Germany's Secret Service just charged their leading Civil Rights group on treason for publishing information about the German government's plans to further expand domestic mass surveillance.
This is not different than what has happened in the United States - though the US uses National Security Letters, gag orders, financial and criminal leverage and defamation - its only when these don't work that the US will reach toward the Espionage Act.
We look back in history and question why citizens in history asked their governments to send civil rights activists to prison and to silence certain stories in the press.
Today we get modern answers to these questions at least every few months.
I have polled friends, family and acquaintances: the overwhelming response is that we don't feel safe.
I have also sampled the official stance from press releases and speeches: the overwhelming justification is that we are not safe.
As all things are, the truth is much more complicated.
> This is not different than what has happened in the United States - though the US uses National Security Letters, gag orders, financial and criminal leverage and defamation - its only when these don't work that the US will reach toward the Espionage Act.
The hell it isn't. When did the U.S.G. hit the ACLU with treason charges?
Ok, when was James Risen charged with treason by the US?
AFAICT, the most significant legal battle he's had with the US Justice Department was over the latter's attempt to force him to testify in the trial of Jeffery Sterling, a former CIA officer charged with leaking. Risen himself hasn't been charged with anything.
Nacchio was one of several executives at a variety of companies charged with bilking shareholders out of tens of millions of dollars. The case against him appears to have been quite strong: he stipulated to a number of high-dollar sales of his stocks during times where he knew the price of Qwest's stock was going to crater.
You write that as if the rest of your comments on this thread weren't there for everyone else to see, like maybe people will just read this one in isolation and believe you.
The OP had said that tptacek was a shill. I defended tptacek by saying I didn't know that he was paid or whether he was just in the circle of security contractors (he is) or whether he merely bought into and was regurgitating their propaganda.
I did not call tptacek a shill nor make a baseless accusation. It's absolutely true that tptacek is a stalwart defender of public narrative. This is the base of OP (not baseless) of his calling tptacek a shill. I entertained the possibility that he wasn't paid or anything like that.
Anyway, this isn't really interesting content any more. I think the real shame is that the main topic was downvoted to oblivion where people will not see the comparison to the US. The information about Binney (that tptacek clearly showed he was noncharitably and polemically engaging) and Risen and others won't be seen.
Right, he was involved in insider trading. If you don't do anything illegal it's hard to blackmail you for it. That was the claim. Blackmail. Sure, he did something wrong(-ish).
Do you have evidence for "blackmail" beyond the word of someone who bilked shareholders out of tens of millions of dollars by selling insider shares in advance of earnings restatements?
Source that Risen was charged with the Espionage Act? The Wikipedia page just mentions Sterling. Binney was never indicted for anything. As for Nacchio: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/qwests-joseph-nacchio-tries... ("Nacchio, after all, had deep pockets and millions of dollars in legal indemnification from Qwest. He fully exhausted the federal-appeals process and still lost his case, Eid said.")
You are right about Risen and Sterling. I think you get the point though. The leverage placed on Risen to reveal his sources and the placement of Sterling under the Espionage Act - the use of backroom deals to keep Risen's publication of mass surveillance out of the Times when it was first published - the use of NSLs - the hacking of the Associated Press to spoil their sources during the Benghazi Affair. The US uses these things to curdle journalistic coverage and their sources.
Binney wasn't indicted for anything. He and his family was held at gunpoint and threatened.
The link you gave just had people calling Nacchio pathetic. Was there a specific fact you were trying to highlight? (I mentioned character defamation in the top post.)
The Espionage Act in the US serves a similar role to the broader treason laws in many other countries, which often include the kind of offenses included within the Espionage Act. So, while "espionage" and "treason" are, indeed, different words, being prosecuted for what German law calls treason may well be more analogous to being prosecuted in the US under the Espionage Act than it is to any other US offense.
I find this neither complete nor accurate but it's good to see a list like this. Thanks for doing the legwork.
Don't forget the Japan mutual defense deal, the upcoming Korea unification and all the other hundred things in the Asia Pacific.
Be careful about many of these things - the way you present them needs to be pretty careful. The goal in the Asia-Pacific (TPP included) is to contain China with a balance of power in their region. This includes Australia, Philippines, Japan of course, Guam, and Singapore, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Northern Mariana Islands, etc. Ukraine was being purposefully Westernized (Project UNITER) for inclusion into the EU and Russia is the goal after Ukraine. It is against the backdrop of NATO, EU and in general Western liberal expansion that Russia solidified its position in Crimea. In other words many of the things you list here can be seen as policy failures or at least haven't played themselves out (Saudi Arabia and Israel with Iranian nuclear deal, etc). We don't know whether this will actually prevent Israel from invading Iran yet.
Yadda yadda.
Anyway, thanks for compiling a list. It's hard to follow American domestic politics without understanding American Foreign policy and Geostrategy. So it's good to see information and dialogue posted here.
During the White House press briefing the WH spokesperson mentioned that normalizing ties was being done for international strategic purposes (and of course, Cuba was blacklisted for similar and for political reasons - not because they had anything to do with terrorism). I don't actually know what they mean by this. Do you have some idea of what strategic investment/partnership is being made?
Oh yeah. That's totally happening. The Sunshine Policy was ended some time ago. President Geun-hye called for international support for the unification at the UN. SK, the US and Japan have joint plans for the destabilization of the regime and other contingencies, US foreign policy thinktanks are devising plans for the event (http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2015/01/20-k...), SK and US are in talks with China about getting their support, interception capabilities have been moved out to the Korean peninsula, anthrax was sent from the DoD to a bunch of labs in the Asia Pacific (North Korea is afraid of being framed - came to the UN with a complaint and offered to open up inspection of its laboratories to the international community).
Uh, a bunch of other associated facts. But yeah, give it a pretty short couple of years and you're going to see this happen.
You had me until you started claiming that the US was going to be involved in destabilizing NK; that seemed pretty hard to believe. Then you brought up anthrax and then I knew you were just pulling our collective legs.
Well they are trying to destabilize the regime - I didn't provide data on that. (Would you like some?)
The anthrax thing is reporting facts. I didn't say that the US IS organizing this. I didn't say NK was RIGHT about their worries. What I did say about anthrax is quite true.
The work that DARPA does is incredible and we should be proud, as a country, that we pursue transformational research. One of the big weaknesses of the private sector is that there are few opportunities to pursue high-risk high-reward research and research that must be done on long timelines.
The stuff DARPA funds is fundamentally important and has an incredible track record.
That said, their primary customer is the DoD which has demands for technology that is sometimes rather creepy. Without going too far down that route and forcing a tangent on the thread I'll just plug here that technology is power and that power can be used for good and evil, for noble and ignoble and for personal or public gain. We need to cheer on DARPA for its development of technology and keep its customers accountable for how it applies that technology.
I do not. Microsoft Research and Google Research and IBM are examples of places where some of this research is done - and there's Universities. MITRE does as well as other semi-public orgs.
But it's the case that all of these places also sponsor work and work with the military. I guess the answer is yes that it exists, but no it doesn't exist (AFAIK) completely military free.
I don't have very good visibility into pharma companies and agro companies. I know that they do some long term research and I don't know (I would suspect) whether they have partnerships with DoD folks.
* If Wikileaks edits the content it can be criticized for tampering.
* If Wikileaks leaves malware in it can be criticized for circulating malware.
It may also give an excuse to search engines and other partners of the government to block the site on account of it hosting files that are infected.
A pretty nasty no-win situation.
Also think about what this means for the sources of the documents. It means that the surveillance and intelligence information from these firms was likely compromised. Yikes.
What's wrong with providing one dump without malware, and a second dump of just the infected files, which when put together gives you the whole thing? That way you have full disclosure, the people who want the infected files can easily get it, and the people who don't want it can easily avoid it.
Critics might be able to say that Wikileaks BOTH hosts malware AND tampers with evidence - but if Wikileaks has a voice to respond it has a pretty good reply.
Filters and services sometimes block entire domains because one page hosts malware. So it might be that the excuse could still be used to block Wikileaks if they did host both - but again agreed that hosting both is pretty good.
It does increase the work staff at Wikileaks must do and the amount of data they have to host/manage.
But yeah overall if this becomes a problem for them doing both seems like a pretty good solution.
Practice safe computing instead of expecting others to do it for you.
What malware 'is" can even be a difficult question. Is a RAT malware, or a way to log people snooping on your computer? Also, new malware is discovered. So it'd have to be a curated collection.
Even if you practice safe computing it's likely that your information will be compromised - especially in the long term and especially if you are an organization.
That's not to say this practice isn't important. It's just that it's not enough. We need both of these things (and more).
The state of computer security is fundamentally asymmetric.
In the case the pre-screener is honest, having them pre-check the work only saves you downloading a few virus executables at the cost of some work.
If the case the pre-screener isn't honest, it's saved you nothing at all and cost you a lot because you're likely to be less cautious.
Do you remember the tagline (roughly) "Outgoing email scanned and verified by AVG"? That was 100% worthless and actually very counterproductive. Expecting someone to check leaks like that is just as bad.
Scan everything. You've got the same technology they do.
You're correct but this is not an argument against screening on the distribution end. Not everybody will do this and if you can protect them from problems due to their own lack of screening then you should.
Just because you can avoid problems on one end if you do everything right doesn't mean you shouldn't also try to avoid problems on the other end.
This very specifically is an argument against scanning on the distribution end.
A false sense of security hurts more than deleting STONED.EXE (and likewise, all other malware caught by signature) helps.
Point to a modern virus scanner and also list what you've found in the archive. That gives a good baseline for people to check against without promising to have made anything safe to touch without scanning.
It's a pretty easy win-win situation–offer both, inform users appropriately. And then provide a third set: a list of the sanitized files not present in the virus-free dump. I think a quick spot check through those would show whether any editorializing was going on.
I have serious concerns about their publishing the private emails of employees of a private company that, from all I can gather, turned out to be pretty non-evil. But the virus issues, while not Stratfor's or Wikileaks's direct fault, could have been mitigated by Wikileaks pretty easily.
(Disclosure: I've subscribed to them for many years, but have no interest beyond that.)
The emails from SONY had some controversial stuff in them.
For example here is an interaction between the CEO and the State Department about setting up a group of media executives to develop US propaganda for the Middle East and Russia: https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/117082
Of course it was also revealed that The Interview was a propaganda product aimed at destabilizing North Korea (in anticipation of the upcoming planned unification).
These sorts of things can only be found when there's wide access given to journalists. It's also true that the emails were available via torrent and hosted other places online.
To play the other side, 99% of the SONY leaks were innocuous. While it is a company with management that works, like most US international corporations, with the US government on 'shady things', it is also in large part also a private company with the usual mundane concerns of a corporation.
> Of course it was also revealed that The Interview was a propaganda product aimed at destabilizing North Korea (in anticipation of the upcoming planned unification).
I missed all that–can you point me in the right direction?
> These sorts of things can only be found when there's wide access given to journalists.
Sure, but there's an argument to be made that the only way to end domestic violence is to place cameras inside all homes. Obviously that tradeoff is one most people aren't willing to make, and I don't think that leaking the private emails of employees of a private company is ultimately morally defensible.
Whistleblowing is one (very important) thing–bulk dumps of 99% of innocuous stuff became there's 1% of stuff in there that isn't great (but probably isn't all that bad, in the grand scheme of things) is both tactically questionable–leaking something with a 1:99 S/N ratio is a terrible way to get your message across–it's also morally suspect.
If Wikileaks & Co. truly wanted to change the world (and it wasn't about garnering attention and giving indiscriminate anger an outlet), they'd be approaching things differently.
> I missed all that–can you point me in the right direction?
Sure!
The CEO of SONY, high level state department officials, RAND specialist on nuclear deproliferation, regime change and North Korea, and Special Envoy to Korea discussed what direction the ending of the movie should go for it to most optimally destabilize the Kim regime. Special Envoy talked about plans (and RAND specialist Bennett) mention plans to seed the film into NK:
The decision to name the leader of NK in the film came down from executives - in the original script it had entirely fictional names (http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2014/12/15/40758/how-...). This is also confirmed by the SONY leaks, which have the executives trade emails concerned about the appearance of their having brought up the idea.
This all came out pretty early during the hacks but unfortunately the skepticism over it having been NK behind the hacks overwhelmed the media at the time. (It did turn out to be pretty definitively North Korea, or at least sympathizers, after all).
> 99% v. 1%
I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly. I do like the way that Wikileaks operates, though. They don't want to be the people in charge of curating and censoring information because they feel that this process can become politicized. So they publish everything.
The cost of their publications is extremely high. The returns are also high and IMO the ROI is good so in general I'm for them. But yeah if the ROI wasn't very good I would question it a lot more.
Definitely Wikileaks operates in pretty challenging legal waters.
So it looks like there's not much of a worry someone has from looking through those files themselves.
Personally I have looked through these files and have not run into any malware issues pointed out by the article.
I found it very informative and interesting to look through the intelligence files. One of my favorite finds are the docs on CANVAS and some of the US destabilization operations in Venezuela and color revolutions.
There is one specific torrent at issue here. It is the latest torrent, gifiles-2014.tar.bz2.torrent. I identified 20 malicious files in my post:
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\6\6566_The Split Betw.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\19\19701_MASY - Q MASY HUMINT.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\19\19719_List of Addresses - Advance Copies.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\152\152977_Happy vacation.pdf
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\18\18714_Research_and_R.xls
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\117\117687_Lithium.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\117\117870_Hybrid write-up2.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\117\117793_Hybrid write-up.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\47\47247_US Congress re.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\47\47329_US Congress re.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\52\52004_IRAN_STRAIT_PART.pdf
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\151\151784_Command.com
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\151\151098_text.zip->(Zip)
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\151\151098_text.zip->text.exe
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\119\119443_Russia Data Requests.doc
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\142\142345_photos.zip->(Zip)
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\142\142345_photos.zip->photos.jpg.exe
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\146\146924_message.zip->(Zip)
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\146\146924_message.zip->message.exe
gifiles-2014\gifiles\attach\17\17102_Draft scenarios for Libya_0416.pdf
If it is your position that these files do not contain malicious files in the torrent I stated, please back up your conclusion with the level of research that I provided in my post(s) on the topic. For all files provide the hashes, for .DOC files provide the output of an application showing no macros or embedded OLE's exist, explain the presence of executables of .COM files in the torrent, provide a hex-dump of the PDFs.
As for the next comment's claim that the presence of malware in this sort of file distribution is irrelevant, such a position is nothing short of madness. These files are viewed by journalists and activists. Malicious software like this, regardless of its source, can compromise the identities of those journalists and activists. The only way I could understand such a contention would be if you were to also claim that journalists and activists should be "outed" for working on such documents. To that claim, I strenuously disagree. I think that those working on these documents should be able to remain private and protected. This is not a torrent containing a pirated movie. This is a torrent containing leaked documents from a defense contractor, provided on a website that (rightly I believe) claims to be a news organization.
Would you think that Fox News embedding malware in their website's flash player would be no big deal? For those of us working toward a safe and secure internet, malware should be removed and/or users notified wherever it exists. Mine is not an extremist position.
No, what my post was claiming is that the presence of malware didn't hurt my system and wasn't an issue when I browsed the files (on a practical basis).
I understand the potential.
I think it's valuable for you to do this.
You should continue to look for malicious files in a variety of places online.
During his AMA I asked clarifying questions that never got answered about Reddit's policies about federal programs and partnerships regarding the management of political discussion attributed to foreign actors - and whether like other social media sites - foreign political content including propaganda are considered by Reddit to be 'spam' and 'trolling' and therefore subject to Reddit's comment deletion and shadowbanning capabilities.
I unfortunately did not see a reply. It's my understanding that many of these executives of social media websites face the challenge of negotiating what the community wants and the curation requests and preferences of partners - both governmental, 'civil society' and business customers and investors.
The Snowden document released on the strategic objectives - the high level goals driving all NSA technology - included strategic communication, which we know from DoD investment in the last two presidents has increasingly been focused toward social media (with some programs like SMISC and MINERVA as public research instanciations of the policy).
We know quite a bit about the US attempted partnerships with Twitter (historically Twitter has refused partnership but now is more congenial) from FOIA documents and news sources and that the US uses sockpuppets in many places, including Twitter for its own propaganda purposes worldwide. We know that the Facebook studies on nudging voting behavior and emotions had ties to these programs as well.
We know that threat intelligence systems include patterns to block certain URLs and content that is foreign controlled propaganda - notably of Russian origin and that there are people in the government full time on tracking Salafist ideas online for both blocking when they reach American audiences and engagement of various sorts overseas.
We know that there is a firewall between the State Department and DoD when it comes to the programs (State Department has the overt programs for the most part and the DoD the covert). We know a few things from various leaks about partnerships (HB Gary Federal, etc) with private sector intelligence firms.
We also have reports from the US and journalists about some of the techniques of adversary nations and we have some details especially about GCHQs JTRIG capabilities and some of the areas the NSA and GCHQ have worked in due to Snowden document. We have a couple of other examples - things like ZunZuneo - that some social media platforms are fronts for various countries rather than merely partners.
We also know some things about the law in the United States for messaging: foreign messaging the US has pretty much no limitations. While it will censor American political speech (al-Alwaki's youtube videos, etc) for the most part it can justify minimal amounts of this and focuses on foreign speech and foreign aimed influence.
It is legal in the United States to message Americans under wartime powers, states of emergency (Occupy and Ferguson were both considered states of emergency), and for the purposes of getting domestic support for overseas military operations. The Smith-Mundt Act was recently revised to remove the limitation on the US government to prevent foreign-aimed propaganda from being incidentally consumed by Americans (the internet makes this hard) but it's unfortunate that this happens quite a lot (why they had to make the revision) and that it has, in the past, been purposefully abused.
We also know some things about historical partnerships, but most of that has to do with 'old media' and it's hard to draw real policy and technical implications from programs that existed a generation ago. The things we know about those partnerships today (partnerships with media executives, leaked editing of journalism coverage) that look like the old stuff don't focus on social media so much - the social media programs are a relatively new initiative.
There's a bunch of programs like these. CANVAS for example works with the US government to stir dissent in VZ. Similar to how the US then uses crackdowns on its clandestine programs as illustrations of a corrupt VZ government when the Cuban government cracked down on phones due to US messaging programs (both to SMS and through apps like ZunZuneo) it was criticized by the US government for cracking down on civil rights. This is also similar to (project UNITER) activity by the CIA in organizing the Euromaiden protests and for shell media companies in Ukraine, and the following cry about the crackdown on 'civil society' there.
These things are incredibly smart, of course, and I'm glad our government has these capabilities and is so good at it. But there's also a level at which some debates need to be had and while specific programs and details hurt national security a general conversation among the people on what sorts of tactics they approve of and what boundaries should be in place in this murky area of law should be a good thing.
I wanted to get a picture of whether the socketpuppeting that is done on reddit was colored by particular objectives - whether US and partner sockpuppeting is allowed where adversary sockpuppeting is not - and whether censorship of certain types of content was performed on the behest of partnerships.
Basically, an overall clarification about the policies, the technologies and the coded language for reddit's stance on sockpuppeting and content curation.
If the actual case was "yes, we will allow US sockpuppeting, and forbid Russian/Chinese sockpuppeting", would you actually have expected an honest answer?
This is sort of a corporate equivalent of "are you still beating your wife", isn't it?
But it's important to ask hard questions and get denials: even when they are blatant lies it makes the organization responsible for the lies (and any associated fallout) and it puts pressure 'upstream' for more comprehensive public discussion and justification.
It also has the virtue of being public, where other redditors and HN folk can peruse it and maybe become interested in the topic.
I'm not wholey against or for any 'side'. I'm actually pretty confused and can see good reasons abound on all sides and my guess is that solutions, whatever they are to whatever challenges are percieved, are probably pretty complicated.
But I believe in public deliberation and awareness: the more people who participate in these discussions I think the better. Finally widespread awareness of sockpuppeting and other means of content curation - no matter who the perpetrator - weakens sockpuppeting as a tactic. So I think it's also important to publicly challenge social media CEOs to speak publicly about these challenges for this reason.
reddit is largely immune to political pressures that other large social media sites must endure for the simple reason that reddit makes shit for money and has no business operations abroad. Facebook and Twitter have to listen to foreign governments because they want to do business in those countries.
That sounds mostly right to me. Barely floating or even running in the red (making shit for money) also provides financial incentives. But beyond the monetary there are plenty of types of leverage - legal, "human", and access to information (in reddit this is probably also not as strong leverage). There's also rewards that can be given to individuals who have some say in the direction of reddit. For example Pao was on the board of National Defense Thinktanks in Washington - an opportunity to both give a small stipend and for conversations to open dialogue and for perception.
Espionage is standard practice in the world today. So are isolated assassinations, torture, coups, and state sponsorship of terrorism. The United States participated in all of the above.
Domestic citizens in America feel as though their government is 'clean' or 'noble'. This is a myth propelled by Public Affairs, PR and supported by the media (at worst, the media will say, the US made blunders and mistakes).
The United States is in the boxing ring with every other nation. It's a heavyweight.
What's happening right now is that the United States is 'short of breath'. It's overextended. Long term plans haven't worked out. The US is finding itself reacting to other nations rather than keeping them on their toes. It's dropped in its financial, economic, and technological development capabilities. It is having trouble facing challenges brought by new technology. It is losing the support of its closest allies.
It's a difficult time for America. Not everything is decided. It may yet remain a unipolar power.
But to do so it will need to get in and scrap.
The hawks want to scrap. They want to fight for continued supremacy. There are no doves that are serious contenders for president and I don't know if the system would allow a dove to be elected, even if the candidate had majority support from citizens.
In this turbulence, we have to think about what we can do as citizens. The clearest answer is to get quality information and to be informed. Taking the Snowden and Wikileaks documents as a list of things that the US does that are bad is not the best way to read them.
The best way to read these and other documents is to better understand dog-eat-dog realpolitiks of global power games.
No matter whether you want to support the United States in this moment or demand it change course one thing is certain: you must be as educated as possible about the tradeoffs, the current investments, the challenges and the nature of the Great Game. Read across different sources of information and focus not only on domestic news but good foreign policy sources. Talk with neighbors and friends about your and American ideals and how and whether to negotiate and achieve those goals in a world that is 96% non-American.
Wikileaks is a great place to start. The reason for this is not that they have 'the dirt'. It's because they have primary documents. When you read, prioritize information that isn't summarized or filtered.
Muckrack is another great source. Washington Thinktanks another.
This is not different than what has happened in the United States - though the US uses National Security Letters, gag orders, financial and criminal leverage and defamation - its only when these don't work that the US will reach toward the Espionage Act.
We look back in history and question why citizens in history asked their governments to send civil rights activists to prison and to silence certain stories in the press.
Today we get modern answers to these questions at least every few months.
I have polled friends, family and acquaintances: the overwhelming response is that we don't feel safe.
I have also sampled the official stance from press releases and speeches: the overwhelming justification is that we are not safe.
As all things are, the truth is much more complicated.