WikiLeaks I don't have a lot to say about WikiLeaks, but I do want to make a few points. 1. Encryption isn't the issue here. Of course the cables were encrypted, for transmission. Then they were received and decrypted, and -- so it seems -- put into an archive on SIPRNet, where lots of people had access to them in their unencrypted form. 2. 3. 4. 5. EDITED TO ADD (12/10): Me in The Economist: The State Department has learned what the music and film industries learned long ago: that digital files are easy to copy and distribute, says Bruce Schneier, a security expert. Tags: leaks, secrecy, whistleblowers, WikiLeaks
[UPDATED] Anonymous Ousted from Twitter and Facebook, Back on Twitter Already Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity: Tech News « The past week has seen plenty of ink spilled — virtual and otherwise — about WikiLeaks and its mercurial front-man, Julian Assange, and the pressure they have come under from the U.S. government and companies such as Amazon and PayPal, both of which have blocked WikiLeaks from using their services. Why should we care about any of this? Because more than anything else, WikiLeaks is a publisher — a new kind of publisher, but a publisher nonetheless — and that makes this a freedom of the press issue. Not everyone agrees with this point of view, of course. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn), the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, is the one who put pressure on Amazon to remove support for WikiLeaks (although the company claims it removed the organization’s site from its servers because Wikileaks did not own the rights to the content, not because of political pressure). So what makes WikiLeaks different from the New York Times?
Predicting the future of WikiLeaks: Follow the media! The New York Times asked me to do a short piece for their Room for Debate forum on WikiLeaks. Go read the whole piece; below is a paragraph that I'd like to discuss in more detail on this blog: One possible future for WikiLeaks is to morph into a gigantic media intermediary -- perhaps, even something of a clearing house for investigative reporting -- where even low-level leaks would be matched with the appropriate journalists to pursue and report on them and, perhaps, even with appropriate N.G.O.'s to advocate on their causes. Under this model, WikiLeaks staffers would act as idea salesmen relying on one very impressive digital Rolodex. The argument I'm making in the Times piece rests on three premises: a) WikiLeaks, at least in its post-Cablegate reincarnation, has two major assets: an easily recognizable brand and an extensive network of contacts in the media I'd really like to believe that this is a valid assumption. So, now we are getting to the very heart of the issue.
WikiLeaks: Reporters Sans Fact-checki... Anonymous Wikileaks supporters explain web attacks 10 December 2010Last updated at 18:39 'Coldblood', a member of the group Anonymous, tells Jane Wakefield why he views its attacks on Visa and Mastercard as defence of Wikileaks. A group of pro-Wikileaks activists who coordinated a series of web attacks have explained their actions. The Anonymous group said they were not hackers but "average internet citizens" who felt motivated to act because of perceived injustices against Wikileaks. The group said it had no interest in stealing credit card details or attacking critical infrastructure. The details were posted online by one of the many factions claiming to carry out the attacks. "Anonymous is not a group, but rather an internet gathering," it said in a statement published on 10 December. It said the ongoing attacks were a "symbolic action" targeted at corporate website that had withdrawn services from Wikileaks. "We do not want to steal your personal information or credit card numbers. Numbers game Continue reading the main story Criminal chain
WikiLeaks: RSF is peeved over reactio... DNS Provider Mistakenly Caught in WikiLeaks Saga Now Supports the Group | Threat Level A DNS provider that suffered backlash last week after it was wrongly identified as supplying and then dropping DNS service to WikiLeaks has decided to support the secret-spilling site, offering DNS service to two domains distributing WikiLeaks content. EasyDNS, a Canadian firm, was attacked last Friday after media outlets mistakenly reported it had terminated its service for WikiLeaks. The company sent an e-mail to customers Thursday morning letting them know that it had begun providing DNS service for WikiLeaks.ch and WikiLeaks.nl, two of the primary domain names WikiLeaks relocated to after WikiLeaks.org stopped resolving. "We've already done the time, we might as well do the crime," Mark Jeftovic, president and CEO of EasyDNS, told Threat Level about his decision. DNS service providers translate human-friendly domain names to IP addresses, so when someone types www.Amazon.com into their browser, for example, they're properly connected to 72.21.211.176, the address of the host.
The Race to Fix the Classification System The massive disclosure of a quarter million diplomatic records by Wikileaks this weekend underscores the precarious state of the U.S. national security classification system. The Wikileaks project seems to be, more than anything else, an assault on secrecy. If Wikileaks were most concerned about whistleblowing, it would focus on revealing corruption. If it were concerned with historical truth, it would emphasize the discovery of verifiably true facts. If it were anti-war, it would safeguard, not disrupt, the conduct of diplomatic communications. But instead, what Wikileaks has done is to publish a vast potpourri of records — dazzling, revelatory, true, questionable, embarrassing, or routine — whose only common feature is that they are classified or otherwise restricted. This may be understood as a reaction to a real problem, namely the fact that by all accounts, the scope of government secrecy in the U.S. These are not cosmetic changes. Finally, we want to ask for your help.
Anonymous Appears to Threaten Electronic Frontier Foundation with DDOS Attack Hacker vigilante group Anonymous may have followed up its distributed denial of service attacks against Mastercard and Visa with a threat to do the same to...the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The group, allied with 4chan, prosecuted "Operation Payback" to harm the credit card companies allegedly for suspending WikiLeaks' payments. The threat to attack the online freedoms group came after EFF tweeted its opposition to DDOS attacks. There was a problem with EFF earlier today, according to Chris Palmer, EFF's tech director. "Defending free speech means people get to disagree with you. "(W)e did experience extremely high web server load for a bit less than an hour today between roughly 11:30 - 12:30 or so. When writer and BoingBoing co-founder Cory Doctorow retweeted Anon's post on his Twitter account, and followed it with a tweet agreeing with EFF, the objectors came out of the woodwork.
us-watson1-2010 01/13/2010 FM AMEMBASSY REYKJAVIK TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC PRIORITY RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY SIPDIS TREASURY FOR SMART AND WINN, NSC FOR HOVENIER, DOD FOR FENTON E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/13/2020 TAGS: ECON, EFIN, IC, PGOV, PREL SUBJECT: LOOKING FOR ALTERNATIVES TO AN ICESAVE REFERENDUM REF: REYKJAVIK 9 Classified By: CDA SAM WATSON FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D) 1. (C) Summary. CDA met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Einar Gunnarsson and Political Advisor Kristjan Guy Burgess January 12 to discuss Icesave. After presenting a gloomy picture of Iceland's future, the two officials asked for U.S. support. They said that public comments of support from the U.S. or assistance in getting the issue on the IMF agenda would be very much appreciated.
WikiLeaks grows stronger as supporters fight back THE WikiLeaks website has been deactivated, its PayPal account has been frozen, credit card companies have abandoned it, all thanks to US government pressure - yet the group is now stronger than ever. Blocked from using one internet host, WikiLeaks simply jumped to another. Meanwhile, the number of ''mirror'' websites - effectively clones of WikiLeaks' main contents pages - has grown from a few dozen last week to more than 1000. At the same time, WikiLeaks supporters have apparently gone on the offensive, staging retaliatory attacks against companies that have cut ties. On Wednesday, hackers briefly shut down access to the MasterCard website, which announced it had stopped processing donations to the group. Advertisement PostFinance, a Swiss post office bank which closed its account, has itself been under cyber attack. Coincidentally , or perhaps not, WikiLeaks cables reveal that the US government lobbied Russia on behalf of the credit card giants. WikiLeaks has had a win in Australia.
U.S. warns Ottawa about fallout from pending WikiLeaks release The U.S. government has notified Ottawa that the WikiLeaks website is preparing to release sensitive U.S. diplomatic files that could damage American relations with allies around the world. U.S. officials say the documents may contain accounts of compromising conversations with political dissidents and friendly politicians as well as activities that could result in the expulsion of U.S. diplomats from foreign postings. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson phoned Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon to inform him of the matter, a foreign affairs spokeswoman said Wednesday. Melissa Lantsman said the Canadian embassy in Washington is "currently engaging" with the U.S. "We are not privy to the full contents of documents which may be leaked," Ms. A State Department spokesman said Wednesday the release of confidential communications about foreign governments probably will erode trust in the United States as a diplomatic partner. Canada has long resisted repatriating Mr.