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Comment by joshfraser | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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..

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?

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.

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

> 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.

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