GlobaLeaks - Open Source Whistleblowing Framework | Hacker News Reader

GlobaLeaks - Open Source Whistleblowing Framework

globaleaks.org

87 pointsyaph50 comments

I've noticed yet another interesting double-standard on HN: privacy should always be respected except when it comes to the "bad guys". It's all good as long as you agree on who the bad guys are. This is an extremely slippery slope as we can all witness with the US war on terror slowly eroding personal rights for the greater good. In my mind, this line of thinking is analog to the "free speech unless you say something I don't like" mentality. Do we really want to devalue privacy so we can catch a few bad guys? Just saying we should all be extremely careful around the topic.

You don't really have to make that choice, because these leaks are targeted at Governments. Governments should be transparent with their citizens. When they are not, the leaks will start showing up. I think that's ultimately good for society, even if now and then some secrets are not supposed to come out.

Good luck with diplomacy if you have no private communications.

Good luck with "diplomacy" when you have secret communications discussing a secret alternative agenda.

My response to the "bad guys" argument has always been: if you asked the bad guys if they were bad, what would they say?

> The Target receives the submitted material as a tulip that will expire after a certain amount of downloads

Perhaps I am hopeless behind the times, but what is a tulip?

From what I found reading through some stuff, 'tulip' is the term used to describe whatever a whistle-blower uploads. It also has some meta-data including a point of discussion, so that the Global Leaks provider (the recipient of information) can ask the sender (the whistle-blower) to upload some more material or explain something. It seems tulips can be set, by the sender, to expire.

Here's a link to the tulip controller - you can mostly figure out what it does reading through the well-structured code:

https://github.com/globaleaks/GlobaLeaks/blob/master/globale...

It would be interesting to see how governments around the world react to this. They haven't taken WikiLeaks to kind and in some ways we know their decision. However, it would be great if some governments accept such a framework.

Indeed. However if this ends up being a peer to peer type project, then it doesn't matter how the government reacts to it. Embrace it, try to stifle it, doesn't matter.

A network of GlobaLeaks "nodes" makes the entire process infinitely effectively impossible to stifle at any level, unless you go the route of shutting off the internet as some regimes have done. And even then information finds a way out.

I love this idea.

If a government reacts to this, then you know the project was a success.

I think if a government reacts, we would know that this Whistle Blow framework has good potential. Unless adopted, I wouldn't label it as success. It would be another project like WikiLeaks which is waiting to be back door squeezed by the FBI and their equivalents.

Whistle blowing is not limited to wiki leaks style government secrets publication. What about employees stumbling onto corporate mis behaviour? Victims of war etc etc This may help the Arab spring type scenarios.

The website does not work without Javascript. Javascript is unsafe. I would not trust them with my sensitive revelations.

Saying JavaScript is unsafe is like saying driving a car is unsafe. If you intentionally run into a wall sure, it's unsafe.

If you don't trust a site enough to let them use JS do you really trust them enough to send them your leaked data?

JavaScript just adds another thing that could go wrong, in exchange for a potential increase in usability. On a site like this, it's almost certainly not worth it.

Usability is the entire focus of what they are doing. They aim to make it possible for non-programmers/non-sysadmins/non-security geeks to set up their own whistleblowing framework. Think journalists, volunteer orgs, activists, dissenters...

I think the word here is accessibility, not usability. Every step of the process can be made usable without the need for JavaScript.

From a security stand-point, I don't trust whatever JavaScript engine is running, even more when considering non tech-savvy people.

An activist could find himself in a delicate position and discover that many CPU cycles ate away whatever battery was left in their mobile devices, just to display three Canvas elements in a row, with the text "Tulip", "not", "found" in a cool font.

Now the browser can crash due to a flaky HTML5 Canvas implementation in addition to the JS engine.

Your concern is pretty silly. If your life is at stake for whistle blowing, I bet Javascript being unsafe will be the last of your worries! You will probably use Tor in an Internet Cafe with incognito browsing mode.

It looks like mostly icing on top of http://tor2web.org/

Good to see someone trying the Dissent As A Service turnkey business model.

What happened to openleaks?

Note enough people fell for that con I guess

The vibe that OpenLeaks gave off was that it was founded by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, the guy that was rumored to have betrayed (in some way) Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Say what you want about Assange (like him being the Jason Russel or Michael Arrington of whistle-blowing) but with Julian it felt like you were protected and anonymized at all cost. Whereas with Daniel it feels like the moment he's threatened with jail time he'll sell you out.

Also,

"[OpenLeaks] will allow leakers to anonymously submit information to a secure online dropbox. But unlike [Wikileaks], it won’t publish that information itself. Instead, it will allow the source to designate any media or non-governmental organizations he or she chooses and have that information passed on for fact-checking, redaction and publication."

Sorry Daniel, but it doesn't work that way. In the world of whistle-blowing, it's all or nothing. You either publish the leak or you don't. Not go through 3 extra steps and a whole lot of "if/then"s and still not be guaranteed that your leak will be published. A broken model in my opinion.

I worry about things like this. I'm all for freedom of information and all that, but if that information is all that's keeping one country from launching nuclear weapons at another. That information should be kept very very private indeed,

What if that information details acts of war by nation 2 against nation 1, however those acts have been, up until the publication of the documents, untracebale or unatributable to nation 2. For example Mossad paying revolutionary groups to kill off Iranian scientists, the release fo the documents would lead to condemnation of Mossad and stilfe their activities, thus saving some innocent scientists from being assasinated, sure Iran may want to retaliate but the other option is you allow Mossad to go on killing iranians (or anyone else they choose to) without bringing scrutiny on their actions.

Your example was extreme but it was poorly thought out. If the information is powerful enough to cause a nation to want to launch a nuclear weapon at another country then that sort of information needs to be publicised, whatever the hell it is that is bad enough to start a nuclear war is certainly not going to get any better by hiding it away from people.

<rant> "What if that information details acts of war by nation 2 against nation 1, however those acts have been, up until the publication of the documents, untracebale or unatributable to nation 2."

Nation one should not have been meddling in nation two's business in the first place. I think this comment summarizes the overall problem with our governments. They should be completely transparent and open. The reason that we go to war is over secrets. Remember growing up:

When/why did this stop applying to governments or "adults". Secrets are used to push agenda's. If there are no secrets, then no one can hold anything against anyone else. There wouldn't be conflict. I do not want to go to war or get drafter to fight for something, unless I know all the information. I don't want to die so someone else can grow their bank account. Governments work for the people and paid for by the people, not the other way around. Therefore, all information they possess belongs to us, the people.

Israel should not be meddling in Iran's business, and vice versa. I have friends of all denominations, nationalities, and colors. We all get along just fine and generally complain about the same things. Its our governments that cause problems for the worlds populations. If our governments really represented the people and not the politician's own agenda's there would not be any need for secrecy.

This solution could be a huge step for us to start changing things for the better.

</rant>

TL;DR "Secrets, secrets, are no fun. Secrets, secrets hurt someone." Secrets are used to control people/agenda's.

I'm having a hard time thinking of "information that would keep one country from launching nuclear weapons at another". Unless that information was "this country is planning a nuclear strike", and then the threat of retaliation could very well save lives.

Could you give me an example of what you mean?

As an example, let's say one country poisoned the leader of another country 20 years ago and covered it up. Exposing that information could start a war.

If it's the right action to leak that information is entirely dependent on your moral philosophy. Utilitarians would generally want to keep it a secret, though.

That is not entirely true. Governments, unlike individuals, are fairly rational agents and do not start wars for revenge. For all we care, the murdered president was member of the opposition and his disposal might have helped the current ruling party.

I think you are being overly generalist here. Governments are as rational as the people that make them and run them, in the same way as a corporation (or any group of people, really). Can you really say that all governments are fairly rational? How about North Korea?

At least the motive of corporations is clear: profit. A (democratically elected) government is in constant conflict with itself over ideology (a much trickier motive to grasp, one that often causes irrational behavior), and it doesn't always take consensus to act.

> Utilitarians would generally want to keep > it a secret, though

Yeah, those Utilitarians are always taking ideological stands on general issues.

war != nuclear strike

I understand your concerns, but whoever decides what information will be kept secret is biased in some way and keeping information secret may actually pose a bigger threat than publishing it.

How?

I've heard this argument many times but can't actually think of any non-idealogical reasons why it would.

For example, when a government lies to its people to have an excuse for starting a war, disclosure may save many lives.

What would be a non-idealogical reason? States are driven by ideology as much as you and I are.

Please don't downvote Taphangum for asking a question. If it were chit-chat or a non-contribution style opinion downvote away, but not when it's a quest for knowledge and bettering oneself.

The only reason keeping one country from launching nuclear weapons at another one is Mutual Assured Destruction principle. Without nuclear weapons, the world would be a much more dangerous place to live.

We had two world wars in the first half of previous century. It was a like a loop: as soon as new generation of youth eligible for combatant service grew up, world war started again.

Fortunately, nuclear weaponry ended that loop, and Mutual Assured Destruction principle is the only reason for protracted peace at the global scale.

I find your statement

> Mutual Assured Destruction principle is the only reason for protracted peace at the global scale

very hard to believe. Do you have any source I could read that may change my mind ? For the moment I am a proponent of global nuclear disarmament, I don't have any source in english but the argument that draw me in was can be phrased as :

During the one true nuclear crisis, the Cuba missiles, Kennedy did not send the Air Force because the chance of getting nucleary hit, even "a little", was not 0%. Still, the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction posits that one enemy must be sure to be completely destroyed.

So we have a doctrine that leads to enormous arsenals, yet the only data point we have shows it is probably not true, as a mere chance of getting a small hit was enough for Kennedy to back down.

Hence, our arsenal are, at best, far too huge. I furthermore believe that we would be better off with no nuclear weapon at all, but I wanted more info about your precise statement.

So you think that what kept Stalin from marching into West Germany in the 1950s was a respect for the principle of freedom and independence in the Federal republic? Or perhaps he feared the awesome military capabilities of a conventional British army of the Rhine?

And similarly Washington didn't start a war with the USSR because it believed in "live and let live" with regards to world communism.

From my questioning of (emphasis mine) :

> Mutual Assured Destruction principle is the ONLY reason for protracted peace at the global scale

you seem to derive that I think something along the line of "Equilibrium in nuclear abilities played no role in global stability during the cold war."

The answers to your rhetorical questions are of course all no. But do you truly think the huge size of our nuclear arsenals are a necessary feature for global stability nowadays ? If yes, could you explain to me why a smaller arsenal could not do the trick ?

I think a big enough nuclear fleet on bath sides has led to the first half-century in the history of europe without a major war.

I think it's also odd how politicians 'claim' that Iran/Korea/Belgium mustn't be allowed to get nuclear weapons because then they would be unstoppable. So MAD works against the USSR but not against Iran?

At least until US has anti-rocket shields everywhere on Earth. Then they won't have to worry so much about mutual destruction. I remember a few years ago when Russia was upset about US putting an anti-rocket shield in Poland, I was taking US' side, because I naively thought that US is a democracy hero country and that having those anti-rocket shields will be a good thing for the world. But now I realize how dangerous is giving US so much control over the Earth and turning it into a quasi-empire.

Pax americana, friend. What're you afraid of?

If every country had nuclear weapons, would there be no more wars then? And to take it one step further, if every man had a gun, would there be no more murder?

Nope - M.A.D. principle assumes perfect rationality, i.e. all leaders with launch capability care about the survival of their subjects. This assumption worked well during the times of Cold War, but may fail in future, as more states gain access to nuclear technology and weaponry.

So I admit this principle has its limits of application, it's not perfect, but nevertheless it proved worthwhile tool to sustain global peace on the planet during Cold War era and up to this day. Imperfect tool, but only one that works.

You're right.

I used that example to make a point, the core of what i am saying still applies though.

Some information should be kept private

M.A.D. only works if all of those involved are rational actors with high levels of control and clear geographic definitions.

If every country had nukes then you only need one country to have a civil war and things could get rather messy.

Imagine what would happen in the US, for example, if Washington went bankrupt. Something like that could lead to civil war, which raises the thought of what a nuclear civil war might look like, could you have an independent theologically-apocalyptic nuclear armed Texas spitting bible verses and megaton warheads at any heathens, for instance?

Although interestingly it works best if the other side believes you are an insane fundamentalist psychopath.

So the US assumed that Russians, being Godless commie atheists were itching to nuke the good old USA if they could. Rather than their generals being a generation that had fought in the ruins of Stalingrad and didn't want to see that happen again.

Fortunately the Russians assumed that US were a bunch of bible-thumping God bothering spoiled children who would nuke them rather than have to face the horrors of fighting a Stalingrad type battle.

So everything worked out ok!

There is still a debate in the global-thermonuclear-war business about whether Curtis LeMay actually was the insane trigger-happy character from Dr Strangelove he appeared - or if that was a deliberate image projected to convince the Russians that the USA was crazy enough to use the bomb.

This is software. It doesn't dictate the type of information people share. Why do you assume it's going to be state secrets?

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