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Comment by DevX101 | Hacker News Reader

900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action.

To release the emails of private individuals and firms without any a priori evidence that they have committed any sort of crime is distasteful to me. It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released. And its unethical in this case as well, regardless of whether the victims are powerful or not.

I supported the wikileaks 'collateral damage' video leak, because I think its important that our government be transparent and its citizen understand the ramifications of going to war. But this, I can't support it.

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Hmm.

You know what? Your position, on paper, makes a lot of sense.

At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it."

And this, for me, is one of them.

Assume we live in a world where those who have power exist in a sphere of privilege. They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions. Their influence and connections exempt them from the standard costs of citizenship.

If that's the case, if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?

This, I guess.

There are lot of communications in this bundle that are probably pretty mundane, sent and received by people who show up for jury duty and take traffic school when they run a red light. And it sucks that they've lost their privacy on this.

On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission, you can be almost certain that a handful of messages will reveal information where disclosing it is emphatically a public good. Will we find wrongdoing? Downright illegality? I'm not sure.

But I am pretty sure that actions like this are the last reasonably potent check on power we have left.

So funny, I feel the same way about things like TPB, and yet I bet you think shutting them down without a trial is immoral.

and yet I bet you think

That seems slightly unfair. Unless of course you've performed a comprehensive background check on danilocampos' comment history. But I bet you haven't ;)

You're right. That's not cool. But I haven't really run into anyone who thinks we should shut down sites without due process, particularly on HN. Even still, I shouldn't jump to conclusions.

> So funny, I feel the same way about things like TPB, and yet I bet you think shutting them down without a trial is immoral.

You feel as though "things like the Pirate Bay" are run by people who are so wealthy and powerful that they've completely subverted criminal justice and international law?

I had no idea Dick Cheney was running torrent sites. The bit where he sent those stooges to sit in a Swedish court was a nice touch, I guess.

No, I feel "They enjoy protections from the consequences of their actions," and, "if these people exist outside of due process, what's left?"

They enjoy protections provided by operating in a country where their site is legal. They're not operating outside due process.

If Dick Cheney were running Stratfor, they wouldn't have said that Iraq probably didn't have WMD.

Get off this, dude, no one thinks Dick Cheney's running Stratfor. I bet he has friends on their client list, though.

All of Dick Cheney's friends get their intel from the CIA. Stratfor is small potatoes.

The Pirate Bay does not exist outside of the confines of due process. It exists only because it is transparent and complies totally with Swedish law.

No one is doing TPB any favors. If anything, it gets more negative attention than it (legally) should.

"On the other hand, because of Strafor's mission"

The dissemination of information? What's wrong with that?

> The dissemination of information? What's wrong with that?

...Nothing at all?

It's a simple matter of the type of information they disseminate. A type of information of particular interest to people with skin in the game of world politics.

That is, a guy on Stratfor's secret client list probably has much more interesting email to read than a guy working at a Radio Shack in Sarasota, Florida.

"It's a simple matter of the type of information they disseminate. "

And that type of information is? You seem to be one of the people assuming Stratfor is some kind of Blackwater intelligence company. They aren't.

> And that type of information is? You seem to be one of the people assuming Stratfor is some kind of Blackwater intelligence company. They aren't.

Oh, thanks so much, jonhendry! I really appreciate your filling me in. Reading America's Secret War, by Stratfor's founder, had left me entirely in the dark about their mission and capabilities until this very moment. I stand enlightened.

The fact remains, the sort of person who is emailing high-level folk at Stratfor either knows things or wants to know things of geopolitical importance. A source with a compelling piece of data the public doesn't know about, perhaps. Or a business tycoon with a question that, knowing it was asked, completely invalidates the public narrative that company had spun.

So if your mission is to get access to data about how people are running the world, a great place to start is a private global intelligence firm.

No one is saying they're not allowed to do what they're doing. Only that "trades emails with a private intelligence analysts" is probably going to be a pretty good proxy for "has interesting, secret shit to talk about."

"Reading America's Secret War, by Stratfor's founder, had left me entirely in the dark about their mission and capabilities until this very moment. I stand enlightened."

If you read it, what makes you think Dick Cheney would be involved? The book apparently contradicts everything the neocons stood for. Cheney would probably prefer that Stratfor were shut down, so that he could control the flow of information.

"No one is saying they're not allowed to do what they're doing."

Really? People are tossing around the word 'evil', but they should be allowed to keep doing it?

"Only that "trades emails with a private intelligence analysts" is probably going to be a pretty good proxy for "has interesting, secret shit to talk about.""

Ah, so you've gone from justifying it by saying they're evil and up to no good, to justifying it by saying they merely have interesting, secret shit to talk about.

Lots of people have interesting, secret shit to talk about.

So basically it's really just a voyeuristic thing for you and the moralizing is a pose.

> If you read it, what makes you think Dick Cheney would be involved?

Nothing. Good luck finding anything where I say "Dick Cheney is involved with the operations of Stratfor."

> Ah, so you've gone from justifying it by saying they're evil and up to no good, to justifying it by saying they merely have interesting, secret shit to talk about.

When I say interesting in the context of "how people are running the world," I mean interesting as in "lied to the public about an issue of global importance."

> So basically it's really just a voyeuristic thing for you and the moralizing is a pose.

Nope. I doubt I'm going to read any of what's leaked.

It's just my fervent hope that one of these days a leak can begin to remedy the sorts of injustice that only the well-moneyed and well-connected can perpetrate with impunity. Any entity that needs Stratfor's analysis of global events and decisions seems like a reasonable candidate to deliver an important payload in such a leak.

" I mean interesting as in "lied to the public about an issue of global importance.""

It's so secret multiple HN readers have said they subscribed. It's so exclusive that anyone can subscribe for a yearly price that is cheaper than cable TV, let alone secret publications like "Science" or "Nature".

You really seem to have the wrong end of the stick here, as in not-clear-on-the-concept of how Stratfor worked.

If you want to know if someone has "lied to the public about an issue of global importance", and think Stratfor holds the answer, you would subscribe to Stratfor and compare what Stratfor reported to what the public figure claimed.

You've bought into some kind of radical left fantasy of what Stratfor does, turning it into the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers.

"Any entity that needs Stratfor's analysis of global events and decisions seems like a reasonable candidate to deliver an important payload in such a leak."

See above about the Bilderbergers.

Say you're a company doing business with Turkey. Not a huge business, but you've got a lot riding on stability in Turkey. Maybe you import rugs. Maybe you do package tours of Istanbul. Maybe you have a team of developers there. Where do you go for good analysis of the situation there, given the history of military takeovers and whatnot?

The newspapers only cover it occasionally, probably too late to do you much good. MSNBC won't cover it at all on a weekend. FOX News would be all "OMG, Turkish Muslims! Threat or Menace?" and be useless. Turkish media might cover it, but not provide good analysis, and you don't know if the coverage is biased there, or if so, how.

So where do you turn? You could read the Economist, but that might not be good enough. Maybe you could buy some reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit, or Jane's. Or you could subscribe to Stratfor, which is probably cheaper.

> You've bought into some kind of radical left fantasy

And you've gone to the zoo, friend. Almost to the point where I wonder if you're being deliberately obtuse to troll me. (Nice one, if so.)

Two things to note, here.

1. Stratfor has public products and private analysis services.

2. I'm not talking about what they've disclosed publicly.

You could substitute "Stratfor" with "The New York Times Company" in this scenario and I would take the same position. Papers rarely publish all they know, as sometimes it's a better bet to keep quiet on something juicy to avoid burning bridges. Papers are also routinely asked to sit on a story, or bury it outright, as a favor in exchange for access.

A leak of all New York Times emails would probably include a lot of the same sort of content and people I'm imagining in a Stratfor leak. The SNR wouldn't be nearly as favorable, since the Times has a much more public profile and a much broader scope than just global events. Stratfor's specific focus makes it much likelier that any given source, or any given chum of the CEO, has said something via email that could be pretty powerful, were it disclosed. I'd also wager that Stratfor content will be more candid, since it's a smaller world than mass market newspaper publishing.

It's a sad fact of subjectivity that you can, apparently seiously, call out anyone else for trolling. You've run every fallacious argument up the flagpole here. But it's the fault of jonhenry or any rational person for taking this issue up with you, since you admitted squarely in the beginning that your intellectual justification for this is "fuck it."

The only thing preventing my using this line to justify the publication of internal emails between the 5 people who run my competitor is a thin, grey line that you seem to be drawing and redrawing continually. This is an intellectually and morally bankrupt idea you've got here, it hardly suffices for a proper argument as to why this is legitimate action.

Nobody important uses the analysis service. Everyone important uses the CIA.

Stratfor serves small and medium sized businesses with global operations.

Huge military-industrial operations like Halliburton get their intelligence from the CIA.

You don't know what Stratfor is. It's a niche news product, nothing more. Like any newspaper, they have secret sources.

But the news product and analysis services offered by Stratfor are extremely benign. Anon is targeting them for no other reason than that Stratfor is a small business who hired a shitty engineering firm with bad security practices.

Any script kiddie can go around finding non-technical businesses with poor security. Stratfor's 70-person staff is peopled entirely by nerdy writers with humanities degrees who spend all day compiling mostly-public information released by the world's parliament buildings and militaries.

Stratfor deals in the analysis of public information for the benefit for private parties. No government agency relies on them, though they may subscribe, Stratfor will not be their primary source.

The people who rely on Stratfor are companies too small and inconsequential to get CIA-access.

Anyway I support the mission of Anonymous to hack the government and hack evil big corporations but Stratfor is not part of that complex and no juicy information is going to come out of this leak. It's going to be extremely mundane stuff and will probably get a few innocent cab drivers in 3rd world countries murdered.

I still don't get what was wrong with Stratefor. I subscribed to their newsletter a long time ago and the content was somewhat on the Foreign Affairs magazine level.

Sure, some military and secret service personal were among the subscribers, but they are most likely among the subscribers of the Wired magazine as well. I am truly looking forward to the email leak and what kind of secret in formations they are able to reveal.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with Stratfor. It's just the business they're in means that the clients who engage them for one-off analysis jobs are often into some pretty... globally interesting things.

Think of it like this.

Say that, one day, all the pigs in town just disappear. Gone.

And everyone's like, "Hey. Where are all the pigs? This is crazy. Hey, Danilo, do you know where the pigs went?"

"Me? Uh, no."

But a few years later, the town librarian has all his emails leaked. And included among this is a brief exchange, a week before The Pig Event, wherein I ask "So, librarian, any advice on books for transporting livestock? Oh, could you set aside Pigs for Dummies for me?"

This message is now... pretty interesting.

Does it prove I'm a pig thief? Not necessarily, unless I get into more detail in other messages. It does suggest, though, that I might have known more than I did when the event happened. And that it's worth digging around for links between me and the pigs.

Stratfor was essentially labeled as a form of collateral damage. The self-described Anon spokesperson basically said they weren't one of the "offenders" but were "of interest".

I don't feel sold on the merits of going after Stratfor - it's almost as if it was merely a convenient and vulnerable target. It's not too hard to envision just about any company or organization being targeted because of some vague affiliation or "interest".

Stratfor is an organization (similar in a way to wikileaks) that offers private individuals the option of buying intelligence analysis. I used to be a subscriber.

How does stratfor get this intel to share with its clients? By tips provided by trusted sources in government. These people would probably lose their jobs if it was found out that they shared info with stratfor.

I would not be surprised if the USG infiltrated anonymous and did this attack as part of a campaign against whistleblowers.

Agreed. Over the last 10 years, arguably much longer, if you take into account the "war" on drugs, the US government has begun to, in some aspects, wage war on its own citizens. The power grabs by politicians and law enforcement nowadays is reaching insane levels to the point where I am not confident that we live in a fully "free" country anymore and to where I think that people doing things like this could be one of the only defenses against our country going even further down the shitter. Just as our government is fine with killing plenty of innocent people in a variety of ways (non-militants killed in wars, overzealous law enforcement, people executed that are later exonerated) I am fine with some innocent "casualties" when citizens fight back, which in this case is the loss of privacy for some of the people who sent these emails.

Kismet and nmap protected by the 2nd amendment?

> At the same time, there are times where you say "eh, fuck it."

Cognitive dissonance overload!

"Anonymous"/"99%"/TPTB_NOT is correct (imo) in criticizing the TPTB's theory of 'suspended norms/ethos due to emergency' e.g. get ready to be groped by a uniformed servant from the margines. Good times.

Now we have supporters of anon/99/we-the-people's position asserting that the philosophy of "what is Right is what is convenient'/'end justifies the means' is in fact acceptable.

USA is saying "eh, fuck it" when it kidnaps, tortures, rapes (abu ..), terrorizes (same place), and holds in contempt (fuck it) the said "it": Our aspirations, our principles, our heritage, and our "fucking" way of life.

Simply based on that ideological finger print, I would certainly entertain the view that holds these groups and their shenanigans to be entirely the work of TPTB.

In a democracy, people don't get re-elected when they're shown to be crooks in such a huge way that it's impossible to ignore. We already know, to some extent, how crook-y some of these people are. In particular, we know how easily they assault our civil liberties, or perhaps better stated our right to privacy. If assaulting theirs is how we convince the masses that they should not be there, then it is perhaps reasonable to do so. Ours are already under fire, the question is whether destroying theirs will produce a big enough result to make it worth it. I don't think the answer is clear-cut in general, and time will tell in this case, but I don't know that it's as cognitively dissonant as it seems.

In the case of the government, they can't say “well we're watching everyone's conversations because so are the terrorists”. That makes their justification very different from the one in use here, and thus changes the equation a lot.

There are dragon slayers and there are also those who tilt at windmills. I'll be a believer the day that Anonymous/Lulzie-ones core dump the archives of The City of London.

Slaying that dragon is a game changer; effectively random acts of cyber anarchy and antisocial behavior (people's CCs, for ex.) just raise dust and TPTB love occultation and delight in the demonstration of the emptiness of our "convictions" and "principles".

Have you ever considered that this is an intellectual/spiritual battle between a subset asserting superiority in every dimension of human endeavor that (literally) justifies their rule? If yes, then mind your "principles" and "convictions". That is the Human Front. Hold the line, please.

You must have a fundamental misunderstanding of what cognitive dissonance is.

That. Protect privacy for everyone or have no privacy for anyone. I'd be happy to have all my emails exposed if I could read Lehman Brother's inboxes.

I have to back you on this. This doesn't sit in any moral grey area. This is nothing but corruption. If people genuinely have no problem with the outing of millions of private correspondences, then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection.

If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.

I believe in the transparency of government, which is why I can turn my eye when wikileaks was doing their thing. I can't turn my eye if someone's raiding my neighbours mailbox and I hope no one else here would either, but I think it's pretty scummy that people here are supporting this.

Sorry folks but if people here aren't outraged by this, then say hello to your new HN subreddit.

"then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection"

We already are, the government has made it fairly clear that they have the "right" to read anyone's emails they please due to their bullshit "war on terror", its about time we get the same chance to do it to them

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that government employees' correspondence with a private company is confidential.

Is it? If it is, it shouldn't be. If the matter concerns clear and present threats to national security, then why is a private firm involved at all? If there is no clear and present threat, then why bother with secrecy?

We need to take back the concept of the government serving the people, they are our employees, we pay taxes that go towards their salaries, last time I checked, my boss has the ability to read emails I send from a company email address.

You're wrong. You can foia request any communication between government employees and anyone if it was done in their official role or on government equipment. There are some exceptions of course, but generally speaking correspondence is anything but confidential (at least in the USA)

It's really hard to generalize about this in the US, each state has their own laws, FOIA isn't applicable to state and local governments: http://www.nfoic.org/state-foi-laws

The allowable exemptions -- and penalties for non-compliance -- vary wildly from state to state.

Thanks for disabusing me of my misconception. However, I'm going to have to do more homework on this before I'm willing to concede that you're right.

> If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.

In normal circumstances I would agree with what you say, any sane person would agree with you actually, but these are not normal circumstances, what with all the TSA crap, the Iraq war that was started based on a huge LIE by the US Government and happily backed by the British, and I could go on and on.

At some point, better sooner rather than later, we the citizens of democratic countries should realize that our Governments are not there to rule over us, they have no special privileges, they have been chosen by us just to be mere executors of statutes and laws. They're not there to (tacitly) rewrite the Constitution and take away our rights (see the Guantanamo debacle in the United States), if they start doing that we as citizens have every right in our power to take actions against our fellow citizens who don't respect the fundamental laws of our countries (what most of them call a Constitution).

Stratfor is a news company. Their only mission is to print accurate information for the consumption of the public. They give away many articles for free, and individuals can subscribe for about $20/month.

Stratfor is not Halliburton. It's sort of the opposite. While mainstream media propaganda spins bullshit about the Euro crisis, Stratfor gives straight-to-the-point, honest reporting and is only concerned with accuracy.

Basically Anon is trying to destroy one of the highest quality news sources available online. This isn't noble.

If they hacked FOX, the NYT, lobbyist emails, the MPAA, or even something like Facebook, I would probably congratulate them for helping humanity.

But not in this case.

Agreed, this is scummy anarchy just so they can watch the world burn.

I'm all for government transparency, however I believe the media has the right to privacy as they alone seem to do the work of keeping the government transparent. All the Anons are doing is fuelling fires that will allow the government more secrecy and ratting out the whistle blowers isn't going to help anybody.

If people would actually READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE instead of spouting off about governments hypocrisy to defend an attack against a news company.

Bravo forensic, you seem to be one of the few capable of looking at the evidence on this issue.

> these are not normal circumstances

How ridiculous. You can use that to justify absolutely any action that you deem fit. Who's to decide what's acceptable in these "not normal circumstances"?

My email was obtained, and my credit card #. I used to subscribe to Stratfor to get another (more in-depth, geopolitical) perspective on the news.

Stratfor has sources whose anonymity (like with Wikileaks) is important.

If indeed the breach does reveal people who have helped Stratfor obtain information for its stories, it will be akin to if the group had hacked Wikileaks and outed Bradley Manning before he was caught by the government.

Yeah, same here -- I'm a subscriber too.

But, Manning got caught b/c he bragged to someone who turned him in. I don't think Wikileaks was hacked.

The parent didn't state that about Manning. He wrote "if".

1) The Stratfor seems to have an impression of being a media organisation akin to Wikileaks. They talk to many contacts, don't form any policy except stories. They pass the stories onto governments/corporations.

2) An another Anonymous group says it's not them and they don't support it because Stratfor doesn't appear bad

3) That same other Anonymous group also warned that these are probably hacker [agent] provocateurs because it may just as well expose honest people who are exposing problems to Stratfor. The original aim was to expose the crimes of the government(s) and corporations by looking at the exchanges between contacts.

4) I tend to agree with you.

" They pass the stories onto governments/corporations."

And non-profits, and NGOs, and humanitarian organizations, who need or want information about places that don't get much coverage in the New York Times until the shit has already hit the fan. Places where maybe they have people working.

And regular folks like me who are willing to pay ~100/yr for indepth, unbiased news reporting that you can't find anywhere else because it doesn't concern Kim Kardashian or Lindsay Lohan.

I like how people blame agent provacateurs when someone on their side does something wrong.

Not to defend the practice of claiming sabotage or subterfuge when accused, but it's a time-honored tradition held by all "sides," including the likes of the RIAA/MPAA, governments, etc.

You mean “without any prior evidence”. The phrase “a priori” means “by reason or deduction alone, without empirical evidence”. The phrase “a priori evidence” is an oxymoron.

It's the internet, if you don't start adding random i's to words, people will think you're new to the place. Don't forget the Viri, or even Virii.

Plurals of Latin / Greek words used in English: http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxplural.html One of my favorite pages.

I believe the proper Latin phrase, to evoke appropriate pretension and bravado, would be prima facie.

900 upvotes and 92 comments on the reddit thread, yet not one comment that is critical of this action.

That is a reflection of the community this was posted in (/r/WikiLeaks). If you look at the other Stratfor discussions on reddit they tend to be more balanced.

This is due to one of my least favorite traits about reddit: the hivemind criminalizes the rich and powerful by defining them as naturally evil. I don't know how this mindset got started on reddit; I would love to find out. It seems to be their way of justifying being middle/lower class by saying the reason the rich/powerful succeed is due the rich/powerful not having a heart and gaming people of their money.

It's called tall poppy syndrome.

not really - tall poppy syndrome is when people of genuine merit are criticised. to apply that to the rich and powerful you have to also assume that merit is rewarded by wealth.

in other words: you're assuming that rich people are wonderful and that criticism is therefore unfair; others are sceptical that the wealth and privilege is justified and so feel that the criticsm is fair.

so the difference is political. labeling it "tall poppy syndrome" is a framing technique to "smuggle in" the assumption that wealth is deserved.

and to answer the question of "where it came from" - questioning the right to wealth is not a new idea. if you think it's something specific to reddit then you might consider learning more about alternative political viewpoints.

There's a significant difference between business and personal emails.

If you write anything in a business email you should assume that it may become public at some point in the future. Both your employer and the recipients employer have the right to read it, as does any company that acquires either party.

The email may also be demanded by the government for a variety of reason or by a court in pursuit of a civil case.

Business emails have much weaker privacy protection than personal emails because it's assumed that from the very beginning that any privacy arises from the commercial implications of the contents rather than the inherent privacy that you have when two private individuals are discussing a personal matter.

It seems the same argument you're making about it being distasteful to release the emails without any a priori evidence of wrongdoing could have been applied to the HBGary Federal incident, although Anonymous was provoked in that case since Aaron Barr claimed to be able to expose the "leaders" of the movement.

Was it distasteful to leak the 44,000 emails acquired? If so, was the important information gleaned from the emails exposing all manner of shady dealings in the white hat industry[1] not enough to vindicate the attacks?

[1]http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked...

IMO the problem here is that this leak will probably make whistleblowers easily identifiable, thus causing legal actions against "the good ones" (think Bradley Manning). This makes the case more comparable to the cables (which were filtered before release) than to hbgary.

Bradley Manning was not one of the "good ones". Sorry.

I yield to your well-founded argument.

P.S: I consider publication of information about war cruelty and international political pressure as benefiting for mankind, ethically good and thus conforming to the "hacker ethics".

How about this...

Bradley Manning posted two types of information. War Footage and Diplomatic Cables. The War Footage was unpleasant to watch but didn't document anything that wasn't already well known (at least to anyone who paid attention to Iraqi Civilian Casualty Numbers). As such no change has been made by the government.

The second group, diplomatic cables, actually caused harm. The whole point of diplomacy is to avoid war. Manning leaked info (such as state department officials' personal opinion of other world leaders) that made it harder to deal with them. Hence making diplomacy harder and war more likely.

I think the larger point with the Stratfor hack and Manning's actions is it's dumb to release indiscriminately. Good reporting has always involved inside sources but those reporters targeted the actual corruption and only released that.

Much better.

> The War Footage was unpleasant to watch but didn't document anything that wasn't already well known (at least to anyone who paid attention [...])

It generated mass media attention and thus had an impact on previously uninformed people.

> The second group, diplomatic cables, actually caused harm.

It also made transparent how governments followed US pressure secretly, lying to the people, and they are said to have had an influence on the Arab spring.

Its all subjective. To some, such as myself, I don't give a shit if it cost our government to "lose face" and possibly have to back out of war, etc. I personally feel that are government is up to no good in a number of ways and that those in charge need to be taken down a few notches. The U.S. isn't some mindless borg, we all have different beliefs and feelings on what is right and wrong so saying something caused our government harm is really just saying it caused the people in charge harm, its up to the rest of the citizens to decide if it really caused them any harm.

Yes, the government is not above the law. If they are going to do things that are incriminating obviously we can't go through the normal channels to find out as they will cover their asses to no end. This sort of thing is literally one of the only ways to give the assholes in charge who abuse their power what they deserve.

Powerful actors must be held accountable for the use of their action. To believe otherwise means that might makes right.

Private actors, whether they be firms or well-connected individuals are (and always have) attempted to influence those holding power. It is in the public interest to expose power and influence-mongering. Government, by virtue of its power over individual citizens needs to be held to a higher standard of openness. Private parties should be held to the same standard, when they choose to deal with the government in a manner that may influence its actions.

So hack lobbyists. Hack Halliburton. Hack Wall Street. Hack the MPAA.

But Stratfor? One of the highest quality unbiased news sources available to the public? One of the only news outlets free from mainstream media spin, with a fanatical devotion to a just-the-facts reporting style?

Yours is the first post on the topic to make me think that the _agent_provocateur_ accusation might in fact be true.

I agree totally. Situational ethics abounds it seems.

It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released.

What do you mean, "if" the tables were turned?

"Influencial individuals" can do harm to society at large (and have done it quite a lot in the past years). They are "public persons" and must undergo check and control by the society. That is absolutely not comparable with private individuals who's actions are very unlikely to have any damaging impact on the general society. That's the difference.

In my opinion, just like politicians are worthy of public scrutiny, the people in power should be too. If a person's actions and views affect population, they should be known to the people who it effects.

Having said that, it becomes difficult to draw the line. Stuff like this does have potential to create anarchy, which doesn't benefit anyone.

I would have to follow the twisted logic, Do you really expect these people to have not committed any crimes over the entire course of the emails?

I would have more of a issue if this was personal correspondence but this is dealing with large US institutions and people that deal with policy.

Policy makers don't get intelligence from Stratfor!

For fuck's sake! You people are truly clueless!

"Policy makers" get their intelligence from the CIA. Duh! No government relies on Stratfor, it would be grossly irresponsible.

Stratfor makes most of its money from corporations that operate in foreign countries and are not large enough or important enough to have CIA-access.

This means corporations OUTSIDE the military-industrial-security complex. Anyone inside this complex uses Stratfor for light reading at most. The real intelligence is classified and is available to megacorps that collaborate with the CIA.

Nice wording, "You people are truly clueless?".

Well one thing is clear, whatever kind of opposite world you live in large corporations don't have any influence over government policy.

There is no one on that client list who deals with anything policy related at all! The interesting things about company emails is that they tend to not communicate to the outside world.

Yes "Policy Makers" only get intelligence from the CIA. Since out of the huge intelligence budget the only agency we have that deals with matters outside of the US is the CIA.

Think tanks and other non governmental institutions are for people other than "Policy Makers"

I hope I'm keeping up the theme of saying completely backwards stuff!

Or that you just....clueless.

You're just flat out ignorant regarding the nature of Stratfor.

It's not a think tank! It's not a big corporation! Stratfor serves medium and small corporations!

Hack the CFR. Hack the Brookings institute. Hack the RAND corporation. Hack the DoD. Hack the Tavistock institute and the Club of Rome and the Heritage foundation. Hack the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller foundation and hack Harvard and hack Yale and hack the New York Times. Hack Monsanto and KBR and Blackwater and GM and GE and News Corp. Hack the RIAA and hack AIPAC. Hack Blue Cross and Pfizer. Hack Goldman Sachs and Timothy Geithner.

Stratfor does not fall into this category. They are an unbiased high quality news source that serves small and medium businesses. They are not directly attached to the military industrial complex.

What you're clueless about is Stratfor. It's a small business with 70 employees. It's not a think tank and it's work even exposes the influence of the megacorps that run your country. It exposed the influence that international finance was having on the Euro crisis in a completely unbiased way, for instance. The rest of the media wouldn't even touch the Euro crisis with anything resembling a realistic appraisal. Stratfor just cut right to the heart. High quality journalism for about the same price as The Economist.

Stratfor was on the good team. Anonymous just committed a friendly fire incident.

“In normal times, evil should be fought by good, but in times like this, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil”

And, it's the reason governments will clamp down and regulate the internet more and more.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Hacking is already illegal. What could governments have done to prevent this?

"More laws!! Think of the children!"

With respect, it's an awful question. Awful because some politician might read it and think - yes, what can I do to prevent it?

Introduce SOPA/PIPA/a variant thereof, and takedown/prosecute anyone hosting this content.

What they could, and are discussing doing, is defining Hacking as terrorism. I heard this from my own congressman's mouth and that's why this scares me. Because there were a log of Senators and Congressman subscribed to Stratfor and this is exactly the type of incident that might push them to act.

> What they could, and are discussing doing, is defining Hacking as terrorism. I heard this from my own congressman's mouth and that's why this scares me. Because there were a log of Senators and Congressman subscribed to Stratfor and this is exactly the type of incident that might push them to act.

I'm not a US citizen and I don't live in the States, even though I am a huge admirer of how your political system was first set up (the Founding Fathers and all that), but all I want to say is that if you, as a citizen, have started to be afraid just at the mere mention of something possibly passing into "terrorism" territory only because one of your elected represantives hinted about that then it means they've already won.

He's not saying he's scared of "terrorism", he's scared that they'll call it terrorism and use it as a club against People They Don't Like.

English is my mother tongue, but that's what I wanted to say, actually, that we shouldn't be afraid of people tagging random stuff as "terrorism", we should do something about it, otherwise we're just potatoes or vegetables waiting for bad things to happen.

No, I get that. I think the person you replied to was saying the same thing. =)

For example, they'd make anyone possessing, downloading, reading, printing etc any of these emails a 'terrorist' and imprison them indefinitely.

I'm not afraid of that happening in my country. I doubt it would happen in the US either. And even if it did, there would still be hackers, still doing the same thing, and still getting away with it.

They'll clamp down regardless. If anything maybe they'll try a little quicker this way, but they'd also run the risk of shooting too quick.

That's the thing about leaks like this -- they happen without regard for your sense of propriety. Or anyone's.

It would be unethical if the tables were turned and ordinary citizens were getting their emails released.

It would be unethical if a company properly secured their servers.

It would be educational if ordinary citizens expected their communications to be completely private without taking reasonable measure to assure same.

This is a great lesson in security.

One of the ramifications of going to war, like it or not, is increased scrutiny. This is a weaker form of the "collateral damage" that our politicians and bureaucrats routinely write off.

Alright, so, anyone care to put effort into a reply as opposed to solely downvotes?

> It would be unethical if a company properly secured their servers.

My guess is that this is the root. It's unethical for you to walk into my house and read my mail regardless of whether I locked the door that morning or not.

I'm not losing any sleep over this particular leak, just saying, what I quoted is probably their beef.

I mean, that's an interesting question, right?

I've copied the information in your mail to myself without harming the original. If I burned your letter, I've absolutely committed a wrong, but I didn't do that.

If you fail to lock your door, you are in effect allowing this possibility. If you communicate over a "clear" channel, without taking steps to encrypt that data, you are again allowing this. That's why I don't view this as a valid moral claim.

Could the same not be said for having windows made of glass? You did not build your entire house of steel and deadbolt locks, so you have allowed this possibility and therefore I am entitled to come into your house.

That may be true, but most jurisdictions recognize an inherent right to physical privacy which isn't lost based on how securely the premises are sealed.

So, the truly problematic part is the trespassing and/or burglary (illicitly entering a building, regardless of destruction or theft of property, meets the test).

The law around extracting information from a physical place is something I don't really know about.

But either way, we have a parallel in the unlawful access of shit that isn't yours.

You're argument is essentially the "She deserved to be raped" argument. I understand that your argument is a bit more nuanced than this because of the idea of harm you introduced.

But at it's simpliest core you argue that "Hey, you made it easier and the possibility exists..." It's the same way with rape. "Hey she was wearing a short skirt and was drunk, the possibility exists."

We should be able to to agree that because I make something easier for you to do that doesn't mean you are free and clear to do it.

If you want to have this debate it shouldn't be about the ease of which someone allows another to take a particular action. Instead, we should debate about if we believe we should secure in papers and from who. In a world in which non-political actors have more power than political actors that's an interesting question!

> I've copied the information in your mail to myself without harming the original.

If you opened mail from my physical mailbox, you'd have committed the federal crime of mail tampering, which faces a fine and/or jail time. If you opened 3.3 million letters from my mail box, you'd probably be the first person to live the remainder of their life in jail for mail tampering... regardless of your age.

My mail is stored in an easily accessible box at the end of my driveway. If it has any form of lock, you're committing a much more serious crime. When you're hacking into a passworded system to steal email, your crime should be treated with just severity. Not only should it be regarded as committing a federal crime, but there should be charges for breaking the lock too (I'm against the DMCA's whole copyright circumvention bullshit, because it hurts the little guy. But no protection against email fraud hurts the little guy.)

> If you fail to lock your door, you are in effect allowing this possibility. If you communicate over a "clear" channel, without taking steps to encrypt that data, you are again allowing this. That's why I don't view this as a valid moral claim.

If I fail to lock my door, it's still immoral to enter my property and steal everything. Just as it's immoral to enter my unlockable mailbox and steal my mail. If you don't find it immoral for someone else to read your mail then honestly you should have no qualms with posting the entire contents of all your email addresses online for us to scrutinize as well.

If there's no immorality about stealing a corporations emails, containing hundreds or thousands of peoples personal emails and information then you should have no morality problems about HN trawling your own emails.

Regardless of if I lock my door or not, I have a right not to have my property looted. Regardless of if I use a strong or weak password for my email, I have the right to not have my property looted.

My problem with this world is people like you, who will be the first to scream fucking murder when some trivial wrong happens to you but you claim everyone else has no moral claim for not doing everything you deem appropriate. Get off your fucking high horse and learn the god damn definition of morals because at least knowing the definition might help you find a set.

I'm giving myself a 99% chance of being down voted, but put your money where your mouth is. I want to see your goddamn emails.

Right, yes, it's illegal, but that's more an accident of legislature than anything else. Don't pretend that that gives it moral explanatory power one way or the other.

If I fail to lock my door, it's still immoral to enter my property and steal everything. Just as it's immoral to enter my unlockable mailbox and steal my mail.

I agree that theft resulting in exclusion of your access to your resources is very much unethical--copying mail does not result in this exclusion of access.

If you don't find it immoral for someone else to read your mail then honestly you should have no qualms with posting the entire contents of all your email addresses online for us to scrutinize as well.

I don't have to find it immoral; giving away that information freely is an act of charity I do not believe myself morally obligated to perform. Were you to come across it otherwise, I'd be a bit annoyed (as I would have to update various authentication mechanisms), but I wouldn't believe I ought to jail you or fine you or the like.

I make a bet, everyday, that the relative security of my systems is adequate for my needs. Some days I'm right, some days I'm wrong, and I bear no ill will for somebody that authenticates as me to that system--clearly, the error was in the system's scope and construction.

I'm giving myself a 99% chance of being down voted, but put your money where your mouth is. I want to see your goddamn emails.

You know, if I could do so without giving away authentication credentials for other things, I would. That said, the cost-benefit isn't there. As I pointed out above, I don't have any moral obligation to provide you with information--if you gather on your own, hell, that's your business. As long as only copying has occurred, what does it matter?

Jesus dude stop fucking trolling. Mail tampering isn't illegal through an accident of legislature, it's illegal because even a hundred years ago they realised its a serious deal.

As long as I only copy your social insurance number, credit card numbers, banking information, etc, what does it matter? I'm just copying!

Reading between the lines, I gather that angersock's underlying point was just that technological solutions are superior to legislative solutions, with the twist that technical capability equals moral acceptability. Apologies to angersock if I interpreted incorrectly.

Regardless of your argument, that's not what happened here.

They broke into the (secured) Stratfor servers, then decrypted the email using a key they stole.

At best the real analogy is picking the lock on your house, taking your spare car key and then stealing your car.

The whole "but nothing was destroyed" argument is a whole other argument, but equally as weak. The fact that exclusive access information has value has been long established, and there are numerous precedents in the physical world showing it. The best example is someone breaking into a commercial office, gaining access to private commercial documents which they can use in negotiations. Clearly harm has been done, as it has in this case.

So, lost profits due to being in a worse bargaining position is hardly a "harm". The company in question can either go through the negotiations in a weaker position, or they can walk away from the table. This is a case of better matching the (true) price of sale for the seller and consumer.

Ignorance is what allows large profits to be made, and as far as I recall unrealized profits shouldn't be claimed as harms.

So, lost profits due to being in a worse bargaining position is hardly a "harm".

You might not agree, but there is plenty of case law against you.

If you don't like that example, there are plenty of others showing the value of private information regardless of its destruction (for example, there is a whole genre of entertainment build around the spy novel|film).

The real issue is the fact you disagree with that, and are presenting your opinion as fact.

The post was clear that they did not do this to prove the security flaws. They did it because they believe this information should be made public for the good of the public.

Nearly everyone in this forum opposes SOPA's attempt to shut down websites without a trial. Effectively subpoenaing private communication between suspected criminals without a court order and making those emails public requires much the same infringement of basic rights.

So you have to ask yourself, "Do I approve of private citizens and organizations taking actions such as these if they believe they're helping fight crime?" And then ask yourself whether you're talking about the release of these emails, or SOPA.

" "Do I approve of private citizens and organizations taking actions such as these if they believe they're helping fight crime?""

Crime? If every fringe nutcase gets to decide what is crime, and act on that, then it's likely you've committed somebody's idea of a crime, and so has everyone else.

So far the accusations of Stratfor's evil have been about as meaningful as the British people who threatened a pediatrician, ignorantly thinking she was a pedophile.

I don't see anyone railing against the crimes of Jane's, or the Economist Intelligence Unit. Probably because they know nothing whatsoever about the industry and don't even know those organizations exist.

I think you're in violent agreement, and that this was the point of "if THEY believe they're helping fight crime".

It's pointless, causing a lot of people a lot of trouble with no clear upside. Even the Pastebin admits that Stratfor doesn't seem to be involved in anything shady, but they're going to release all their e-mails anyway just in case. It's a witch hunt.

There is no best case scenario from releasing this data. The point that even security companies can't guarantee security has been made, all that releasing the data can do is turn public sentiment against Antisec and towards "whatever it takes to stop this kind of thing".

"The point that even security companies can't guarantee security has been made"

But in their nerd rage tunnel vision they still haven't figured out that not all security is internet security, and not all security-related companies are internet security companies.

There are valid non-computer matters of security, such as "Is the Lord's Resistance Army active around this particular village at this time?" which would be crucial if, say, you're sending some doctors in to work in that village. Or "How active are the Maoist militants in India?"

Basically, the Anonymous people don't have the faintest clue what Stratfor does, or why you would turn to them or similar firms for information.

"It's a witch hunt."

And a publicity stunt.

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