do exist and in this case the government has the legal authority to kill, to kidnap, to do a lot of different things to those they deem the enemy. Whether Bradley Manning is guilty or not the US government has the authority to put an American citizen in that situation. So if it's legal then your legal duties go up against your moral duties. My personal opinion is no matter what the situation is, whether there is genocide or torture or rape, whether you feel you have a moral duty to do something about it or not, doing something about it doesn't necessarily mean doing what Bradley Manning is accused of doing. Doing something about it could mean resigning, quit your job, contact Senators and Congressmen who have the ability to do something about it, and contact law enforcement, but what you should not do is put lives at risk by leaking classified information to the general public.
If you take an oath, and you swore under that oath, and you sign a contract, all of that is done for a reason. The secrets you have to keep in many cases are secrets which if exposed would put many lives at risk, many of them would be innocent lives and it could even include your own.So I don't support leaking as the answer to corruption because I perceive leaking as potentially tipping off the enemy or rival and a problem such as genocide and torture which may have affected a small amount of people due to your actions could now affect a much larger pool of people.
I think you got it a bit wrong. To be a good hacker you learn to bend the rules without breaking them. You learn to work the legal system and laws to your advantage. You learn that while computers and operating systems do have rules, those rules can be bent.
That is not the same as breaking the rules. A rule breaker is an outlaw and wont last very long before they break one rule too many. A rule bender is someone who knows how to get things done by knowing how things work so well that they figure out the cheat codes.
Speaking of geeks tending towards "isms"... even Robert Oppenheimer was being closely watched for his "communist" tendencies, but the real spy Klaus Fuchs went undetected for way too long.
You would think any geek in these positions would be watched intensely so how exactly am I supposed to believe that a geek could get past FBI counter intelligence? I don't believe it's possible to fool counter intelligence.
So if counter intelligence did their job and somehow the information didn't reach the right people it was a problem with information flow and information sharing. The government has so much information on every single one of us that I don't see how they can be taken by surprise.
...had a Top Secret / SCI (secure, compartmentalized information) clearance.
They crawled up his ass with the Hubble telescope, looked for people he knows, then went and crawled up the ass of *those* people to find out who *they* know that might know Manning. They hooked him up to a polygraph. They checked, re-checked, cross-checked and followed every single link, social media page, every parking ticket, every word on his school records.
It takes months to do a SSBI.
And yet, when Manning encountered something that he knew for a confirmed fact that what he was seeing/hearing/reading was against the law, he tried to do the right thing, but got shot down by his chain of command. Feeling as though he had no other choice, he allegedly turned the info over to Wikileaks.
What the heck do you suppose a "geek", someone who by their very nature has issues with authority, probably has personal issues around justice, and has tendencies towards just about every "ism" that your average government puts people on watchlists for, is going to do when they see/hear/read something that they think is wrong????
Nabbing geeks off the street to "hack the planet" is fine and dandy for movies about the end of the world, but it doesn't work so well in real life.
If the government story on Bradley Manning is correct...
Bradley Manning was a political activist pretending to be a soldier in the US military. If it's incorrect then he may have been the scapegoat.
Either way it's clear from his behavior that he didn't really belong in the military and not because of his sexuality but because of his emotional instability. His personality type and psychology doesn't seem very stable so why was he given a security clearance if he's nutty?
The author obviously doesn't know very much about government security practice, even though their handbook is available online for anybody who can Google.
The assumption that there are no qualified, committed, and skilled professionals in the industry who are not geeks (quasi social outcasts) is totally false. There are a lot of us out there that don't look, smell or act like such employees who are willing and able to do this job. If you show up looking like this stereotype and fail the drug test what do you think HR is going to do? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
I think the real story *should* be that if you really want a job and you don't like to show up during office hours, dressed for work, with combed hair, demonstrating basic social graces and you refuse to give up illegal drug use, your membership in Anonymous and all the other nasty things "Geek Culture" brings to the table, Just go look someplace else for a job. Somehow, I don't think there are very many private companies who will put up with you as a security professional.
Those are a lot of unnecessary assumptions. Being a geek has nothing to do with being a vigilante. Being a hacker has nothing to do with being a vigilante. Being a vigilante has to do with ideology. Being ideological is the enemy of trustworthiness because ideology can change or be influenced very easily.
The two biggest indicators that someone isn't going to be trustworthy have to do with their motivations to be untrustworthy.
Drugs. A drug addiction can quickly lead someone into going broke. Broke junkies will do almost anything to keep the drugs coming. Stealing from the company and selling company secrets is certainly a possibility. Note that this doesn't say drug use, it says drug addiction. I've never known anyone that would say, "Sure, I'll sell out my company for a dime bag." Unfortunately, there's no way to distinguish between the two without getting accused of being a junkie yourself by whoever is gunning for your job.
Debt. A lot of debt can make someone a higher risk because they're more desperate for money. But this is highly situational..someone with a lot of debt that is just waiting for it to fall off their record is a lot more trustworthy than someone that needs money by the end of the month or they're going to be evicted. Drug addictions, gambling, and poor money management in general can all be responsible for this.
Are there any other motivations people have for selling a company out? Revenge, maybe, but that can easily be solved by treating people with respect and not keeping them 'in the know' about what happens if they get fired. By the time they want revenge, they won't have the power to take it.
The big problem with these consideration is that it is merely a glance at someone's life and isn't indicative of the real person. They might answer yes to drug use, ten years ago in college. Whereas someone else might have just stepped out of the bathroom where they shot up a dose of heroin and then told you to their face that they'd never even seen any drugs in their whole lives. Someone with a lot of debt might have been in medical debt, someone with a little debt might be just be on a winning spree from the local casino.
Sex, Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. These are the motivations people have to sell the company out. Coercion can also mean Contraband/Drugs. In general any addiction can be used to socially engineer a target into doing anything which is why addiction itself is the enemy of trust.
Hiring a known Black Hat? Are you nuts?
I know, there's that myth floating about that a police register is some sort of "letter of recommendation", but actually, it not only tells me that the person at the very least didn't mind playing on the "wrong" team, but he was also not good enough not to get caught. I do NOT want that person on my team!
Actually, what you want to hire as government is that average-good hacker, not the top level one. Why, you may ask? Well, with the former you can be certain that he's playing for the good team. The other one could just be smart enough to be a bad apple AND get away with it.
I agree with your perspective. Why would anyone want a failed hacker on their team?
As far as being smart enough to be the bad apple and get away with it, I doubt that. How would they know what technology the government has or how the government network even works since that is probably classified? It's very unlikely unless they are government sponsored in which case they would be a mole not a hacker.
Sounds like a way to get some Black Hats working directly for the DOD and Homeland Security. Hiring Black Hats is good only when you know they are a Black Hat, and that usually requires they get arrested first. If they are a sketchy unscroupoulous looking person then stay away. They already have to be on the lookout for the Normal Looking Black Hat Anon that's slipped into the organization they shouldn't be putting people that are clearly a risk in.
That is what counter intelligence is there for. Do you really think a black hat is going to get past FBI counter intelligence? I don't think so.
What is more likely to happen is white hats who get frustrated with life and government and who in an act of rage and instability decide to act like a black hat. That scenario can be prevented if the psychology of the individual is known in advance.
I have worked for the Federal Government for some time now (6-7 years). Below is a brief detail of my hiring/firing history.
1 - Apply for intern job (summer 2004), a month (month!) later, go on an interview, be told that I "got the job". Two months (!) later, I start. The first 50 hours are entirely paperwork. I work 20 hours/week for a year after this.
2 - Due to the conditions on my hire, I was only allowed to be employed for 12 months. The plan is to fire me on a Friday, and hire me on Monday (more paperwork). Somebody gets sick, or lazy, or something (never found out). I end up unemployed for a month. My supervisor gives me a bonus (equal to a weeks pay... $240), as an apology.
3 - I get my degree, and get hired on as a full time employee. I start the process early, but it takes three months (during which I work full time at less than half of the full time rate).
4 - I take a temporary assignment. This takes 9 months to set up. It is a two month assignment.
5 - I take another temporary assignment. We don't fill out the paperwork, as it is a lateral for the same pay on the other side of the building.
6 - I find new employment (June 2010). A position is opened up with my name on it. I start mid-January 2011.
Among my group, one of them took over a year to hire (and had to jump through a "temporary hire" hoop in order to wait out a hiring freeze), one of them took 9 months to hire (full time federal), one of them took nine months to hire (full time post-doc contractor), and one of them took 4 months to hire (contractor). I don't know what it looks like in the private sector, but this is INSANE. In a previous federal job, we had two applicants find other employment while we were in the process of hiring them (restarting the 6-9 month process!).
Want to talk waste/fraud/abuse? Have an engineer work 70 hour weeks for 6 months while you try to promote the person who will do the job. This has happened twice in my observation (the first person got promoted out). Fucking disaster.
While you are correct that it is difficult to fire someone (I've seen it done twice), it is also very hard to hire them. It is double-hard to hire people when you tell them that it will be 6 months before they start. You tell that to graduating seniors, and they walk away from the recruiting station.
Your situation doesn't sound so bad.
Seriously, what the fuck? "Legal niceties" is another term for these rules are in place because we don't want to get fucked over again by someone we trusted. They're there for a reason.
I hate this mindset. Rules are there for a reason, yes, but what is that reason? Maybe it's an ironclad principal of human nature ("people with credit problems are easily bribed"); maybe it originates from a once-applicable idea that is now obsolete ("homosexuals are easily blackmailed"); maybe it originated from prudish mindsets or political agendas that never had any validity to begin with ("marijuana smokers are less trustworthy"); maybe it was meant to appease stakeholders whose concerns or opinions no longer hold sway ("art students are more likely to be communist sympathizers"); maybe you're more desperate than before ("sh*t we need a lot of custom code... isn't there some non-critical stuff that we can let non-cleared programmers work on?").
Rules are not so eternal as you seem to think... they are but one of many structural elements in complex human systems, and an organization that is poor at reevaluating and changing rules is doomed to ossification.
BTW, if you RTFA, you'd see that's he's specifically talking about people with AD(H)D, autism, OCD, and perhaps soft drug use. He's also talking about redesigning clearances and pushing back on overweighted HR/legal interests, not outright circumvention of existing rules. (And if he's seen the HR departments that I've seen, he knows they frequently block any meaningful evaluation of a candidate's technical proficiencies and prefer to judge people on their ability to smile, deliver a firm handshake, and make smalltalk with a stranger. Part of it is legal... can't ask that candidate to write a SQL statement like he or she will have to do every damn day on the job because we don't know for sure that it isn't some subtle proxy test to discriminate on race.)
Marijuana has little to do with it I think. I think having addictions in general makes a person less trust-worthy. I don't trust an addict. Would you?
On the other hand an occasional smoker is not an addict.
How this crap gets modded insightful, I do not know. "We" may *debrief* double agents or "converted" terrorists, but "we" don't tend to give them security clearances, and "we" therefore don't tend to make them privy to new sensitive information except under very carefully controlled circumstances. Because "we" are not "gibbering fuckwits without a braincell".
Robert Hansen had a security clearance. Ames had a security clearance. And then there is operation paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
Are you saying none of them had a security clearance? If they didn't then how did they keep their experiments secret?
study some history. people who follow the "proper chain" tend to just get ignored and shitlisted. What happened after mai lai? the only reason it saw the light of day was that someone ditched the chain and wrote letters to every senior person he could think of. even then how many people actually went to jail?
If you want to be a political activist then why try to be a security pro? You can't be both at the same time. Activism and Cybersecurity do not mix. Why is it difficult to keep work in one sphere and your personal opinions in another?
In my whole professional career(some of it actually required NATO clearance...for blueprints that propably had already been known been known to Teh Enemi for 30 years) I was more than once severely tempted to leak stuff to the national press. Never did, tho. I fully understand what thought process Manning followed when he leaked stuff. We let the fools run stuff and let them cover up their shortcomings with secrecy.
Bradley Manning if what he is accused of is true had put politics before country. If you work in defense of the country, you cannot put politics before country.