Wikileaks publishes 500k new Stratfor emails | Hacker News Reader

Wikileaks publishes 500k new Stratfor emails

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366 pointsdmix177 comments

Oh, this is so classy: https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=8402

Quote:

Oh, they have enough weapons. Now the serious game begins as Reva pointed out. The investigation of the attack is not interesting. I suspect the findings have already been reached before the first investigator got to work. Now the question is how India responds. God willing, the Indian response will make us a lot of money.

This after the devastating terrorist attack in Mumbai which killed 164 people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Mumbai_attacks

Holy damn. Here is one interview of her (Reva Bhalla): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc1gJOPCipY And at the end she is linking the attack to Al Qaeda. I think this is why they are giving her kudos, for planting the seed. This is nefarious on so many levels. This means India directly comes under pressure to respond back to Pakistan, and then respond to allegations that Al Qaeda is expanding in India. It is ironic that it was one of the CIA double agent, with links to terrorist organization LeT, who conducted recce of the sites before attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley

India was under so much pressure to go to war at that time. Experts were gunning for surgical strikes. Imagine the pressure on bureaucrats, especially when both countries have nuclear arsenal.

Why does education/intelligence/morality not cull the inner devil of some?

> Why does education/intelligence/morality not cull the inner devil of some?

This is honestly a far more complicated question than other commentors appear to be capable of engaging with.

Educational systems worldwide are constructed with the idiotic hope of job fulfillment. There are noises about a liberal arts education, but these are the first things cut when budgets are on the line. Educational systems, thusly, do nothing to help guide moral compasses: indeed, they do a lot to break them down.

Intelligence, on the other hand, very naturally cuts both ways. The capacity to reason is also the capacity to rationalize. These are people trained to vote with their wallet, because their wallet is the only meaningful measure of value they have. Short of coincidence, they have no particular reason to believe that this is untrue.

Morality, though, isn't innate. The purpose of philosophy--one of those casualties of an industrial-catered educational system--is to actually tackle the construction of a moral system and tinker with practical applications of it. It was never a widespread practice to engage in understanding how morals are made, even if you contribute no new thought, but we've done nothing to spread it wider.

We end up leaving it to genetic lottery and your local tradition of faith. When most people's "inner devil" is culled only by the least possible amount of thought, how do you expect it to be culled at all?

"Why does education/intelligence/morality not cull the inner devil of some?"

IMO education and intelligence may sometimes fuel the "inner devil". "Greed has poisoned men's souls." I really think it is power and or authority that may be the culprit in these kinds of situations. Some people are completely disconnected from our fellow humans.

> power ... authority ... completely disconnected from our fellow humans

Highly relevant: http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~uzimmerm/Notes/Ludwig+Longenecke...

It could also have meant that investigators have already decided who did this. IIRC, hours after the attacks we were already suggesting Pakistan. In the end it turned out to be close, but jumping into conclusions would not help our credibility.

Reva Bhalla's interview is too insignificant to directly affect our decision to respond. She was speculating, but everyone (including the government!) was speculating too and they were all pretty much saying the same thing. Which is, "someone in Pakistan".

I haven't seen anything seriously damaging yet from the India files. People aren't always very mild in emails, and some of them were just jokes. Some jokes were crude, but we all make such jokes.

They did not know who did it immediately, except knowing of Pakistan's involvement. Remember, ISI chief was being flown to India immediately on eve of attacks and Pak PM allowed it, only to be cancelled at last minute? [1] Nobody was speculating Al Qaeda links, it was being said either JeM, Deccan Mujahideen or LeT. Her speculation is significant because she is associated with security agency, is on CNN and will be listened to by in American Policy corridors.

You haven't seen damaging because they are aggregator, and put in their analysis on the news. Yeah crude jokes like selling weapons over the misery of others. "We" do not make these kind of jokes, and even if we do, they should be deplored. Sorry, I am not in sync with you over this.

[1] - http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/nov/29mumterror-isi-chief-vi...

To be fair, the guy joking about India attacking Pakistan and Israel having an excuse to go back into Gaza is the FOUNDER and CHAIRMAN of Stratfor. He ended the email with, "We are looking at a tense and profitable week."

He is apparently in "high demand" at JP Morgan- http://www.stratfor.com/about/analysts/dr-george-friedman

> Why does education/intelligence/morality not cull the inner devil of some?

Neither ignorance nor stupidity cause people to act this way.

>Why does education/intelligence/morality not cull the inner devil of some?

I've seen some study (not handy sorry) that about 5% of people near-totally lack the ability to empathize.

And why does education/intelligence/morality not keep others from constantly seeking out the perceived inner devil of others?

I'm being serious. You make an awful lot of assumptions about real people there, and ascribe to them the worst possible motives. That's a risky default behavior.

Reva's pretty hot. I see why the CEO told her to exploit an Israeli intelligence source by "financial, sexual or psychological control to the point where he would reveal his sourcing and be tasked."[1] The CEO added that this is difficult with her being associated with an intelligence organization.

Basically the same stuff CNN does.

[1] http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/201031_.html

This makes me sick to the stomach.

I was in India when the Mumbai carnage took place. My classmate from IIT was killed the same day at the very same spot [1].

And here we have this class of a bitch thinking of making a "lot of money" off a probable war ['caged match' look at the audacity!]. No wonder they say karma is broken all over the place. On another story these same corrupt assholes have abused their power to send a whistle blower to jail and serve a 10 years term [2].

Nice going, keep it up newage SS!

[1] http://www.iitfoundation.org/?p=200

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6740652

Relax, they are more like a news company. If you checked the emails of CNN, Fox, or even BBC you might find similar stuff. All news companies, including Indian TV channels love bad news.

Stratfor is nowhere close to holding the kind of power you are imagining.

On the ground human intelligence is power. And Barron's called Stratfor "the shadow CIA".

I have limited experience in this but I've seen some egregious things with current intelligence employees and private contractors. I think you are underestimating outside ways these guys could profit and/or use their intelligence collection news company to encourage those profits.

Since intelligence is just a fancy word for news, I guess that means every journalist needs to be at the sharp end of the same mob justice

How is this any different than the "Scud Stud" Peter Kent making his career of the Iraq War? Or a defense lawyer becoming famous because he got a murder case dismissed on a technicality?

Sure, it's pretty crappy, tasteless behavior, but lets not go overboard here.

I'm about to throw up. Here's what that message was a reply to:

-----Original Message-----

From: eisenstein@stratfor.com [mailto:eisenstein@stratfor.com]

Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2008 10:02 AM

To: Fred Burton

Cc: <allstratfor@stratfor.com>

Subject: Re: Reva rocks

Will be glad to supply weapons to both sides if India and Pakistan want a cage match. India gets the net and trident and the pakistanis get the shield and short sword. Kamran can instruct in Klingon

Sent from my iPhone

So WikiLeaks are policing black humour now? Do we need to submit all bad taste jokes in advance to see if they are be approved or not?

Strawman argument! WikiLeaks is providing transparency and some insight into the decisions and discussions made by powerful people that affect all of our lives.

They're not powerful people. I've read a few StratFor articles. They don't publish anything much different from what you would read in The Economist.

These people should be hung.

People who say something you don't like should be lynched? Really? How about what you are doing, advocating for someone's murder?

They didn't advocate murder, only a sentence. It's a way of expressing a preference that something be illegal, and have a particular punishment.

There's a difference between someone who says something, and someone who acts out on it - and when they're in the business of selling weapons or profiting from it - and say something like that, which will lead to action or is inherently acted upon because of the nature of what they're doing (the business they are in) - then it's no longer just a "freedom of speech" thing.

You can say you want to kill someone, or even tell them you're going to kill them - but under law, it's only when you act on it OR have a plan to do so that the scenario becomes illegal - and you'll go to jail if you then kill said person (assuming you get caught) or have a plan to do so. Likewise, them just saying wouldn't be illegal, however I feel them acting out and selling actual weapons to both sides (and perhaps somehow inciting war between two parties to then profit) should IMHO be illegal, stating their intent they would and would love to is not only having a plan stated but perhaps one of the most disturbing disconnected inhumane uncaring violent acts a person could partake in.

I don't generally agree that killing of anyone is right - though perhaps with the only exception of those who actively kill others or lead violence - however that's for a society to determine what is acceptable. Unfortunately many things a society deems unacceptable (even existing laws that are enforced) are happening and go unchanged, though we're moving towards a system that is more in line with general views. There are more basic issues that need to be taken care of first to help alleviate people's worries and stresses, removing fear of survival will solve most, if not lead to solving all problems.

War profiteers, the good guys.

Mean, cynical and snarky remarks are a hanging offense, apparently

To note, my comment is under the assumption they are involved in facilitating this process, and not merely just talking about it.

So you said that people should be hung without having the first clue about why? I love hn on the weekends.

You mistakenly are thinking that I literally meant these specific individuals and not in general those who facilitate this kind of thing.

You don't see any problem with this, a conflict of interest, that might lead to incentivizing said weapons company to be more inclined to help incite a war between two parties - which they'll clearly be happy to profit from?

I believe you mean "hanged".

They probably are.

I think you mean hanged.

I'm assuming that there is some sort of Star Trek universe remake of the scene from Spartacus, but I can't seem to find it. If so, does it have the same set-up (slave gladiators battling for the amusement of the elites)? I'm not entirely sure this makes sense...

There is a Star Trek episode where Kirk is forced to watch as Spock and McCoy fight as gladiators against Roman guards. There aren't any Klingons involved, but it does feature Roman clothing. There is another episode where alien brains want Kirk, Ohura and Checkov to fight as gladiators on their planet for the rest of their lives. There is a third episode in which Spock and Kirk are forced to fight in front of Vulcans as part of a Vulcan trial-by-combat marriage ceremony. Their is also a fourth episode in Voyager which features a gladiatorial combat but in a sci-fi arena that looks like the set of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." Those are the only references I could find, but let's just say that this idea has seen its fair share of screen time on Star Trek.

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_Circuses_%28Star_Tre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gamesters_of_Triskelion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amok_Time http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Tsunkatse_%28episode%29

Thanks. None of those quite seem to fit the email though. I'm guessing that the allusion in the email must have just been to general Klingon war-like attitudes.

Its actually a reference to the classic gladiator match up with side order of trek in joke's.

I must be one of the few HN commentator apart form Matt Cuts who has ever studied the classics.

I was wondering if the explicit naming of the weapons was supposed to refer to that exact scene in the Kubrick movie. Which, given it was one of the triggers of the slave rebellion make the original email seem possibly quite weird.

These kinds of people need to be in prison, not the people exposing what they're doing.

What do you mean by "these kinds of people"? Greedy people? People who say things that are tasteless and mean? I'm pretty sure there's no law against any of that. Please enlighten me re: the law they've broken, otherwise I hope you can see the inherent irony in your statement... </unpopularOpinion>

edit: I'm not being ornery, I'm really actually curious what people think they should go to prison for. Tastelessness != criminality.

These people aren't just a group of kids on xboxLive making idle threats. They are making real plans and use their influence to make money at the cost of killing people. Conspiracy to commit murder for financial gain sounds like a good fit here. Or at least intent to indirectly end lives for money.

EDIT: Ouch, game over for me... I thought these email leaks involved government officials 'n such. If these are like reading the emails of FOXNews, then nevermind. They're bad people(IMHO), but can't jail 'em anymore than we can jail the people of stormfront.org

Conspiracy to commit murder? What are you talking about? Do you even know what Stratfor is? They're a glorified news organization. They're no more involved in the Mumbai terror plot than CNN is. As I said, they stand to profit because people will want more information about these events, which they provide. The stuff about supplying weapons is clearly a (bad, stupid) offhanded joke.

Profiting from the deaths of others is morally wrong, and it should be illegal. Judging by the number of up votes my parent comment has, there are lots of people that agree.

>I'm pretty sure there's no law against any of that.

You're right, there is no law against it, yet.

There also didn't used to be laws against a ton of morally wrong things, but at some point, enough people thought it was wrong and a law was made.

We should be looking to make the world a better place, not saying "there's no law against that, they can do it". The status quo needs improvement.

Profiting from the deaths of others is morally wrong, and it should be illegal.

The media makes a lot of money from bad news, especially death. Perhaps only the state should run news organizations?

Profiting from the deaths of others? They're a news organization. I don't understand what you're accusing them of that CNN isn't also guilty of, save some tasteless emails with bad jokes in them.

I'm really actually curious what people think they should go to prison for.

Terrorism, for material support of international war for commercial gain.

If they are actually engaged in selling weapons; well, arms trafficking is generally a crime unless you are very close to your government and very up to date on the paperwork. And even then most people would consider it a "moral crime", to profit from the misery of war.

The weapons they mention are traditional Roman gladiatorial weapons. I think that they're meant to be taken literally but are simply a reference to the presumed entertainment value (sigh). And honestly, even if literal giving swords to an army with automatic rifles is just giving them ceremonial props, not weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retiarius

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murmillo

Spoiler alert: they aren't. The weapons they talk about supplying are "a net and trident" for India and "the shield and short sword" for Pakistan. Seems pretty obvious that's a dumb joke. The closest they get to the illegal arms trade is reporting on it, eg. http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/global-arms-markets-seen-thro...

Laws are made up by humans - we could create laws that disallow this kind of behaviour, it's a bit surprising that it's not, no? Oh wait, the for-profit military-industrial complex lobbies politicians who are pro-war ...

Again, what kind of behavior are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting we pass laws prohibiting saying things that you find objectionable, tasteless or greedy? In a thread defending a whistleblower's free speech?

No, the action of selling weapons to both sides is much different than someone simply talking about it. Giving someone the ability to make money selling weapons has its own problems - which will incentivize those people who are looking to make profit do things they wouldn't normally otherwise do, and then worse - if they have the ability to sell weapons to both sides of a battle or war, what might they be willing to do in order to incite violence of one party against another? Do you not see a problem with this?

Please do some research before you make accusations like this. I have seen zero evidence that they're involved in the arms trade whatsoever. Your conclusion to the contrary is based on a misreading of a bad joke taken out of context. See my other comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6743185

You're right - I assumed they are involved in the arms trade. I should have clarified what I meant. I assumed too that this wouldn't be a mob going after them, though a due process to gather information and evidence. What would your thoughts be if they were in fact say an employee (of any level) of a weapons company? Also, you're equally assuming it's a "bad joke taken out of context."

Yes, Occam's Razor tells me that when an employee of a media organization says he's going to arm Pakistan and India with tridents and swords, it's most likely and therefore best to assume it's a joke. Assuming otherwise would require some evidence.

I don't wish to engage in hypotheticals, suffice it to say I'd sooner be a prostitute than work for a weapons company myself.

Also, when's Turntable.fm making its way to Canada? :) I know I could use a way to pretend I'm in the U.S. - though I'd rather not circumvent.

> I'm pretty sure there's no law against any of that.

Agreed. Unfortunately there is no recourse until a power center rises elsewhere. They say written history would have been very different in case Germany had won their war.

No I don't really think it would be. I doubt it would have been in recent history after Germans won either, and even if it did dynasties fall. "History is written by the victors" denies the fact that even the victors have their doubts, internal doubts, and some after reflection regret.

He's pretty clearly implying that the investigation is rigged, and therefore uninteresting.

The money comment is a pretty insensitive. That said, a lot of time spent on any particular thing tends to result in serious desensitization to the subject. Go have dinner with a few EMTs and listen to their shop talk. ("He was tasting for air, saying, 'dudegaspam Igaspgonnagasplive?', and all I could muster was, 'dudemock gasp, mock gasp no, mock gasp you aren't mock gasp gonna live!'" Followed by a few rounds of laughter. Got to hear that little gem said just the other night by one of the top Search & Rescue professionals in the world.)

This kind of thing isn't uncommon, or even that big a deal. Few people can withstand the scrutiny of a public life-dump.

Tackiness aside, I don't think it's sufficient evidence for us to call for anyone's hanging or jailing, like some seem to be advocating here.

It's just business. Conflict is extremely profitable. Unfortunately, 164 people is a drop in a bucket in an ocean.

"It's just business."

Oh, it's ok then.

That's not true! People who died in these five star hotels and their conference rooms were top notch entrepreneurs, executives AND ordinary people of India [1]. So 164 people who died is not just a drop in the ocean as you would like to believe here.

[1] http://www.indianexpress.com/news/yes-bank-chairman-ashok-ka...

People who died in these five star hotels and their conference rooms were top notch entrepreneurs, executives AND ordinary people of India [1]. So 164 people who died is not just a drop in the ocean as you would like to believe here.

Death of innocents is a tragedy whether they were an entrepreneur, an executive, or a janitor.

You're right. But when conflict is extremely profitable for some then the value of those who died and are going to die is already under material consideration within that justification.

On the parent comment 164 people sounded like a lame statistic, involuntarily generalizing everyone as "people who just died there" and this is usual business for others to profit from it.

I know what you're trying to say. Sure everyone innocent who died there was an equal human being and this tragedy should be left at that.

What a horrible thing to think or say. Entrepreneurs and executives be damned; human beings are human beings.

Are we already implying that Stratfor carried out the bombing? Wow.

You don't see a problem with this?

It's a weird feeling reading other people's email. I'm sad to see Wikileaks didn't at least do a quick regex pass to remove the credit cards (yup, found some) and the personal love notes. I'm generally a supporter of Wikileaks, but mass dumps like this aren't responsible and only give more ammunition to their detractors.

These "people" are looking to profit from misery (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6742844).

Wikileaks is attempting to provide transparency in a world where that doesn't much exist so boo-fucking-hoo if somebody's Mastercard gets leaked in the process.

Mass dumps aren't adding any more "ammunition" for their detractors than some sort of filtered dump would. Detractors don't need much of a reason to dislike what Wikileaks is doing beyond the fact that they've been exposed.

You know who else profits from misery? Doctors, and funeral home owners. Pretty much anyone in the media. I certainly hope my doctor isn't making terrible jokes about how much money he's going to make from my disease, but even if he was, it wouldn't be illegal nor would I find it a justifiable reason to leak his personal information (let alone his clients' information!).

You also assume everyone is already split into either the pro-Wikileaks camp or their detractors. As someone who has mixed feelings about Wikileaks, this definitely affected my view of them negatively. (Full disclosure - my card was among those leaked. But even if it hadn't been, if I had just been someone who knew about Stratfor rather than a subscriber, this would have put Wikileaks in a bad light for me).

I might suggest that doctors and funeral home owners profit by alleviating the misery of others.

Also, it would be different if we did a dump of all the emails from oncologists at the Moffitt Center and found out they were putting doctors on the news to say smoking is good for your health and then highfiving each other via email after.

You would be actually shocked how driven by money many oncologists are. Back when I used to consult, I had an oncologist tell me, with no hesitation, that he prefers to prescribe the drugs that give him the best profit margin, even if that means it's not the best choice for the patient.

I'm pretty sure if you checked his email you'd find some pretty shocking stuff as well.

In which case, publishing them would be a public good - doctors who put profit over positive outcomes for their patients should be named and shamed and patients would be better off knowing to avoid them.

This is in fact a solid argument for why transparency of this kind is a Good Thing.

Yes, as opposed to actively encouraging or causing it.

An ethical problem happens when the doctor conditions the alleviating of misery with the alleviating of the money from the miserable in moments of greatest weakness of people.

It negatively affects my view of Stratfor that they are not PCI compliant and have this sort of credit card information just lying around in emails. That is pretty grossly irresponsible.

Agreed. It affected my view negatively enough that I am no longer a subscriber. But somehow dumping all the credit cards on the Internet seems even more grossly irresponsible to me.

The point is that it is a data dump of emails and there is no reasonable reason for anyone to believe there is credit card information in there. I'm not sure why anyone should expect Wikileaks to scour the materials for this sort of thing. They only seem to redact in life-and-death sort of situations.

When doctors start joking about giving out .22LR zip guns to inner city 17 year old drug addicts, and funeral home directors start encouraging people to drink poisoned water , maybe then your parallel will ring true ...

They don't create or facilitate misery though..

None of that matters. They can read what they're posting and filter out personal information. Who cares what the detractors think, it's the right thing to do.

"Two wrongs don't make a right"

EDIT: people understand that Stratfor is a small publishing company, right? They sell subscriptions to a security-focused newsletter of debatable influence. They have no operational capability.

Yes it does matter. The right thing to do is transparency and that's what's happening here. If Bad Person & Associates are doing evil, they're not going to get a break just because their messages also contain personal love letters.

What great evil, exactly, has been done?

See post by kid0m4n below. It's the worst kind of evil: warmongering.

I had a much better opinion of Stratfor until now. They were plotting how to best sell misinformation. Misinformation that could start a war in which millions could die. They thought they could get away with this shit.

That's not how I read that email. I read that as a joke, kinda like a bunch of doctors talking about a disease epidemic and joking that it'll help put their kids through college.

Good point. We don't know the context of these emails. Are they being serious? Are they joking? Are we to assume every email in the 500k is to be taken seriously?

I'm sure many HNers have sent joking emails concerning their work to fellow coworkers. It happens in almost every office. I'm not saying that's the case here, but you never know.

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone but affect the whole world.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from the other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Does Stratfor have the capability of initiating wars?

I think this quote is worth thinking about, which is why I put it here. A bit of a non sequitur, perhaps.

I respect the ideal behind wikileaks but its not very important, and i believe that it takes a quite considerable amount of naivete to believe that this behaviour is beneficial to the masses rather than the groups and organisations that wikileaks is 'against' (!)

The 'transparency' is only of value for people who are too fucking stupid to understand that people are people no matter what job they are in, and should absolutely be expected to behave this way if there are not checks and balances in place.

Spamming out people's personal details is not just sloppy, it is giving ammunition to criminals and maybe even the target of this press release...

Personally I consider that to be very /wrong/ it may be legal or illegal or whatever, but its just wrong - people can come to some kind of harm as a result of this action. Conversely the benefit is that stupid people get their eyes opened? You can fuck right off frankly...

Noble intentions or not, wikileaks should not give people genuine reasons to attack them. This is precisely one.

Why is it OK to read the email of people who work for groups you don't like? Shouldn't the have the same rights as everyone else? If this is acceptable, why is it wrong when the NSA hacks into email accounts of groups they don't like?

(And putting "people" in scare quotes as if there's some doubt that they're human? Grow up.)

It has been quite long enough since the Stratfor data breach for the CC companies to close & reissue new card numbers. This is much ado about nothing.

Exactly what cause has been advanced by making them available?

There's a big difference between saying there's something on the Internet for no great cause (stop the presses!) and saying that something on the Internet is causing unfair personal damage.

When is it ever fair to cause someone personal damage? Doesn't there need to be some greater, overriding justification? If not then isn't this just internet mob justice (and as usual, if there's some collateral damage, so be it)?

> When is it ever fair to cause someone personal damage?

A lot of the time. For example, it's fair to rat out a cop who acts inappropriately or give a negative review to an eBay seller who scams you.

Filtering this stuff reliably isn't exactly free.

Just needs a quick regex! (now you have two problems: ) http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247

Maybe we'll be able to identify some people who voted for Stratfor with their pocketbooks. That finding wouldn't make me sad.

You want to internet mob justice on people who simply subscribed to a news service you don't like?

That appears to be what he is advocating, yes.

Next on WikiLeaks: credit card #'s and home addresses to subscribers to Fox News and MSNBC. It's the wild, wild west.

> I'm sad to see Wikileaks didn't at least do a quick regex pass to remove the credit cards (yup, found some) and the personal love notes.

Please, tell this to everybody claiming "I've nothing to hide". They will realize that YES, they've got something to hide, and then they possibly would shut the fuck up.

Sorry man, priorities - you got them wrong. Who cares about a few credit card numbers or "personal love notes" when we find ourselves living in corrupt "democracies" that are about to crumble pretty much all over the Western world.

Is it wrong when the NSA reads your email under certain conditions but who cares when it's released to everybody?

The strength of your principles can only be tested at the extremes. We can't beat corruption with wishy-washy values and situational ethics.

If more people funded to hire people or people volunteered to go through the content first, then sure - otherwise it's important to release content like kid0m4n posted in a comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6742844

Why would people email credit card details?

Because it's not that big of a deal. People's CC number is everywhere. In databases, on receipts, etc. It's a little more risky but so are many things people do daily like owning a Ford truck (some of the most stolen vehicles) or using ATMs.

Because it's not that big of a deal. People's CC number is everywhere. In databases, on receipts, etc.

Where I live the full no is not stored on receipts, and in dbs it must be encrypted. I think emailing CC numbers around would be breaking PCI compliance, and that would be a big deal. There's no way I'd email a CC number.

I think that feeling is guilt.

Call it collateral damage. They have no problems inflicting that on others.

most of those cards should have expired by now I guess.

I can say from experience that the number may still stay the same, once the issuer provides a new card to replace the expired one.

Is it more, or do these leaks paint StratFor as something along the lines of a "conflict investment firm" on the lines of Richard Morgan's Market Forces [1]?

Jacket cover description excerpt: "A coup in Cambodia. Guns to Guatemala. For the men and women of Shorn Associates, opportunity is calling. In the superheated global village of the near future, big money is made by finding the right little war and supporting one side against the other–in exchange for a share of the spoils."

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40450.Market_Forces

While that book has it's pacing flaws I really enjoyed it. When he calls up "Langley Contracting" for "five extreme prejudice deletions" and is asked "Please indicate level of precision required from the following five options: surgical, accurate, scattershot, blanket, atrocity" I decided it was a winner. Morgan's site has a great quote that the movie option for this book was never exercised because “no-one’s going to want to play an action hero this morally compromised”.

I guess if StratFor is acquired by an investment bank you would basically have a Shorn Associates type firm.

It's a pity that his most popular book (Altered Carbon) hasn't been made into a movie. Now that one's a clear winner (sex, drugs, lots of bullets).

I haven't read the book, but I don't see how anyone who's done their research into Stratfor would think this. AFAIK they don't fund any conflicts or play an active role in any political events. Their business is information. They're discussing this as a profitable event because they expect people will want to know more about the event and will therefore subscribe. Tasteless? Absolutely. But that's about the extent of it.

https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?relid=402#searchresult

Subject: Re: GOOGLE & Iran internal use only - pls do not forward

GOOGLE is getting WH and State Dept. support & air cover. In reality, they are doing things the CIA cannot do. But, I agree with you. He's going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose GOOGLE's covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Govt can then disavow knowledge and GOOGLE is left holding the shit bag.

That email thread has been public for quite a long time now and the subject of some conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the rest of that email chain fizzles out, suggesting that it was just an opinionated off-the-cuff remark, not the result of any serious analysis. Maybe there is more in today's drop, but as of yesterday there wasn't anything particularly damning regarding that google employee.

Surprised no one has pointed this out. The headlines for "statfor" today aren't this dump, but rather: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-strat...

I imagine the two events are connected

An absolute gem

"... 2010-12-03 11:54:04 FW: Manning & Wiki Founder Arrest/Prosecution? scott.stewart@stratfor.com gfriedman@stratfor.com

Holy crap, we're passing Fred's rantings to confederation partners?

From: Emre Dogru [mailto:emre.dogru@stratfor.com] Sent: Friday, December 03, 2010 3:37 AM To: burton Cc: Confederation Subject: Fwd: Manning & Wiki Founder Arrest/Prosecution?

Hey Fred, one of our confed partners (Sabah daily) would like to use this information without any attribution. But he just wonders if your source used "fry" in the sense that Manning should be executed by electrocution, or does it mean something else in intel business lingo?..."

https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=410181

"RELEASE: over 500k new Stratfor files. Total now released over 5.5M. http://wikileaks.org/gifiles #freehammond" - @wikileaks https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/401466014111506432

whaaa? https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=10828

Jesus christ that looks terrible.

Horrible, but this has been online for awhile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyar-Way5RE

I'm going to say that the video is almost certainly not real and is in fact a training video.

A training video? Showing them how to behave like barbaric cunts?

Do you have any context for the video whatsoever?

No?

OK, then maybe don't jump to conclusions. One possibility is that it's a training video for a "watch this then report what happened" sort of thing, which are very common and may not even be affiliated with an actual police department.

Consider the presence of a camera crew (the filmer is way too close to an armed officer to be a bystander). Also notice how there is no blood and no physicality related to a body being hit by bullets.

For all we know this could be a training video to help cops avoid this sort of thing. What sort of twisted world do you live in where you would imagine that any police department in America could explicitly set out to train its police to cold-bloodedly murder people?

Everything related to this video screams of it not depicting an actual event.

Edit: videos of the police committing murder or negligent homicide do exist but there is generally far more context with those videos and they are tied to well known cases.

Edit2: I've watched the video a few more times now and I've noticed some important details which aren't very obvious due to the low resolution of the video. First, the civilian has another gun which he retrieves from behind his back, you can see it in his hands in the last few frames of the film. Second, the "police" are not in uniform nor do they have any police insignia present yet they are wearing bulletproof vests. If they were plain clothes cops they would not have their vests on above their clothes. If they were police on duty they would have badges, insignia, etc.

My guess is that this is a training video or video of training, maybe for police, possibly for private security.

Wiki leaks is embarrassing itself. Stratfor is a silly bunch of blowhards who repackage the Economist for gullible subscribers who think these jokers are some secret intelligence agents.

Actually, Stratfor tends to have a unique perspective on the news. I've been signed up for their free email thread for a while, and while I've never been blown away, they do have a better-than-most longform approach to news. It definitely beats CNN.

I've had the "privilege" of getting access to the paid product via work some years ago. I found that they did accurately predict 100 of the next 2 crises (ie if you say every day disaster is imminent some days really bad things randomly occur). But beyond the quality of their content, Stratfor intimates they have some proprietary pipeline to govt classified intelligence when they have no more access than any other person with Google and a subscription to the NY times. Wikileaks embarasses itself and does Stratfor a great service by perpetrating the marketing hoax that Stratfor is anything but a bunch of guys in Texas rehashing public news sources for gullible corporate consumers.

I'd have to agree. Stratfor has some incredible analysis in their articles. Stuff the mainstream media overlooks in an effort to make news easily digestible.

>It definitely beats CNN.

Damned by faint praise...

Imparting that kind of wisdom is what inspires new users of HN to sign up.

Would it be a crime if I were to read one of the emails?

It may be a crime to link directly to a zip file containing the data in an IRC chat, as we saw with Barrett Brown [1].

That made me reconsider even posting this Wikileaks page to HN (yay chilling effect). But I'm not aware of any criminal law preventing you from reading published content on Wikileaks or submitting a link to them on a social media site.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown

That zip file contained 5,000 stolen credit card numbers, along with CVVs and ID info.

Correct, he copied and pasted a link (posted by someone else) to a zip file from one chat room to another chat room, that contained 5000 cc's.

And is now facing "12 federal charges relating to identity theft and fraud" for doing so.

In the same vein, and according to leaked TPP documents (incidentally also leaked by WL), simply linking to infringing content would be grounds for forcing ISPs to notify you of your infringement and subsequently disconnect you.

It's certainly quite clear that submitting such links to social media services would permit retaliation against you.

Any chance they could get you for downloading copyrighted emails without a license?

IANAL, but copyright violations almost always have to do with distribution rather than downloads. They get P2P users on the technicality that to download, you also end up uploading.

That's not a technicality, and with most clients (e.g. BitTorrent) it's quite possible to download without uploading. There's a fair amount of work focused around penalizing people for downloading without uploading.

All I really torrent anymore is Linux images, and there I usually find I can't seed more than I download if I try.

Interesting.

I wonder if disabling uploading is any defense.

The real question is, what does it really mean for something to "be a crime," and does it really matter? If you mean could the US government do anything it wanted to you because you read one of the emails, then the answer is a definite yes.

If you are a DoD employee or contractor, then the answer is 'yes'.

[1] http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/06/dod-classified/

(assuming there is classified information in the documents)

The Stratfor documents were accessed through the internet. If anything in there is classified someone at Stratfor should be facing a criminal investigation for storing classified documents on an unclassified system.

That doesn't mean it isn't also a crime to access the classified files (in certain circumstances, as above).

That's the great thing about the US government now - everything's a crime, oh boy!

thoughtcrime, maybe.

Not if you live in China

I click through the Canadian ones, I'm confused on how much those emails are racists, homophobic, raw and violent...

https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?relid=707#searchresult

Question for game theorists: Is here a realistic scenario under which the entire world could disarm and shift from coming up with better ways to kill people to more constructive pursuits.

Please don't say "A visit from Vulcans"

> realistic scenario

No. Because humans don't follow game theory. Killing people hasn't come about because of rational application of theories. It comes about from evolution. We, as a race, are aggressive, territorial, greedy, exploiters because that has been, recently, a winning strategy vs the other organisms and environment on this planet. Unfortunately, for us, evolution doesn't care about long term. It's fine with us being wiped out and taking 98.1% of the rest with us. It can always start over with next up and comer organism.

Theory, rationalism, good intentions, nothing is going to override millions of years of genetically programmed behavior.

Transhumanism will override all the genetically programmed behaviour :)

For some entertaining, game theoretic exploration of this topic, I recommend reading Liar Game[1].

[1] http://mangafox.me/manga/liar_game/

Are files available via torrent/web somewhere? I'd appreciate if someone has a link to share.

It sounds like they need to improve their billing service.

" Call me if you want me to get on IM. I'm running around the house and putting things away but would be happy to come back to my computer and chat w/ you. Smoochies Hunny. I love you! XOXOXOXOXO Amy"

Seems a bit too personal to me

Yeah Amy should know better than to email that to his work email address.

I wish they published the raw data for this - it would be a lot easier to do analysis and visualization on it.

They are talking about the 26/11/2008 Mumbai, India attack and how its going to make them a lot of money. Horrid! https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=8496

https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=363678

Nice.

I was shocked to read through those comments, they didn't seem very professional, and that such blatant racism could go unchecked in such a large and powerful organization as Stratfor seeemed very odd. Anyway, turns out those comments were just pasted from vnnforum, and were not written by Stratfor employees. Now, I don't know why they saw any value in that thread at all, just seems like a bunch of nazis trashing McDonalds, but at least Stratfor didn't write that garbage themselves.

I'm a supporter of the idea of WikiLeaks, if not all of their decisions ... now here's what bugs me: why is it rare (or never) that we see mass dumps of Russian, Chinese, or Pakistani intelligence information? What, there's no corruption, profiteering, or otherwise bad vibes over there? The US has a monopoly on all that? Why does it always have to hurt US intelligence activities (yes: some deserve to be hurt, but just blanket dumping also puts the country at risk).

Are you serious? http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:China

Open mouth, insert foot I suppose. Though this leads me to a second question, equally interesting ... why haven't I heard of this? Aside from the obvious (I've never looked directly for it), there are two aspects at play - my own filtering, and the editorial decisions of the news organizations.

For the former, I aim for diversity, but it's hard to know you're getting the "full story" as well as what's a "credible source" when all you have is what's already available to you.

For the latter, none of us is immune to this influence, unless we operate our own news / fact-finding outlet, and then our internal biases still provide an umwelt [0] that's hard to escape.

----------------------------------------

[0] http://xkcd.com/1037/

There are plenty of those things, but certain media outlets/"journalists" (Joshua Foust...) have taken this propaganda approach of thinly veiled accusations that Wikileaks only wants to hurt the US and may be a [insert enemy nation] intelligence operation.

It's just a bunch of bullshit. I was reading wikileaks long before the Iraq War logs, and there was before that very little US related leaking.

The interesting thing for you to do is analyze how it is you came to this myopic view of the situation. Who/what have you been reading? Having conversations with? It's a great example of how filter bubbles affect our view of the world.

Why the hell don't they just dump everything?

they're politicizing the very leaking they're doing.

Are you actually going to read 500k emails?

Especially when most of them look like water cooler chitchat.

404 on all those links. am i doing it wrong?

or may be Great Firewall does it right :) Btw, can NSA splitters function as such as well? Or [selectively] replace real traffic with artificially generated one? (I mean pure splitter wouldn't, yet why it would be just a pure splitter? why limit themselves to read-only capabilities only? May sound like a new tin foil hat frontier for some ... yet i think we do need one at least as a guide post into the future as the reality has already moved well past the previous one)

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/this-is-how-the-interne...

Apparently there are malicious servers that do active attacks against Internet users (with forged injected traffic). I've seen no indication that the servers that carry out these attacks are directly related to the splitters.

Definitely works...

it works for me. Maybe it was temporary?

yeah, works now

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