WikiLeaks: The Spy Files
wikileaks.org
wikileaks.org
The actual files are on the left, in that ~100px wide container.
Here are some brochures from companies that do this stuff:
http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/list/document-type/brochure.ht...
(The 3G thing is the only part of this that is really surprising. Intercepting wifi isn't really that impressive)
Here is a pricelist of some tech that is, I guess, being sold in Europe:
http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/files/0/204_GRIFFCOMM-200802-P...
(Honestly none of this seems very...leaky. Isn't most of this fairly common knowledge to anybody who even reads about hacker conferences?)
Even so, if all this does is raise awareness among the average (news watching) people this has already been worthwhile.
Feeding us a party line about a "mass surveillance industry" and "Orwell's World" and "Selling Surveillance to Dictators" is not going to bring people to their cause. All it does is make them look like someone with an agenda to push, and I'm not in the habit of going to people with an obvious agenda for a primary source about someone they don't like.
What I want is the old Wikileaks back. Anyone else remember the days when they were actually a wiki? Whistleblowers would approach them with documents from all manner of sources from governments to corporations to religious institutions, they would be subjected to source verification, and then they would be published and indexed for the world to see with minimum fanfare. Back then, I at least got the sense that they were devoted to aiding whistleblowers, not some silly and ineffectual crusade against the US government, no matter how right that cause may be. Can anyone really say that that's gotten us anywhere useful?
Let us see the documents and judge for ourselves what they mean.
Honestly, no one would even care if there were the greatest intel of all time, the most incriminating information, published on a free-for-all wiki without any editorializing. This is the model Wikileaks had at the beginning - and no one cared and things didn't change.
Many reasons, just the most important one: No media organization is going to cover your whistleblowing (and researching and verifying and spending hundreds of manhours before publishing it) if they cannot be sure they have an exclusive. If there is a slight chance they'll get beat to it, they won't touch it (with serious effort).
So: Either you editorialize and embargo stuff and work together with media organizations. Or you don't - and no whistleblower will ever give you stuff anymore, because it's just not going to change anything.
Actually, IMHO, Wikileaks has an obligation to whisteblowers to get the most bang for the buck and that's just not going to happen in the old ways.
There's a reason no one in the real world knows what cryptome even is.
The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Change doesn't happen because a few activists angrily demand it; it happens because of huge cultural shifts in the minds of millions.
This is the model Wikileaks had at the beginning - and no one cared and things didn't change.
That just isn't true. Read through this list, up to 2010.[0] WL can get things done more subtly. It may not attract huge mainstream headlines that way, but that's fine. It should be amassing influence over years or decades, because that's the way real successful institutions start out. Not everyone is on Internet time--certainly not governments.
So: Either you editorialize and embargo stuff and work together with media organizations. Or you don't - and no whistleblower will ever give you stuff anymore, because it's just not going to change anything.
I believe there's a happy medium here, but if WL is your model of media cooperation, you may want to look elsewhere, since WL has not exactly been a good citizen from their perspectives.[1]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_published_by_WikiLe...
[1] http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/12/wikileaks-stil...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_public_opinion_on...
Mar. 19-21, 2010 - 48% favor, 49% oppose, 3% unsure
April 2010: "Collateral Murder" released, showing footage of a U.S. helicopter killing unarmed civilians. Youtube sensation. Lots of media coverage.
May 21–23, 2010 - 42% favor, 56% oppose, 2% unsure
(June 2010: Obama announces a faster withdrawal schedule from Afghanistan than previously planned.)
July 2010: "Afghan War Diary" released, containing evidence of widespread ineptitude and corruption. Lots of media coverage.
Aug. 6-10, 2010 - 37% favor, 62% oppose, 1% unsure
I'm not saying that Wikileaks is responsible for that whole swing, but it sure as hell is responsible for some of it. How many dollars saved will that translate to? How many lives saved? We can quibble about whether the answer is "a lot" or just "a few" but it's more than it would have been if these leaks were not discussed in many major newspapers and on every cable news station.
Here is a concrete example of exactly that : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking which more or less means "The money we private banks lend you at interest, is in fact created out of thin air." Note that most central banks are not allowed to do the same, so states must pay interest to the private banks as well (even though states are thought to print that bloody money). If I recall correctly, there is more debt than money, which may explain (I'm not sure) our desperate need for Economic Growth™.
I'm oversimplifying, of course, but if the people actually knew that stuff, they wouldn't have permitted it. But laying out the schematics of the System publicly is not enough.
Now they´re being more about journalism, but that doesn´t imply that the facts and the cables with the actual information don´t get through.
I´m ok with them editorializing and providing a point of view on the material released. It´s still 100x better than public newspapers, where you get the editorializing, without the material.
That said, the Montag Press Transmedia Collective just put a call out for submissions based upon "Orwell's World", if any authors are interested in partnering for publishing.
The realization (for the cynic) is that everything (even leaked whistleblower info) involves some degree of deliberate spin. I don't think it's fair to say that WL is anti-USG btw.
As soon as you start talking about "the message" instead of "the truth", you've lost me. That's the domain of proselytizers, advertisers, propagandists, and attention thieves. The world is thick with them as it is, more noise than signal.
The credibility of WL depends on it's willingness to be transparent about its processes and to let anyone who reads the fine print determine that the PR headline was fundamentally accurate. The need to even write headlines presupposes that 5-7 words can offer the gist of what the full document states. It's absurd to think that an unbiased headline could possibly exist, it's just a question of what the headline writer thinks is important.
Incidentally, this is the same credibility metric that I'd apply to governments, which WL is helping to usher in by offering a way to measure government claims with a BS-o-meter to reveal what was propaganda and artifice intended to make people draw specific conclusions.
It's up to the reader to figure out the truth, but the pretense of 100% neutrality is overrated. Think about it, lots of people believe that major newspapers are neutral. The key is that WL provides the raw data so that over time it can earn credibility. This is something that even the most respected newspapers refuse to do.
Even though I'm generally a supporter of WL, I'm the first to admit that its PR approach began as naive and has progressed to what I'd call "emotional". But WL is also very much a startup and will gain experience that lets it earn deeper credibility over time (or not).
Wikileaks' execution is less than awesome. You, humble reader, might be able to do better.
If not, why not? Every time the Wikileaks site(s) get taken offline for one reason or another, we lose access to valuable data.
The bottom of the page states "courage is contagious". I'd submit that torrents are even more contagious. Get this stuff on torrents, so it never leaves the Internet for pete's sake!
Do you want to live in a world like this?
There are things in the world like free speech that are not free. People had to fight for it, and in some case they died for it.
Read "The Gulag Archipelago". Solzhenitsyn talks about communism as a minority, that knew they were a minority. So when Stalin was going to incarcerate people, they used night, and police will take off their shoes so nobody hear them detain their neighbors. Stalin only killed people with very gradual steps.
People have a lot of power by their selves. Never underestimate your own power. The power that the courage of millions of people that admits openly that they read wikileaks and are not afraid about it.
They(the government) are the ones that should fear us, because they work for us.
Thank you for stating this.
Fear is a strong means of control. Why do think demonstrators are being assaulted? Their is certainly an element of trying to induce fear in others of stepping out of and drawing attention to the status quo.
Demonstrators are being assaulted, I don't want to be assaulted, therefore I should not demonstrate.
Fear seems like a productive emotion to me. Fear is what keeps you safe.
For instance, under the subheading "Weaponizing Data Kills Innocent People", it talks about "Intelligence Integration Systems, Inc" (IISi) and "Netezza", neither of which appear in the files. In fact, the story described was covered in the press last year[1]. The implication is that civilian deaths from drone strikes is somehow related to this release...but it isn't.
http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/files/0/110_CELLEBRITE-UFED.pd...
Was it intended that a typical shady lawyer/congressman secret deal appears on the left?
I didn't read through all the sources but here are the problems with the slant wiki leaks is spinning:
1. First off, this reads like an editorial. We want facts, not spin and their extremely biased writing takes their credibility from wherever it is to far lower now. Orwell's World? Maybe. But let me decide that and don't try to plant the idea. I think an organization that would spin this as anti-government propaganda is just as bad as the some of the things they're opposed to. Give me facts and let me decided - don't throw in opinions to guide me to the "correct" view.
2. I couldn't read every brochure nor do I want to but the brochures and videos I saw weren't all that evil. At least not as evil as they want me to believe. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be spied on and I do see the potential for abuse but the brochures here are things I can get by myself. The HP brochure, the Hacker Team video, and others aren't hiding in some dark government lab. They're out there trying to sell this stuff to the right people! I don't come across it because I have no need for it nor am I interested in it. But anyway, they're pretty quiet about selling this stuff but they do know how to get heard by the right people. That doesn't mean it's a secret. They don't make secret brochures for spy products if their products and services are supposed to be considered sensitive information like wiki leaks wants us to believe.
3. Don't we all know about this? It really isn't a secret anymore that there are companies creating software and hardware specifically meant to take over devices and spy on people. We hope it doesn't happen to us but we know it sometimes does. That sucks. We should know. We should make a fuss and we do. But wiki leaks isn't sharing anything groundbreaking here. We all know about Carrier IQ, right? Maybe CarrierIQ is a little more benign but then we also know about the cyber attack on Iranian nuclear program via Stuxnet so we all know it goes on, already know the abuse potential, and already know about some but not all abuses. Nothing earth shattering again.
4. This could have come off as a jumping off point for discussing the seriousness of the problem in terms of how we can spot and stop the general public from being spied on but instead they just created tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist fodder. I know it did spark some constructive discussion but I'll be damned if it didn't sound like the stuff you can find on anti GWB sites or "Obama is a member of the Skull and Bones, hey look at the secret symbols on a dollar bill" type sites.
Also, I want to see The sources for where they got the information on these spy products being used in Egypt and Lybia. If its there then it's hard to find. And the site needs a better layout. Nothing fancy, just make it easier to navigate and read.
I think WikiLeaks took what could have been a great jumping off point for debate and made it into a joke with their very generous helping of spin and what seems to be an antiestablishment agenda just for the sake of having an antiestablishment agenda.
You can't spot when a well-funded government secret service, with access to communications infrastructure, is spying on the population.
> Also, I want to see The sources for where they got the information on these spy products being used in Egypt and Lybia.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. You think a site for whistleblowers should release information about those whistleblowers?
My neighbor murdered his wife and had our other neighbor, a police officer, cover up the crime. We now know this. How do we know thus? We just do, I'm fucking credible, don't ask questions.
See what I mean? At least give us something to go on. Even a link to a previous article where they cover this source less information would do.
Let's get something straight. The real issue here isn't that you're being personally spied on. If the government is tracking you specifically and is willing to hold the data they collect on you against you then you should play the lottery too because you're one lucky person.
If and when data is collected it is used most often to analyze groups of people, not individuals. It's very rare that an individual would be tracked and that would only happen if you were influential or a true danger to them (at least a perceived danger).
For example, let's say the government was tracking Occupy Wall Street protesters. If they were targeting individuals then they'd be targeting the very few "leaders" if there are any. Otherwise they'd just like to know about you as a group. What you think, like, listen to, and read. Even so, they're not going to come after you. They're going to use that information in a way that allows them to spin a narrative or in some other subtle way. They just aren't going to bust into your living room.
Also, in the rare case they collect data on an individual and actually try to do something to you personally, they sure as hell aren't going to bring it up in a court. You'll be black bagged or something but you're not going to go to trial with the prosecutor coming out saying "well, we surreptitiously collected this data from John's phone and home computer which proves he's a terrorist". They'd be shooting themselves in the foot! They'd much rather have you know they collect data while still retaining plausible deniability.
You can look up anything you want all day long including how to make bombs and no one will bust in your living room until the day you somehow are in a position to influence a large group of people.
So please everyone, let's take off our tinfoil hats, quit thinking we're important enough to track individually, and just generally stop sounding like conspiracy theorists. I mean, this stuff can really do damage and it isn't right but this discussion is heading in the wrong direction with that kind of rhetoric.
Edit: Seems everyone doesn't like what I've got to say yet only one person is willing to say why. There's way too much group think and karma policing going on around here.
If and when data is collected it is used most often to analyze groups of people, not individuals
And that's exactly the problem with the mass surveillance industry. The more advanced the technology becomes, the easier it will be to track everyone "individually" (recent examples CarrierIQ, malls tracking phones). It also lowers the threshold to invading individuals privacy.
Also, Assange is concerned with companies that sell this equipment to foreign governments with a dismal human rights record. In those countries, a wrong word in a message can cost your life. Mass surveillance makes it possible to easily pick out potential "enemies of the state".
> they sure as hell aren't going to bring it up in a court.
They use intercept evidence to collect enough data; they pass this on to other law enforcement; LE then gather other evidence and arrest and charge. The intercept evidence never makes it to court.
Note that "they" don't care that you know they collect the data, "they" just don't want you to know too much about how it's done.
See this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/06/uk.ukcrime)
Opponents of changes include MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, who have argued
that it would reveal their sophisticated intercept techniques.
> You can look up anything you want all day long including how to make bombs and no one will bust in your living room until the day you somehow are in a position to influence a large group of people.
Maybe, just maybe, true for US.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/26/terroris...)
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/...)
Coming from a point of view where the government isn't spying on people personally and especially not you, your friends or anyone around, it was certainly a bit shocking to see this happen.
But, as others mentioned, that's not even the point with this whole issue.
Some people are important enough to track individually. One might even imagine that someone here on HN might be important enough, or become important enough. One can hope.